A Good Week for Long-Term Stock Investors - Weekly Blog # 516

Introduction

“Six months ago everything was good you couldn’t find a reason to sell stocks. Now you can’t find a reason to hold them.”  I was delighted to read this quote in The Wall Street Journal. I only hope there are more expressed sentiments of discouragement. As our subscribers have learned, such views and increased volume of transactions are necessary to have a successful test of a bottom. The actual index close can be higher, lower, or equal to the questioned low point, but without a change in sentiment it is just statistics.

Parsing out the quote I found the singular buy and sell driver encapsulated in one word, “a”. Perhaps it is my long training as an analyst and portfolio manager, as well as a racetrack handicapper, or just living through these times. However, I have never not had conflicting reasons to buy or sell or take any other actions. One of the training techniques for salespeople when trying to make a sale is called “The Ben Franklin Close”. Perhaps the wisest of the Founding Fathers, who was essentially a successful businessman, used the approach of listing the plusses and minuses of a proposal in two columns on a single page. As long as the potential buyer accepted the validity of the list and the positives out-numbered the negatives, Ben Franklin closed the deal. To make a final decision, I require the weighting of each listed item not just the number of items. My experience has made me a contrarian. I always have doubts.

Investors make the most money in periods of doubt. These periods of doubt are often ones where the bulk of the “experts” are on one side or the other. For example, the vast group of experts who were against the British leaving the European Union predicted dire results if the foolish people voted for Brexit. They predicted unemployment would rise significantly, the value of the currency would drop, and London would be deserted by the financial community. In a front page article in the weekend WSJ Review section, a British editor indicated that the Brits are doing just fine. Unemployment is the lowest it has been in years and the pound is higher than it has been in some time. Additionally, the number of the financial people being transferred to the Continent appears to be in the hundreds not the thousands predicted.

Recognizing that I can and have been wrong, or at least premature, periods of doubt represent opportunities that “experts” can be wrong. After all, the Western Hemisphere was discovered during a period where many “experts” believed the earth to be flat, because they could not see beyond the horizon. By definition, long term investors must look beyond their current horizons.

An Explanation via Fund Data

Investment Performance

One of the main differences between growth and value fund investors is the time horizon expected to bring gains.

The growth investor is looking to a brighter future for the companies in which they invest. Value investors are betting that there will come a time when the values they perceive become more appreciated. Over time both have produced good results, but at different times. (This is why in many of our fund portfolios there is a sample of each discipline. Due to the long underperformance of value-driven funds, a contrarian might start to nibble. It is quite possible in the next wave of acquisition activity that smart acquirers will recognize the value properties before the market does.)

Currently, while the “popular” media is full of headlines as to problems, successful investors are evidently favoring growth. In the year to March 22nd, most equity funds are down a bit, but there are only eight fund peer group averages that are up 3% or more. Of the US Diversified Equity funds, only the four growth fund categories produced 3% or more. In the Sector fund group, just the Global Science and Technology funds make the grade, and they were higher than the Growth funds. Just two other investment objective categories: Latin American funds and China Region funds made the 3% gainers leaders.

Flows

While exchange traded products are governed by many of the same regulations as conventional mutual funds, the reasons their owners use them are different, therefore they should not all be lumped together in deciding market implications. The vast bulk of the money in ETFs and ETNs is invested in broad Index funds, which are primarily used by trading entities like hedge funds and discretionary advisors. In numerous cases these have replaced more expensive derivatives.

Mutual funds, a much older investment vehicle, were primarily designed for retirement, estate building, and other long-term needs. They are found in individual accounts, defined contribution plans [401k], and individual retirement accounts [IRA]. As the participants fulfill their needs they redeem their existing funds and use the money, or change to more conservative investment options. For many years growth funds were among the most popular funds, performing quite well and above most retirement measures. Because of the lack of growth of new investors, redemptions are not being offset by new sales. To my mind these are “completions” of earlier promises.

To respond to the lack of growth in sales of funds at the retail level, brokers in the US and elsewhere have been reducing the number of funds being offered and reducing the number of fund houses with which they are dealing. Funds are not the most profitable products for brokers and some managers. At some point this may change.

On the Horizon

Committees in the US Congress and the Administration are working on a second tax bill. Some of the possible provisions address the need to create more retirement capital in the US. Other countries are also addressing the lack of sufficient retirement capital in an era of extending life spans, expensive health care, and slower to no worker growth. Seniors vote, while often young people don’t.

Conclusions

Despite perceived and perhaps more importantly unperceived problems, equity risk investing is needed by the world and will happen.

The more people sell the more opportunities exist for the patient buyers and their advisors.

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Enthusiasm Now, but Little Appreciation for the Long Term

Introduction

One of the reasons I developed the concept of the Timespan L Portfolios^® was to be armed with a tool kit for market conditions just as we are seeing now.

Whenever I am asked whether this the right time to buy or sell a security, my immediate responses is to inquire, “What is your time horizon and what is the benchmark that you will use to judge your success?” Depending on the answers I often try to help with suggested actions or at least elements for future consideration.

All too often securities analysts think of the future only in terms of the past. For periods of a month, the range of the vast majority of outcomes is roughly plus or minus twenty percent. If the measurement period is extended to a year the range of expectations could be bound by plus 100% and minus 50%. Over  longer periods, including average lifetimes, the extreme range is over +1000% to a total wipeout. Thus selecting your time frame or better yet the timespan of your controlled actions becomes critical as to how you organize and manage your investments.

Investment Satisfaction

In many ways the choice of appropriate benchmark has much more to do with your ultimate level of satisfaction than many of your other investment decisions. Your choice of benchmark comparisons will demonstrate the thoughtfulness that you apply to the investment decision-making process. All too often most people will compare their results against the unmanaged indices published in the media. They won’t understand the selection biases that are built into every index produced, including the ones that I created for much of the mutual fund industry. But the biggest fallacy in using securities indices is they don’t capture the investor’s expenses including an appropriate allowance for the individual’s time, expertise, and worries. These drawbacks are largely answered by using mutual fund indices that are also available in most professional media. Included in the fund indices are all of the costs of operating the funds that largely address the investor’s own costs of operating an individual security portfolio.

Within the Timespan L Portfolios often there is a mix of fixed income securities and stocks. That is why many of our managed accounts are primarily benchmarked against the Lipper Balanced Fund Index. For some investors who are managing their portfolios against specific spending plans, an absolute measure is useful; e.g., “Don’t lose money,” which was my informal instruction from the late Executive Director of the NFL Players Association in terms of their defined contribution assets. A further refinement to an absolute return requirement is one reasonably adjusted for long-term inflation.

Thus, I believe the selection of time periods and benchmarks are of critical importance. This brings me to my dilemma today, seeing risk and opportunity in different time frames.

Potentially Rewarding Long-Term

Various market commentators focus their comments on current valuations without regard to the flows into and out of the market. In effect, they are looking at the size and weight of a boat on the sea, whereas I believe they should include the long-term flows and evaporation of the water in their outlook. Some focus is currently being addressed to buy-backs, hopefully net of issuance expenses.

The principal reason that I am bullish in the long-term is the global deficit in retirement capital at the government, corporate, and individual levels. Using the US as a model (which is paralleled elsewhere in 2016) US corporations are expected to add $15.6 Billion to their pension plans. (I expect an even larger amount will flow into their defined contribution plans which are growing faster than their defined benefit pension plans.) The 2016 funding is under 4% of the S&P500 underfunded aggregate of $403 Billion.

Pension plans are shrinking as the major US corporations are not fully replacing retiring employees. A similar trend is likely to happen to the earlier adopters of 401(k) plans, but they will grow through market appreciation.

I expect that we will see some significant adjustments to both IRAs and 401(k) plans that will allow retirees to continue to accumulate assets in these vehicles on a tax deferred basis rather than mandatory distributions.

I also expect many governments around the world will move out of reliance on defined benefit pension plans and into defined contribution plans.

The political, social, and tax implications of creating a new class of focused investors could be a bigger benefit to all than the funding of defined contribution plans.

Short-Term Concerns may be Warranted Soon

After a very trying first six weeks of 2016, global stock markets have entered five surging weeks with current expectations of more to come in spite of the belief that market indices will have a decline in overall reported earnings per share in the first half of the year, including Energy. Current estimates for the S&P 500 as published by ThomsonReuters is for fourth quarter per share earnings to rise by +10.6% led by Financials +21.8, Materials +20.1%, Energy +11.9%. (I have some doubts about analysts’ estimates in general, particularly those that extend too far out.)

As some of the longer term readers of these blogs know, I was not concerned about a major market break because I did not see a great deal of enthusiasm being expressed for market prices. I am, however, starting to get a little bit nervous now. One of our holdings in our private Financial Services fund and personal accounts is the well respected T Rowe Price, a firm that has entered into something of a flat period. On March 14th the stock traded 1.05 million shares. By the end of the week the company traded 2.45 million shares. During this period closing prices went from $71.67 to $73.54. (I am detecting enthusiasm because I believe in the thesis that people and societies will address the retirement capital deficits. One of the logical solutions will be good for mutual fund management companies, however I am not beginning a gradual reduction program that I might do to be an inverse participant in the market.)

There are other signs of bullish market actions. Following a technique that friends of mine used during the Cold War to triangulate the truth they read in Pravda and the Christian Science Monitor, I read the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. In the Sunday edition of the NYT on page 2 of the Business section there are two tables of interest which are quite bullish. In the first table of the twenty largest traded stocks, eleven were up on the year to date. On the negative side there was only one approaching the normal guideline suggested, -20%. The stock was Amazon ‑18.3%.

From my vantage point the second table of the fifteen largest mutual funds was more revealing. Nine out of the 15 were up on the year. Also nine were actively managed. Six actively managed funds were on both lists and if you include the two that were flat on the year, there were eight out of nine that showed progress or were flat. With all the media hype as well as various pundits pushing index funds, it is nice to see that some active managers are earning their fees in what has been a very difficult market.

Bottom Line

For our second or Replenishment Portfolio in the Timespan Portfolios I would start to plan gradual risk reductions in inverse proportion to signs of enthusiasm. For the Endowment and Legacy Portfolios I would continue to selectively add well managed funds and advisors.

Question of the week: What are your personal indicators of too much market enthusiasm?         

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Usual Models Force Investment Errors

Introduction

In last week’s post I focused on too many investors that are not identifying the correct correlation models. Building on that foundation, this week I will focus on most investors, including professionals making investment decisions on today’s headlines rather than future potential prices.

Correlation Traps

Scientists who study how the brain works and those of us who have developed performance and fee tables recognize the need for comparisons. We are taught that higher ranked items are better than lower. Because rankings are so important, we prefer that the leagues be mathematically constructed, even though our choices of art, music, and significant others are not mathematically based. I will leave it to others to decide which mindset produces better results. Clue: My wife Ruth and I regularly go to concerts performed by the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra.

In the investment arena we measure nanosecond by nanosecond how well a stock or a fund performs versus market indices. (At my old firm, now known as Lipper, Inc., I convinced funds’ independent directors to compare with similar funds.) Because professional investors recognize that there are differences between companies, the popular approach is to measure companies that generally produce the same type of products or services.

This particular matrix approach did not help explain the performance of most security prices in the first three weeks of 2016. On the downward slide at least 80% or more fell, and on the not too inspiring recovery of this last week, a majority of stock prices rose from a Wednesday bottom. (See my friend Jason Zweig’s weekend Wall Street Journal article entitled “Market Capitulation is Nowhere in Sight (So Far).”

As a life-long student of investing and a professional investment manager, I am not satisfied with the comparisons normally produced as a jumping off point for analysis of investment decisions. This bears on fiduciaries and individual investors as well.

Starting from the premise that a stock and a company share the same name, but often not some of the same characteristics, I suggest for stocks (as distinct from whole company buyers) the perceived characteristics of the stock has more to do with its current and near-term performance than those of the operating company. I am suggesting that there are distinguishing characteristics that stock buyers and owners attach to a stock. All of these are far less mathematically defined than price indices, but like identifying the sought after traits of a life-long companion, lead to actionable conclusions. Because there is no easy math to guide us into putting a stock in a particular bucket, investors will reach different decisions at different times as to what is the single most important element.

Improved Correlation Elements

Over time I am sure that we will find other ways to group stocks and corporate bonds. The first four that I use are:

• Demand

• Supply

• Time

• Talent

One example of the criticality of Demand was the sharp reversal on Wednesday which seemed to be driven by overturning the depressing view that the decline in the prices for oil and selected other natural resources was a fall in demand. Apparently investors understood that supply was in excess of demand temporarily which many feared was showing signs of a recession. The prices of crude oil and a few minerals jumping higher was a sign of increased demand from the global economy. (That supposed surge in demand could be right, but based upon my over half century of market experience there could be another explanation. Any time after a material decline is experienced in prices and then there is a sudden price spike it may well be caused by the covering of exposed short sellers.)

Too often we think of supply in terms of the items mentioned above, but I am more concerned with the delivery bottlenecks that are developing and are lengthening distribution times of various products and services produced in the US.

Regularly the number one or two major worries of small businesses are their inability to find qualified labor at reasonable wages. As consumers, people are experiencing delays which is annoying and could be a cause for imports remaining strong even with the escalating dollar. In answer to these concerns, there were discussions as to the impact of robots and artificial intelligence at Davos last week. The shares of companies that are seen to be addressing this supply of qualified labor will be in demand.

Time has two very different buckets. The first has to do with the aging process that can’t be accelerated; nine women can’t have a baby in a month  nor can anyone produce 12 year old Bourbon in a year. Similarly, waiting for the next CEO can require patience. The second bucket is the time proclivities of various shareholder and bond holder groups.

At one point an important group of institutional shareholders were the general accounts of Life Insurance companies who held these securities against the expected maturities of their insurance policies. Often growing defined benefit pension plans had somewhat similar needs. Today hedge funds with currently shaky performance need quarterly successes. Sound defined contribution plans (401k) invested through prudent mutual funds are somewhere in between in terms of time sensitivities or at least the ones we have managed. The nature of the shareholder base for any stock is likely to influence its price behavior.

Talent

In many respects the recognized talent in a company is the most difficult and often the single biggest differentiator for many stocks. Currently there are three major US investment banks. Because of regulatory changes and the persistent low interest rates all three are cutting employment. The leader (while perhaps slightly increasing its annual cull rate) is still hiring a significant number of bright accomplished young people. The second, managed by a former consultant, views people as one of the ingredients to making profit goals and is cutting deeply. The third with a slightly different business mix has raised senior executives’ compensation because they executed well. From time to time I have owned all three, though I now only own the first in our private Financial Services fund.  

One of the reasons for this belief in talent is what I have learned about the discovery of the Ninth Planet, one of the only three identified in modern times. The work was done at Caltech and started with a couple of graduate students who found compelling elements in the sky. Their professor of Planetary Astronomy went down the hall to discuss what the students found with an assistant professor of Planetary Science. Thus they combined observation and theoretical science to confirm the existence of the Ninth Planet. It is just this sort of cooperation of in-house experts in a maturing organization that I look forward to in a smart, talent heavy organization.

Interesting enough all three investment banks are now selling below their published book value which does not carry talent as a balance sheet item. Certainly in the case of the first and quite possibly the other two, if I could buy just their talent and none of their other assets and liabilities, I think I would.

Entry Point Microscope vs. Terminal Telescope

For my sins I sit on a number of Investment Committees and chair some. At this point my fellow members are focused on reading the current “tea leaves” about the near-term conditions including the likelihood of further market declines. Considering their brains and experience they are probably right in the short-term. My frustration is that this microscopic focus is preventing them from acting to position some of the money we are responsible for by investing in the future.

There is no question that a microscope will provide much more accurate measurement than even a thirty meter telescope. However, part of every fiduciary’s responsibility is to provide benefits to the last beneficiary. Since these institutions are designed to be eternal and some of the families that we serve expect eternity, we should be looking to the future. We can not be as precise about 10-50 year futures as we can be about tomorrow’s opening price, however that does not relieve us of our responsibilities to future beneficiaries. I am reasonably confident that this is the right time to invest for the future.

As a contrarian, I like that most investment professionals are focusing on current market and economic conditions. Historically, one can age a “bull market” by how far out investors are discounting the future. The focus on this quarter’s earnings or the next rate hike or the number of producing drilling rigs is reassuring to me. I have lived through periods when investors were using five to twenty year projections for their investment decisions.

A study of great investors depicts that many have been lonely in their exposed positions before achieving success. While I recognize that there are numerous flashing caution lights, such as the sudden drop in the confidence index published by Barron’s each week of the spread between high quality and intermediate quality bond yields, I am comfortable with some money for some clients investing for the long-term. You probably should as well.  

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A. Michael Lipper, CFA,
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Do Minor Price Changes Lead to Major Moves?

The Risk that Greece Will Not Leave the Euro

While much of the world worried about “Grexit” and its impact on the world’s economies and markets, much larger risks loom if the central banks continue to ignore the fundamentals, allowing governments in stress to thumb their noses at the laws of supply and demand and other realities faced by the rest of the world. My historical reaction is that if Greece remains in the Eurozone, it may mean the “Fall of France” eventually out of the Euro along with a couple of others that consistently run large deficits that threaten the value of the central currency. One could envision with France and possibly others out of the Euro, it will look like the old Hanseatic League. Led by German Baltic ports and allied with England, the Hanseatic League dominated free trade in northern Europe for the years between the late Middle Ages and the 1700’s.

Factors Behind Declining Interest Rates

Interest rates being quoted on US Money Market Deposit Accounts (MMDA) declined to a low of 0.31% and a weekend rate of 0.34% vs. 0.36% a week ago. Could this be that a number of banks don’t want to show “excess” deposits on June 30^th reports? Perhaps these rates are dropping  because some banks do not want to have too much in the way of excess deposits as they might be of interest to an unwanted acquirer. Or is there a recent drop-off in the demand for short-term loans, as the average short/intermediate US Government & Treasury mutual fund dropped ‑0.14% for the week when the average general domestic taxable fixed income fund was flat on the week? The only major fixed income fund category to gain was the High Yield funds +0.11%.

Equity Funds Show Divergent Trends

The only domestic funds that showed gains in the week ending June 25^th were Financial Services +0.09% and Health/Biotech +0.07% among the majors, plus Dedicated Short Bias funds +1.41% and Alternative Equity Market Neutral funds +0.14%. All the other domestic equity funds showed declines as somewhat predicted by the continued net redemptions of domestic equity funds. In contrast, every global and international fund posted gains for the week led by the average Indian fund rising in US dollar terms +2.36%.  In spite of the attention to the Greek stand off, international markets in local currency terms showed gains for the week of +3.9% for the Nikkei 225 and +3.36% for the Xetra DAX.  

While this was happening the internal Chinese market was crashing and had entered at least a correction (­­‑10%) or a bear market after a one year bull market gain in excess of +100%. Morgan Stanley is publicly telling its clients not to buy into this particular dip. Early Monday morning prices are down in Asia reacting perhaps to Greece. But more likely it is the need of the Chinese authorities to liberalize bank reserves and lower interest rates to stop the slide in their stock market. Some have even suggested restricting buying on margin. As a reaction to these moves on Sunday night in the US, the DJIA futures are being quoted off some 260 points.    

To some degree what didn’t happen was the most interesting occurrence of the week. Friday was the day when the annual reconstruction of the Russell indices took place with the DJIA going up marginally, the broader S&P 500 and the NASDAQ declining marginally.

Apparent Conservative Funds may be Risky

For the last seven weeks the oldest form of mutual fund,  the Balanced fund has seen net additions, with $1.6 Billion net coming in for the week alone. Is this just a sign of confusion as to direction or conservatism? Possibly the rise is due to 401k and similar defined contribution plans for employees being treated as mixed asset funds (bonds and stocks) which are somewhat more modern Balanced funds. If that is the case I hope that fiduciaries supervising these accounts have sufficient memory and education to recognize the risks of underperformance of mixed asset portfolios in sharply rising and falling markets. The Investment Company Institute, the fund business’s trade association, indicated that there were $741 Billion in retirement target date funds and another $400 Billion in somewhat similar “lifestyle” funds at the end of the first quarter. Under the correct personal conditions and understandings these vehicles might prove to be satisfactory; for others they may in the future prove to be problematic as these funds will own fixed income securities which may not perform well (as discussed below).

Fixed Income Risks

John Authers of the Financial Times had a very thought provoking column on Thursday exploring the “Bondification” movement to address the fundamental concerns that have led bond fund managements to under-perform. Most bond investors start with the assumption of a “risk free” interest rate based on local country Treasury yields. The problem is that with various bouts of qualitative easing as managed by many central banks, these interest rates have proven to be quite volatile. In my opinion, the restructuring of bond markets in a period of diminished capital on trading desks makes bonds anything but stable. The bond professionals have responded by developing a culture of unconstrained fixed income portfolios that allow managers ultimate flexibility in terms of maturity, credit quality and inclusions of derivatives and in some cases commodities. While this flexibility can, if well executed, produce good relative results, they bring into question how bonds should be used to provide some risk-dampening to a mixed asset portfolio. I hope the owners of target date funds and lifestyle funds understand these changes from past performance records.

Liquidity Concerns

Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) have become an important institutional trading device; the US Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) is showing concerns as to the use of derivatives both within ETFs and their marketing partners. For the most part institutions and individuals buy and sell ETFs through market makers called Authorized Participants (APs). When a buyer or seller of an ETF operates through the limited number of APs, they are utilizing the liquidity of the AP for each ETF. Some of this liquidity is in the form of derivatives. The SEC and other analysts would like to understand the size and nature of the liquidity that exists for specific ETFs. My particular concern is primarily based on sector and some single country vehicles. We will see whether the SEC will get the details on a timely basis and make them publicly available.

The use of public disclosure of how various funds manage their portfolios can add some reassurance. For example, the National Economic Research Association (NERA) has published a white paper examining if a fund broke any of the constraints being applied to Money Market funds. Among their findings was a theoretical conclusion that at worst there may be a temporary 1-3% break from the dollar NAV with most of that happening in the first two days followed by a recovery likely by the end of the first ten days. I hope that they are correct as I have regularly used Money Market funds to hold required firm capital.

Outliving Retirement Capital

Many people are  living longer. As a group, they have not changed their spending and savings habits. Also, governments have not fully recognized these implications. Both the workplace and retail distributors are behind in adjusting to this reality.

GDP for the first quarter in the US was revised to a decline of only ‑0.2% from ‑0.7% as originally reported. As previously pointed out in these posts the change was not a surprise. In this case the markets were a better forecaster than government agencies. The size of the adjustment is too large for those who steer our ship of state to put reliance on their own statistical collection approaches.

Question of the Week:  Based upon the week’s news, do you remain a Bull or a Bear?

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Copyright © 2008 - 2015

A. Michael Lipper, C.F.A.,
All Rights Reserved.
Contact author for limited redistribution permission.