Sunday, February 25, 2018

Investment Lessons from “The Phil,” “The General” and Warren - Weekly Blog # 512



Introduction

I look for valuable investment lessons from exposure rather than only from annual reports, company statements, and the financial media. I often find lessons learned from beyond the investment arena as more meaningful. Over the last weekend I was blessed to have three exposures which gave me valuable insights. The three were: The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, General George Washington, and Warren Buffett.

Investment Lessons from “The Vienna Phil” Friday Night
               
They played an all Brahms Program beautifully.  I will let others in the packed audience comment on his Academic Overture (university drinking songs), eight variations on Haydn’s masterful work, and his long delayed symphony No 1. But sitting in Carnegie Hall Friday night, two important observations came to me. The first with the aid of The Playbill was that it was very difficult to produce high quality music in very different musical formats. In particular, it was said at the time no one liked his first symphony, except that over time it became viewed as the best first symphony ever written. Further, Brahms was considered the best composer of his era and the best successor to Beethoven’s crown.

In thinking about the comments on his work, it is somewhat parallel to what we and many others do in assembling a portfolio of managers or securities. At any given point in time one or more managers or securities fail to do well in the period and we are deemed to be less good investors to those highly concentrated portfolios of only the most winning holdings in the period. From a career risk standpoint we get penalized for this underperformance, yet similar to Brahms, taken overtime the complete work through multiple market cycles can produce much more credible “lifetime” results. The lessons are that diversification can hurt results, particularly in short time periods, and we should therefore pick clients more carefully as to their time frame focus.

In addition, there was another critical observation that came to me Friday night at Carnegie Hall. When I was a college student sitting in the cheap seats in the highest balcony, the audience below looked a bit like a bunch of fury animals, with women and some men encased in full length furs.  Friday night, at one of the highlights of this season’s top concerts, I did not see one human draped in furs. Clearly there has been a major change in the audience’s thinking. It was an important reversal. Sitting there, I started to look for a similar reversal from today’s investment fashion. I began to wonder whether in a number of years “intelligent” portfolios will own index vehicles or even this year’s model of ETF/ETNs? The lesson for all of us is to think what will be different when our children or grandchildren have our investment responsibilities.

“The General” Speaks and Too Few Listen

Each February my wife Ruth and I attend a birthday celebration for President George Washington. This year I had the pleasure to spend some time with a young but noted historian. I asked him about the “Whiskey Rebellion” where President Washington had the task of dealing with an organized bunch of angry western Pennsylvanian farmers. At the urging of Alexander Hamilton, the largest American army formed since the Revolution was raised to deal with the rebellious farmers. I asked the bright historian what was really going on in this rebellion. I knew that the excise tax being levied was a small six to nine cents a gallon. He agreed with me it was not the size of the tax, but the resentment of the western farmers to the easterner’s wealth. (Sounds somewhat familiar to the resentments between the blue and red states today.) Hamilton’s solution through negotiation was to have the central government assume all of the war debts of the various states, which lowered the tax burden of many and led to a sound national debt policy.

The reason for my question is that I am seeing the potential for a surge in indirect taxes. These are sales, use taxes and fees paid to the government. Once these indirect supports to a government are in place they are difficult to reverse, except with enormous popular demand. I am told that today in Egypt they are still collecting an excise tax that that ancient Pharos initiated! My concern is that Federal, State, and Local politicians will gravitate to increased use taxes to reduce any shortfall created by changes in the income tax. For some jurisdictions indirect taxes equal about half of corporate income tax payments.

Many years ago the late chair of the US House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee asked me about his favorite tax raising approach, the Value Added Tax. I replied, did he want to convert US citizens to French citizens who at that time had made an art form of not paying their share of taxes? It did not go forward then, but is being raised again now. I hope we don’t as a nation have to go back to The Boston Tea Party and the Whiskey Rebellion to express our concerns for these sly ways to take more money from us. We need to be on watch.

Warren’s Investment Policy Lesson

As most every investor knows, on Saturday morning Warren Buffett issued his annual letter portion of Berkshire Hathaway’s annual report. I believe very few of the media pundits caught what I believe is a very important affirmation to his and Charlie Munger’s thinking. The letter revealed that Berkshire began a slow but deliberate program to eventually buy 80% of Pilot Flying J (PFJ), which has about 750 locations that we used to call truck stops. I am sure that it is a good business, but to me it reinforces what has become a major tenet of their thinking in terms of many of the operations. They seem to be drawn to products that need to be shipped by trucks, trains, or pipelines. While they do own some service companies beyond insurance and finance companies, it seems that goods production and transportation tend to be rather unique vehicles which are often built and owned by entrepreneurial families, which at their current stage are producing excess cash flow to their growing needs. Most of these are domestically located. The greater volume they do, the more closely their results will parallel the Gross Domestic Product, but they will grow faster because of smarter use of leverage and freedom from normal corporate disciplines.

In Conclusion

From a long term investor’s viewpoint there are a lot of positive factors. I am not too concerned that the recent recovery appears to me to be a weak test of the recent lows. I wonder for 2018 whether we have seen both the highs and lows for the year or possibly neither, but in the long run it may not be important either way.

Question: What do you think?     

Sunday, February 18, 2018

Misinterpreted Signals – Weekly Blog # 511



Introduction

There should be much to learn from the last six weeks that could influence our investments going forward. Unfortunately, these inputs do not lead to a quick sound bite, which isn’t bad.  “Sell in May and Go Away” with a return in November, might help equity traders, but would be of little help for long-term investors who are tasked with paying a long stream of future bills. To aid our diverse audience I have divided my focus into three buckets; equity, debt, and inflation.

Equity Prices

Analysts tend to utilize tools which they are most familiar with. In my case, the main investment vehicle is mutual funds, particularly actively managed funds. Each week, my old firm publishes the average investment performance of 8,452 diversified mutual funds largely invested in the US (USDE). After fourteen straight months of gains I saw that the USDE had a gain of +4.37% for January. By the 15th of February the gain for the first six weeks of 2018 had shrunk to +1.53%.  Disregarding the effect of compounding, if that gain was to continue for calendar year 2018, it would be a gain of +13%. That is still too high relative to its past history of +8.41% for the past three years or +8.12% for the past ten years (through the end of January). These eight percent moves are within the long term range of 9% since 1926 for the S&P 500 Index, so are believable. Contrast that with the 12 months performance of the USDE to the end of January of +21.34% or twelve months through February 15th of +14.73%. Thus, there is room for those who expected a continuation of last year’s growth rate to be disappointed. Near term, some of my market analyst friends would only believe the February recovery if there is a meaningful test of the recent low points.

I have an additional concern that the majority of portfolio managers did not actually experience the 1987 decline and recovery and they won’t be attuned to additional insights from that experience. Almost all of the words written about 1987 are about the failure of so-called “portfolio insurance,” not only to protect institutional portfolios but more importantly the contribution to massive sales of equities and derivatives into a weak market. 

There are two other insights that have value today. The first, as pointed out to me by a client during the onslaught, was that while our domestic economy was shrinking due to the Volcker-administered high interest rates created to break the inflationary spiral, corporate earnings were growing smartly through a combination of exports and foreign subsidiary earnings. I suspect that these trends are even stronger today.

The second missed input was that one of the best and strongest specialists went to the wall (bankrupt) using his last equity and borrowing power to absorb some of the selling. Because of regulatory changes, there is even less capital positioned to absorb selling today. Also, little has been written about  the beginning prices of 1987 being similar to the year ending prices, the market was flat. Thus, the market system actually worked and provided the basis for a long bull market that extended many years.

Hopefully we can look for useful lessons from our immediate past that we can apply to our current and future investment policies.

Credit Concerns

These past few weeks we have seen some reversal of the more than a year long global rush into fixed income funds. Due to global central bank downward pressure on interest rates, investors have been in a scramble to find higher income yields without a great deal of concern for principal risk. It is not yet clear if the sizable redemptions in High Yield funds are a display of concern that the inevitable rise in interest rates will make the refinancing of high yield debt more difficult or the beginning of a concern that some of the debt won’t be paid off as scheduled. At the moment we are not seeing the institutional market reflecting the same reaction to bank loan/floating rate vehicles. However, a number of private equity managers have noted that they are seeing an increase in the use of leverage globally.

It is important to understand the impact of a defaulted loan or delayed interest payments on the financial system. Loans from various financial institutions are treated as earnings assets which produce income to pay bills. If these experience slow or no payments, the expected users will have to change, usually by restricting their ongoing payments. In addition, if the defaulted loan was an earning asset for a financial institution, its capital is involuntarily reduced. Perhaps, the most insidious element of defaults is that they cause rumors to fly within the global financial community and beyond. This causes the institution with the perceived bad loan to quickly restructure its loan and other portfolio elements, magnifying the impact of the rumored or real defaulted loan.  Loans can go into default for lots of reasons, mistakes in judgment as to the extent ion of credit to clients, bad product and pricing decisions, acts of nature, and loss of integrity anywhere along the payment line. Unfortunately, as interest rates rise the pace of activity accelerates, which can lead to an acceleration of the problems listed. More exposed fraud becomes visible as rates rise.

There is a strong connection between a threatened credit community and the equity market. Many equity based financial institutions are vulnerable, including money mangers, brokers, and liquidity providers such as market makers, authorized participants for ETF/ETNs, and credit extenders. Most often they function with borrowed money, usually in the form of call loans (which can be called at anytime without reason). The firm that went to the wall in 1987 and Lehman Brothers could have been saved if instant credit was available to them. I am not aware of such a need today, but the rumor or the reality of such a need can come very quickly anyplace in the world.  As we are so interconnected globally, it is conceivable that on any given morning we will be forced to react to such a happening.

Inflation

Hardly any investment meeting that I have attended in the last couple of months has not included a discussion on inflation. I believe that these discussions, along with the purported discussions at various central banks and by most pundits, have been focused on easy and incomplete data. The focus has been on prices, including reported wages. Not only does the data not deal with changes in quality, terms of trade, and non-reported wages, it also does not deal with the “informal economy.” 
 
I am becoming increasingly concerned that the strength of deflationary trends is not fully understood in assessing spending habits of consumers at all levels. One of the major deflationary trends is technology under Moore’s Law. Each year the power of our cell phones and other technology grows. This can be measured easily, but what can’t be is its value in terms of what we can now do that we couldn’t do last year in terms of commerce, enjoyment, and better health.

I suspect that one of the reasons for the declining number of auto deaths is due to the large number of computers in each new car. It has also led I believe, to less time in the repair shop. This is caused by two trends. The first is that the modern repair shop is equipped with its own computer set up to interrogate the car’s system. And second is a trend we see in all of our mechanical devices, of replacing rather than repairing. (How many young repair people do we know?) 

When economists look at wages, they look at it from the workers' take home pay level and exclude payments the employers are making to benefit the worker in terms of social security taxes, health insurance and retirement contributions, all of which have been growing faster than take home pay. I wonder whether the increase in quality of what we are wearing is included. We are no longer wearing cheap, poorly made imports. Walmart and other supply systems are selling much better quality, which is often delivered by Amazon. In the competitive era that we have been going through, the terms of trade are often more important than price e.g., delivery time and conditions, payment schedules, advertising support, etc.

For the above reasons I have little confidence in the value of the published inflation numbers and hope that the Fed and the other central banks will be slow in reacting to reported trends. The consumer and commercial worlds are much better at adjusting to change in conditions than people sitting in capital cities.

Conclusion

We are in a new era of more rapid changes. Dividing one’s portfolio by various timespans can minimize the risks to your total capital.

Question of the Week;

Have you materially changed your 2018 portfolio?      
__________
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A. Michael Lipper, CFA
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Contact author for limited redistribution permission.

Tuesday, February 13, 2018

Stocks Are Not Concerns of Contrarians; Structure & Debt Are - Weekly Blog # 510.



Introduction

I attempt to learn every single day. Further, as a disciple of betting on racehorses, I am always searching for the potentially successful contrarian bet. Contrarians perceive potential future developments different than the crowd. Thus, they almost always are premature and often wrong. However, since contrarians by definition have fewer followers when they are wrong (or too premature) losses are relatively small.

Normal Stock Markets Decline

Anyone that has studied the laws of gravity or were a ground-crunching US Marine, is used to a long march up a hill or a stock chart followed an accelerating decline. We should have expected it because of the length of the past performance streak.

For the last ten years earnings growth has been declining and most of the time operating earnings have been growing in the mid-single digit range. On the other hand, due to the central banks/governments’ manipulation of interest rates, risk assets mainly stocks, attracted inflows. Using the average US Diversified Equity Mutual Fund  investment performance for periods ending at the end of January produced the following results:

Average US Diversified Equity Fund Performance

Period Length
% Total Reinvested Return
One Year
+21.34%
Two Year 
+ 20.96%
Three Year
+ 11.12%
Five Year
+ 12.53%
Ten Year
+   8.12%

Any follower of statistical streaks, e.g., Super Bowl winners, election victories, or rainy days would doubt the continuation of a streak. Despite the Atlanta Fed’s latest forecast of GDP 2018 growth of 5.4%, streaks end  often to the disbelief of the crowd.

First Contrarian Concern

The stock market structure  has changed and some very successful people are betting on further changes.

A strategist at JP Morgan* has noted that there has been massive redemptions by commodity trading advisors and risk parity pools. Charles Schwab* has noted massive unwinding of “short vol” and other positions to meet margin calls. In the latest week, according to my old firm, conventional equity mutual funds had net redemptions of $3.1 Billion and equity ETFs had net redemptions of $ 20.8 Billion. While there may be some double counting in these observations, what is clear to me is that the trading community reacted much more and faster than the longer-term investment community. (We can discuss privately whether we are seeing modern day Sir Issac Newtons at work.)

From a longer term point of view I am much more concerned in watching three of our most prominent investment leaders adding dramatically new (to them) investment activities. Goldman Sachs* going into consumer small loan business through Marcus. Black Rock announcing that it wishes to raise $10 Billion to permanently invest in long-term minority positions similar to Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger at Berkshire Hathaway* and some of their other holdings. Blackstone becoming the 55% partner in ThomsonReuters* financial services, currently managed by Reuters.


*Owned in a private financial services fund or in personal accounts

Each of these may make sense, but requires the use of talents that they may not have already.

What is much more significant to me as a stock market investor is that they are saying that their existing businesses are insufficient to produce enough of the expected profits.  When a crowd moves to a different casino table or shrinks around a trading post on the floor of a stock exchange, one has to wonder whether these bright people are saying something very fundamental to which we should be paying attention.

Second Contrarian Concern

One of the reasons for the victory in the last Super Bowl was the winner had better defenses than the loser. When Marines are forced to go into a defensive position they continue to examine it for possible weaknesses. Most defenses are based on an orderly collection of principles. The two main fixed income considerations are duration/maturity and credit quality. 

Around the world the search for somewhat acceptable yield has led to record sales of bond funds and other credit bearing devices. Due to low and until very recently declining yields, investors have been lengthening their duration to get higher yields even though central banks/ governments are raising rates. The traditional ethos of investing in fixed income is that one makes money through receiving interest payments and hopefully reinvesting them wisely if they are not consumed. Most of the time investors are not concerned about losing principal as the bonds promise to pay off at par. Great theory, but when rates change and fixed income prices decline, bond fund net asset values decline. This is what has opened in the year 2018 up to February 8th. The average Core Bond fund on a total return basis declined-1.67%. This is the largest category for retail investors. Even more disheartening was the performance of the general US Government funds -3.83%. This demonstrates when rates move up a small amount investors can lose money. One needs to remember that there have been periods when high quality rates reached into the double digit range.

My real concern is the possibility of some credit instruments not paying off in full or on time. As someone that sits on investment committees that are besieged by the newest and latest credit instrument vehicles, my guess is that many will be okay, but some may not. For example, a credit fund for a management group that has had prior trouble announces its week even; with 40% in cash they have felt it needed to reduce its net asset valuation in half. Many of the new credit vehicles in the US and other markets  are staffed by bright people who believe in the numbers provided and their derived algorithms. As interest rates move higher, integrity throughout the system may not.

While one can certainly lose more money in stocks than fixed income securities, the expectations are different. In fixed, one expects most of the time is disappointment with the smallness of the gains. Most investors do not expect to have any loses in fixed income. At this point in the cycle, one should be aware that there can be losses and on an emotional basis of disappointment there can be more risk in fixed income than in recognizable volatile equities.

Question of the Week: What are you watching for in terms of fixed income risk?  
__________
Did you miss my blog last week?  Click here to read.

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Copyright ©  2008 - 2018

A. Michael Lipper, CFA
All rights reserved
Contact author for limited redistribution permission.