Sunday, October 29, 2017

3 Potential Risks - Weekly Blog # 495



Introduction

Contrarians are useful even when they prove to be wrong. In forming an investment committee for a non-profit institution of professional investors, I felt it was incumbent on me to somewhat balance the committee, largely populated by generic optimistic money managers with at least one contrarian that was well skilled in finding good shorts. While it would have been inappropriate for this institution to sell short betting on falling prices, the answering of some bearish views were useful in appropriately constructing our long portfolio which did well. We were better prepared to be long-term investors on the long side for reviewing and appreciating contrarian views.

Current Thinking Process

Stock markets around the world are rising well ahead of current sales and earnings, even adjusted for modest growth projections. The buyers are enjoying what could be called a “melt up.” Economic sentiments are moving higher.

While I do not know how long these trends will last - be it a day or multiple years - I believe it is critical to consider the potential risks that are currently apparent to this long investor and manager.

First Risk: Simplistic Decisions

On October 26th The Wall Street Journal published a multi-page critique entitled “Morningstar Mirage” which purported to show that the firm’s various ratings were not helpful in making decisions as to what mutual funds to buy. The article decried the marketing power of Morningstar’s ratings, not recognizing that at least since the 1930s funds that performed well attracted the most sales if they were known. In the same light there was no real discussion of the questionable mathematical processes used to reach its conclusions.

The biggest risk to investors is not the Morningstar Mirage. The biggest risk is that the financial community believes that investors want simple answers to complex questions. Sales people who can get very limited time with both their prospects and their accounts are trained to use the KISS principle, (Keep It Simple Stupid)” in their communications. It has never been clear to me whether the communicator or the investor was stupid.


Often people spend more time at a sporting event or preparing a special meal then they do making investing decisions which can have significant impact on their lives and those of the beneficiaries. At the game each play, each course or each critical ingredient is thought about deeply. As the readers may be aware I learned the basis of securities analysis at the racetracks, spending hours on each race. I am told that one of the most successful racehorse owners in the last 30 years in the UK spends a great deal of time on the races and the breeding of her horses. We should do no less than Her Majesty.

When Hylton Phillips-Page, my VP of Fund Selection and I analyze a mutual fund we spend a long time getting to understand how the fund, its managers, and supporting organizations impact the past results. A much more difficult task is guessing how we think the past will not be simply extrapolated into the indefinite futures. The term futures is a recognition that there will be interruptions of past trends as conditions change.

The risk of simplistic decisions is much broader than choosing mutual funds.  Not only investment decisions, but all types of other decisions, including political, career, and other personal decisions are put at risk when given only cursory attention. The past is useful as to what happened and more importantly what didn’t.  Most studies of human decision-making involve a number of biological organs. The brain and our senses are very complex and they interact differently when conditions change, and they are always changing.

Second Risk: Credit Withdrawals

In each of the general write-ups of major stock market reversals almost all the attention is devoted to stock prices. In truth almost every major stock market decline was slightly preceded by the withdrawal of credit support. Since we are not out of October, we should first start with October 28, 1929, the biggest single day drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average up to that point. On that day, the index dropped 12%. Most recounts do not include the fact that the market had been dropping since August and a good bit of the buying was done with borrowed money called margin. The borrowed money came from the major banks who issued it to the brokers, who in turn offered it to their clients on the basis of their portfolios. The banks used call loans to the brokers using their clients’ collateral. As the market declined in the late summer and early fall of 1929, the value of the collateral fell, reducing the safety for the banks that were starting to call their loans. The brokers called their margin accounts to put up more collateral which most didn’t (or were not able to) and were rapidly sold out of their holdings. This is an example of a non-price sensitive insistent seller.

A similar thing happened in 1987 where in one day, October 19, 1987, the DJIA fell 22.6%. European stocks were down about 10%. Portfolio insurance used futures to hedge long institutional positions. Many of the futures contracts were margined against the long positions owned by financial institutions. In Chicago there was no requirement to be able to short on a price uptick as there was in New York. When New York opened there was a wall of sell orders.

A somewhat similar occurrence happened with the collapse of Lehman Brothers when the “repo market” to finance its fixed income inventory was closed to Lehman due to a different set of rules and expectations in London.

Trying to avoid a future similar event, the Dodd Frank Act focused on what banks and others owned, not the risk in their loans. I suspect that most of the inventory owned by the Authorized Participants, (the market-makers for Exchange Traded Funds and similar products) are highly margined. At some point the providers of these loans may get nervous as to their collateral cushion and may want instant repayment which could create a problem.

There may be similar potential problems in both the US Treasury and Foreign Exchange markets where high leverage is available.

Third Risk : Career Risk

If investors are guilty of simplistic investment decisions, professionals live in fear of being fired either by clients or employers, This is a particular risk if someone needs to publicly report performance or work for publicly traded companies. Thus, despite reasonable long-term results, near-term absolute and even more importantly - relative results - drive terminations. This is normally a mistake on the part of the terminator for two reasons. First, most of the time there is a partial or complete recovery. Second, and much more dangerous to the investor is the choice of the replacement, often a manager that has good long-term results which are appropriate for a decline, but poor results in expansions.

Bottom Line

Risk is always with us and it is the highest when least expected. Drive on two-way streets, they are safer.
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A. Michael Lipper, CFA
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