Mis-Interpreting News - Weekly Blog # 857

 

Mike Lipper’s Monday Morning Musings

 

Mis-Interpreting News

 

Editors: Frank Harrison 1997-2018, Hylton Phillips-Page 2018

 

 

 

Understanding Motivations Before Accepting

Investors and other voters should always search for the motivations of people or organizations distributing investment and political solutions. Most of those using megaphones recognize that only a small portion of their audience will react quickly to the pundits besieging them to make commitments of time, votes, or money. Peddlers consequently boil their pitches down into simple sounding solutions. (When have important considerations ever been made briefly?)

 

In terms of making decisions regarding investments, the media is full of quick and often wrong recommendations. For example, far too many investors have been informed that the rise or fall of interest rates, as determined by the Federal Reserve, is the key determinant of future investment performance and the growth of global economies.

 

As a trained sceptic and rarely a bettor on favorites at the racetrack or in other competitive games, I suggest interest rate changes result from the numerous impacts of identified and unidentified forces. I believe the following factors should be considered:

1. Remember, the Fed was created to replace the power of J.P. Morgan, the man, the bank, and the use of his locked library. During the Wall Street crash in 1907 numerous trust companies were failing, with still more expected to fail. Mr. Morgan called for a meeting of the leading bankers in his library. After assembling the bankers in the library, he locked the doors and stated he would not unlock them until all bankers committed funds to the bailout of a failing trust company that had made poor loans. The Washington government felt too much power was entrusted to one man. Relatively soon after they organized the Federal Reserve Bank. With an eye to public relations, they never specifically stated the real reason for creating the Fed, which was to reduce the risks of bank failures due to bad loans. Bank failures continue to be a risk in the US, and some have occurred in numerous other countries in Europe and Asia. Today, the Fed has supervisory power over a portion of US banks, which is their first order of business.
2. Demographics and Psychographics change slowly most of the time but have long-term impacts on our financial and political structure. An example is our falling birthrates and the fall in educational standards, which probably leads to declining productivity levels.
3. Both trade and military wars create imbalances, which in turn cause global economic changes.
4. Discoveries of natural resources and those made in a laboratory can cause economic and political disruptions Remember what the discovery of gold in Latin America did to the economies of Europe and America. The discovery of oil in the US and Saudi Arabia was equally disruptive of the status quo.
5. The personalities of leaders and managers are very different in terms of their focus on the short and long-term decisions.  

 

Since we don’t conduct in depth psychological interviews with a wide sample of the economy, we don’t know why people act the way they do. We tend to believe that events occur close to when decisions are made. This has led to following beliefs and their assumed stimuluses:

1. Clark Gabel’s appearance in a film bare chested killed subsequent undershirt sales.
2. After the movie Matrix 2, Cadillac dealers couldn’t keep large SUVs in stock due to sales demand.
3. The lipstick indicator and the length of women’s skirts were each believed to predict the direction of the stock market.

 

I don’t know what will cause of the next recession or depression, but one or more of the non-Fed rate cuts may be the first indicator of problems ahead and deserve to be watched.

 

Some Attention Should be Paid to the Following Factors

1. One of the causes of WWII was the US putting an oil Embargo on Japan. The same administration had our aircraft carrier leave Pearl Harbor without protective support ships in December 1941. (It was the planes from these carriers that led to a victory around Midway.)
2. More recently, there has been a 75% decline in commercial flights from China to the US. Most of the decline due to reductions by Chinese airlines.
3.  Around the world, bank depositors are moving up to half their money into investments, accepting the risk that goes along with it.
4. A survey of Japanese workers suggests that 25% will be searching for jobs in 2025. (Lifetime employment used to be standard in Japan.)
5. 20% of Indian retail investors are accepting risk.
6. Manufacturing has hired less people in three out of the last four months. Even more significant for our country is an increase in short-term consumption spending, not longer-term investment needs.
7. People have diverse views regarding investments and other expenditures. The prices for NYSE and NASDAQ stocks rose this week, while the plurality of bullish views declined in the AAII weekly sample survey. In the latest week, the bulls had an 18% advantage over the bears, down from a 26% advantage the prior week.

 

Please share your thoughts.

 

 

 

Did you miss my blog last week? Click here to read.

Mike Lipper's Blog: Investors Not Traders Are Worried - Weekly Blog # 856

Mike Lipper's Blog: Many Quite Different Markets are in “The Market” - Weekly Blog # 855

Mike Lipper's Blog: Implications from 2 different markets - Weekly Blog # 854

 

Did someone forward you this blog?

To receive Mike Lipper’s Blog each Monday morning, please subscribe by emailing me directly at AML@Lipperadvising.com

 

Copyright © 2008 – 2024

A. Michael Lipper, CFA

 

All rights reserved.

 

Contact author for limited redistribution permission.

Announcement + Misplaced Focus Hurts Results

Announcement for Timespan L Portfolios^®

I am very pleased to announce that our affiliate, Whitridge LLC has been awarded Registration No. 4,837,713 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office for the designation of Timespan L Portfolios^®.  Timespan L Portfolios is a unique strategy designed to address the multi-faceted needs of significant investors within an idea of creating a structure that can be used for many decades into the future.

Information for competent investment advisors and other financial institutions wishing license information for this service is available.

For more information, email me at: aml@lipperadvising.com

------------------------------

Misplaced Focus Hurts Results

Introduction

In sports, wars, politics, and investments why do smarter opponents with more resources lose to more agile competitors with less resources? In selecting funds for long-term investing we make a practice to analyze the successful and unsuccessful managers. History is replete with examples of seemingly smarter, bigger forces with substantially more resources losing critical battles. Often the losers believe in their own superiority and that they will produce a never-ending series of victories. Napoleon said that "God is on the side of the bigger battalions," then went on to be defeated at his Waterloo by smaller forces he had beaten previously.  In addition Napoleon did not use his battle trained reserves well. Today we are seeing the rise of "populist" political leaders globally, either on the Right, the Left or even by established political parties and their leaders. This phenomenon is little different than the fall of various “Investment Kings” to different managers who are practicing the game dissimilarly and often much more narrowly.

One of the first clues that a manager will not succeed long-term is the amount of space he/she devotes to the economy and current politics in views and writings. Few future winners start their investment pitch with a discussion of GDP (Gross Domestic Product). I agree with the current number two in China who suggested some time ago he did not trust the numbers produced by his government staff as they were “man made,” which suggested that they could be either inaccurate or corrupt for political purposes. He preferred to rely on industry statistics produced in the private sector; e.g., electricity, freight car loadings, and bank loans (to private companies and individuals) .

The error of focusing initially on the economy is that it starts the thinking process of viewing things from the top down. This is a useful exercise for those that use, or perhaps abuse, the media to pontificate to unsuspecting audiences. It also is a prepaid mechanism when something doesn't work, (“The economy or the government did not do what was expected.”)

Many years ago I was exposed to a much more successful way of thinking which is bottoms up. Often, after a busy day of visiting many portfolio managers in his city, I had a private dinner with at that time was the leader of the single most successful fund group in the world. I thought our dinner table conversation would be about broad fund industry topics and politics which was dispatched quickly. What really turned him on was analysis of individual stocks that weren't well followed. The discussion often focused on what was the critical analytical approach to various companies and most importantly, about the relative strengths and weaknesses of different managers. Occasionally I would come up with new thoughts for him. With only some success I tried to apply this approach with him on some of his various leading funds. Ultimately these insights were of great use to me and eventually my investment clients on the likelihood of the continuation of various "hot hands" who were doing extraordinarily well exploiting various inefficiencies in the market. I recognized many of these aspects for I had travelled with a number of his analysts and portfolio managers.

Today when either an associate or I visits funds we zero in on bottoms up details from portfolio managers and spend as little time as possible following top down chatter. The same approach leads to more fruitful conversations with CEOs of public and private companies. Apply the same approach to how you live your life. The details of what you have to do today is much more important than the top down topics called upon in today's media.

Bottoms Up Factoids

The job of an analyst is to review an enormous amount of bottom up type of details that when combined with previous knowledge or beliefs lead to areas of future analysis (or for the moment to be added to the discard pile). The following are from my readings of this week.

1. Emerging Markets Local Currency Debt funds was far and away the best performing fund classification for the month to Thursday, +4.36% to bring its year to date loss to ­-9.70%. This class of funds that earlier in the year was being heavily pushed as an extra income provider was quite volatile and produced equity type performance as distinct from acting like a high yield bond fund.

2. According to The Economist most equity markets were strong, 37 out of 43 showed gains with half equaling or performing better than our Dow Jones Industrial Average. However, only 15 were positive for the year. This suggests that with selectivity one can beat US results. In our Timespan L Portfolios^® there can be roles for international funds and stocks in both the Endowment and Legacy Portfolios.

3. For those who believe in sector rotation, using FactSet data, three out of ten S&P 500 sectors, Health Care, Industrials, and Consumer Staples are nine years from their prior peaks. If one combines a contrarian streak and some bottoms up knowledge of removing capacity from production, there could be surprisingly selective good performance within the next year. As this is more of a cyclical play as far as the Timespan L Portfolios is concerned, the most logical space for these kinds of investments would be in the Replenishment Portfolio.

4.  An article by Matt Ridley in The Wall Street Journal proclaimed, "Most technological break-throughs come from technologists tinkering, not from researchers chasing hypotheses." I believe a well managed research program that can recognize commercial opportunities is worthwhile in companies that have large enough operating earnings to afford long-term research and development. However, I am much more interested in companies that have a  history of sound development. The Endowment Portfolio should have some representation of well managed research and development companies. The Legacy portfolio could hold the "wild card" type of investment.

In reply to Questions of the Week

I read and think about your questions and replies. This week is in part an answer to DB and his thoughts on GDP. He will get a more complete reply directly.

_________   

Did you miss my blog last week?  Click here to read.

Did someone forward you this Blog?  To receive Mike Lipper’s Blog each Monday, please subscribe using the email or RSS feed buttons in the left column of MikeLipper.Blogspot.com 

Copyright © 2008 - 2015

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