Next Election vs. Future Generations - Weekly Blog # 766

 

Mike Lipper’s Monday Morning Musings

Next Election vs. Future Generations

 

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

 

  

  

Time Horizons

Behavioral, political, and investment strategies should be selected based on a measurement period, acceptance of errors, and compound returns. While rarely identified, these three factors often control the success of a chosen strategy.

 

Many people are currently very short term oriented, distinct from the expressed time frame driving the Founding Fathers of the US expressed in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution.

 

Four examples of this shortened time focus are:

1.  Selection of Leaders in political, military, health, and corporate sectors. We unfortunately pick leaders with political skills rather than courage to lead in a different direction, with the focus is on the next election or selection. Both Henry Kissinger and Jaime Dimon have written about the lack of foresight in the world’s political and business leadership. (I would slightly disagree. Autocratic leaders seem to be playing chess rather than checkers, which is what our elected or selected leaders are doing.)

 

2.  As revealed in the recent “Varsity Blues” scandal, where some rich parents made illegal payments to get their children into well-known Universities. Their apparent motives were intended to ensure their young got admitted to these schools for bragging rights, while others utilized “legacy rights” at their own alma mater to achieve the same result. (That one’s children do not possess the appropriate credentials to be accepted into these designated schools should have been addressed years ago.)

 

3.  Almost all investment performance data in the press focuses on annual or shorter time periods. This often mirrors the investment focus of many in selecting a fund or manager. (While I can’t predict winners in future markets, I am aware that the poorest performing advisors can occasionally produce the best results in  future periods by recapturing some of the prior lost performance.)

 

4.  On Friday the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) gained some 700 points. Supposedly this was because of the questionable Department of Labor establishment survey which showed a higher number of workers than expected. (There was almost no coverage showing that only 6 out of 10 employable workers were on the job. For many years, countries with 7 out of 10 workers employed were considered the better locations for investing.)

 

Contrarian Views

The history of market prices around the world suggests that the biggest gains come from a radical change of opinion on the future performance of various securities.

 

After 15 years of the US stock market being home to many of the big winners, there is some sentiment that more global oriented companies will be winners.

 

Markets don’t have to follow nice, neat calendar periods. In the US, stock prices generally rose in October and November then declined a bit in December. It is quite possible that November represented the end of the recovery period that started in June. Suggesting Friday’s gain won’t be sustained for the month.

 

Only 10 out of 104 mutual fund equity-oriented sector averages rose in December. Utilizing securities data on a national basis, only China, Hong Kong, Japan, and Thailand gained over 1% (listed in performance order).

 

Winning the Long Game

One of the long-term reasons mutual fund investing performs better than many managed accounts with individual securities is that the fund industry developed an easy process of reinvesting distributions of income and capital gains. A number of large companies had similar reinvestment procedures in the past, although they were dropped due to lack of interest.

 

One of the lessons learned from the thrift industry is that through the magic of compounding a series of small contributions can produce meaningful returns over 12 to 30 years, particularly in a market of generally rising prices where fund holders stay in the product.   

It is often the small and simple things that lead to investment success: having patience, a long-term time horizon, taking as much emotion as possible out of the investment process, not following the herd and looking for opportunities elsewhere. While these items are simple attitudes, they are often difficult to implement in practice. Investing is an artform; therefore, one should allow for mistakes without deviating from good strategies.

 

 

 

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Mike Lipper's Blog: Bear Market, Recessions, Reinvestment - Weekly Blog # 765

 

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Cyclical and Secular Concerns Vary with Time Horizons - Weekly Blog # 490

Introduction

“Horses for Course” is a racing expression which indicates that horses run differently at different racetracks. Not only different courses but different lengths of race. As is often the case, what is true in the analysis (or handicapping) at the track is also true in the selection of managers, securities, and investment strategies. These concepts were the genesis of my developing different timespans to be used for managing investment portfolios.

In the first two timespans, Operating and Replenishment, significant financial losses are difficult to overcome and thus cyclical considerations dominate. The longer term Endowment and Legacy portfolios assume periodic declines, but that long-term secular trends will dictate their future performance.

As we appear to be entering a period of switching gears from complacency or frozen in place, to one of growing enthusiasm, the prudent investor should increasingly wonder what could go wrong. Of the myriad of possible future events it is unlikely that one can accurately predict what will happen. At the current time I feel an obligation to point out possible unanticipated problems.

I will first focus on possible cyclical problems that can impact investment performance through an intermediary period of roughly five years and thus cyclical factors. In the second part of today’s blog I will focus on Asian, African, and Latin American factors that could impact the longer term secular trends.

Cyclical Factors for the Intermediate Term

As Professor Robert Shiller points out, almost everyone acknowledges that a recession will happen. He further states at the moment that not too many investors are concerned about a future recession. The popular securities indices are regularly reporting new high levels. However, the best performing of the three indices, Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), Standard & Poor’s 500 (S&P500) and the NASDAQ Composite (NASDAQ) is the last one by a considerable margin, as small companies particularly those involved with information technology including Apple^* performed well. While the NASDAQ is slightly reporting new highs, it is not demonstrating a major breakout after hitting a new high and thus it may be questioning the strength of the move. This is not particularly upsetting because as in the past, Apple shares sell off after new product announcement run ups. As a long-term owner of these shares I am much more focused to see the level of sales and deliveries in its fiscal second quarter ending in March 2018. While some market rotation is healthy if it does not include a strong NASDAQ performance, it would be demonstrating the “animal spirits” are getting tired.

^*Held personally

Market leadership rotation is normal and expected, but when one or more of five sectors or asset classes lead, it will be an indication that investors are deserting the central forces of the economy. If you possess trading skills the five sectors could be very productive. If you are like the most of us who move in and out late, be very careful. The five in alphabetical order are Bonds, Commodities, Energy, Gold, and TIPS. If you are an accomplished player, play. If not it would be time to build reserves, particularly if you are managing a current or replenishment account.

As mentioned last week the gains in earnings being reported for the first half of 2017 are due to expanding profit margins. Earnings per share are growing faster than revenues which are growing slowly and in some cases very slowly in the second quarter. To create sustainable earnings and employment we need to see revenue generation pick up.

The potential expansion in the level of enthusiasm for stocks may be heralded by the decline in neutral sentiment in the latest AAII survey, dropping from 36.7% last week to 32.7% this week, and a roughly similar increase in bearish attitudes. This suggests to me we can see an important increase in volume which in and itself engenders more volatility.

My real concern for the intermediate future centers around the bond market which is larger than the stock market but can be much more sensitive to short-term events. I don’t know what can create a bond market bear market, but the following are thoughts that needs to be understood:

·       The little understood bank for central banks, the Bank for International Settlements, has noted that many governments, including the US, are only identifying contingent liabilities in their financial statements. These include unfounded pension and medical costs. One potential concern of mine is a large size of unprofitable investments by China in building its One Belt One Road Initiative (OBORI) in neighboring and other Asian countries.

·       Yields on high grade corporate bonds are rising which means prices are falling slightly, showing some lack of demand. At the same time yields on lesser quality bonds are holding up, showing an increase in demand.

·       Just as yields go in the opposite direction, the contrarian in me suggests that flows follow performance late and stay too long. In almost every country that has a mutual fund business there is an increase of substantial size in the flow into bonds. They are easy to sell to people in view of the low manipulated rates dictated by central banks that impact commercial banks’ deposit rates. This excessive flow is augmented by the large number of financial groups offering new credit funds without sufficient experience in non-bank lending.

In sum, I grow increasingly wary in crowded markets.

For the intermediate term investor I see more performance/career risk than we have seen in sometime. Perhaps, we will escape but by the next US Presidential Election the odds are that we are going to be tested.

Secular Concerns for Longer Term Investing

For only long-term investors to consider in their third (Endowment Timespan) and their fourth (Legacy Timespan) portfolios are some surprising inputs from a two day visit to Mumbai, India. To fulfill two speaking engagements at a very busy time of year, my wife and I flew into Mumbai Thursday night and left on a redeye Saturday night. The purpose of the two speeches was to have discussions with Indian mutual fund CEOs, portfolio managers, independent investment advisors and distributors of funds. There are forty fund houses with thirty four reporting their net asset value in the paper. I made the point that they have only penetrated 3% of the households where in the US the penetration is over 40%. In addition to focusing on mutual funds, I had hoped to find some good long-term investments for our family accounts. I knew it to be a long shot in that the Indian stock market for the year to date is the best performing large country market. I was impressed with the quality of the Indian professionals that inhabit their market and compete with a relatively small number of foreign funds that are devoted to investing in India.

As with many adventures and experiments, there are surprises generating from some disappointments in the initial objectives. On Saturdays there are two major financial newspapers published in India, (The Economic Times and Financial Express) which have articles of interest that could impact future investing in India, China, Africa, Latin America and other Emerging Markets.

The following are briefs from the points of views expressed without any additional research or separate opinion from this traveler:

“Africa Sees India as Key Growth Partner” is the title to an article that contrasts with the way India is viewed as compared with China as a source of development spending. According to the article "Recent media reports have carried allegations that Chinese business houses are treating African workers as slaves...." India on the other hand is viewed as a collaborator with the locals. The article mentions an Indian-Japan-Asia-African Growth corridor as an alternative to China's One Belt One-Road Initiative (OBORI). Apparently the Chinese focus is natural resource development for export principally to China. The Indian-Japanese-Asian effort focuses on rural development and agriculture, energy, and  education. In addition they are interested in quality of life issues and within the region, connectivity. This is similar to the development practices that are found also in Latin America. (India itself is beginning a campaign to improve the lot of its farmers through the application of technology along with capital.)

The Indian Post Payments Bank next year expects to equip a large portion of its postmen with equipment including biometric readers, a debit and credit card reader, plus a printer. Thus home dwellers will be able to quickly and safely pay various bills.

"Chinese Government Plays Cupid to Help Youth Get Married" is an article about 100 million young people in China that are not married. The government is sponsoring a blind date service. It specifically suggests that marriage will aid in future development.

SBI Life this week had an IPO and produced two interesting details, for this the largest life insurer in India. The first is the offering was oversubscribed by a 3.58 times ratio led by institutional buyers. What was of interest to me is that High Net Worth Investors only utilized 70% of the allocation available to them and retail investors used just 85%.  From my standpoint the most interesting numbers were that in 2016 the Indian Life Insurance industry penetration was 2.7% and this compares with 7.4% for Korea, 5.5%  in Singapore, and 3.7% in Thailand.

Can you imagine what more I could discover if I spent another week, month, or years in India? Seriously, my very brief visit highlighted to me that investors should not isolate the impact of single nations in making decisions. China, India, Africa, and Latin America as well as the rest of the Emerging Counties are linked in many ways that need to be understood for successful long term investing. 

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Avoid Incomplete Data + Overconfidence

Introduction

Far too many investment mistakes can be blamed on incomplete data and overconfidence. In the real as distinct from the theoretical or academic world it is difficult to avoid these traps that have hurt us from time to time. The best that we can do is to be aware of the traps and to avoid putting too much confidence as to “what we know.”

Focusing on the Wrong Measurement Gaps

Perhaps Larry Summers was reading my blog post when we I was questioning the validity and perhaps the utility of building government and financial policies on Gross Domestic Product. My concern is that there is little or any attempt to include unreported income within GDP. The former President of Harvard, Secretary of Treasury, and frequent pundit stated that he wished to abolish large denomination currency bills, for instance the $ 100 dollar bill and similar sized notes in other currencies. His view is that these pieces of paper are mainly used by those involved within the higher echelons of the underworld. At least with that projection I believe he is largely accurate. But he is missing a far more important set of facts published by his own organization. The Harvard Kennedy School found that the US Tax Gap on unreported income was 14.5% of reported tax liabilities in 2006. Other countries have different degrees of shortfalls: UK 6.4%, South Africa 23%, Bangladesh 36%, Thailand 53% and Pakistan 70%. On a global basis someone at the UN felt that the global tax gap was $2.1 trillion.

As far as I know, no one has taken these tax gaps and other less than complete estimates to adjust various GDP figures. Any student of high end purchases should question the sources of the money spent and saved. I have felt that observing the inhabitants of leading countries might be a more valid factor than what one could derive from government statistics. Since ancient times as soon as many people became wealthy in their own eyes and after fulfilling the needs for conspicuous consumption they found acceptable ways to both invest and to hide some of their wealth. They have been doing this long before there were paper currencies. Abolish paper and there will be substitutes, physical and perhaps electronic.

My real concern is that the growing size of the hordes of large currency is probably the best clue as to the size and growth of unreported income. One expert believes that some small businesses and trades people could approximate 50% of their activities as transacting below the tax radar. As a student of both history and human behavior I do not expect radical changes in behavior. What I am concerned about is almost every top/down pontification by political and financial pundits starts with a verdantly express view as to what GDP will do in the immediate future, and therefore various proposed actions are appropriate. Yet the statistical base of their argument is inaccurate and possibly seriously flawed.

Thus until governments around the world massively increase the money they spend on gathering and analyzing their data, Professor Summers please do not now take away an important source of the growth of real world wealth just yet.

Overconfidence

Just as I believe that high confidence in GDP and many other government statistics is unwise, our uncritical confidence in future actions should be avoided. This is very tough to do. In our very busy lives we do not have time to cognate about future implications of present or past actions. One of the characteristics of the human race is the ability to convince others. Those that are better at this than others are our marketers. They often start with given themes for their targets to choose. The salespeople have learned to keep their pitches compact, or in their language “Keep It Simple, Stupid” or the KISS principle. That doesn’t always work out well. As a professional investor or perhaps a surviving professional skeptic, I need to always guard against the exhilaration of an enthusiastic pitch.

Washington’s Mistakes

We can always learn from properly portrayed history. Saturday night my wife Ruth and I attended the birthday celebration for General George Washington at his Mount Vernon home as we try to do each year. Saturday night’s principal speaker was Nathaniel Philbrick, who talked about his forthcoming book Valiant Ambition, on the implications of the interactions between General Washington and Major General Benedict Arnold, an eventual traitor to America who could have caused the US to be militarily defeated. The interesting part of the discussion was the author’s contention of Washington’s ability to learn from his many mistakes. He changed his strategy from one of highly confident and occasionally well-executed battles in my home state of New Jersey and less successful battles elsewhere, to an eventually successful war of attrition that was increasingly unpopular in England.

Our Own Historical Experiences

I am always trying to learn. As a long-term investor with a fiduciary responsibility I need to be on guard as to the power of our own historical experiences. We should look well beyond our own experience to those of others in different times and places. At some point in the past, based on their experience, too many home buyers, underwriters, and mortgage owners thought that house prices would only periodically stay flat or rise, never decline. (I have not read the book or seen the film “The Big Short, which I am told is excellent. I have been reluctant to see it for it does not place the original cause for the collapse at the feet of the US Congress.) Obviously, with 20/20 hindsight it is clear all the way along the chain there was overconfidence. Part of the KISS principle in selling this paper was the growing population and their supposed growing wealth. Often one heard “Demographics is Destiny.”

Some of the same argument has been put forth for investing in Emerging and Frontier markets particularly in securities of consumer discretionary companies. In many cases these pitches drove the valuations for these securities way above those of somewhat similar companies in the developed world before they recently corrected. This is not to say that they may now be more realistically priced. (Some of these stocks are found in some of the mutual funds that we own for clients and ourselves.) The vastly reduced level of confidence and increased level of investment research improves the long-term odds for those that are patient.

At the moment I am wondering whether there is a nexus of incomplete data and recently-experienced overconfidence. There is a well documented rush to own passive index funds either through mutual funds or through companion Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). For those who own these securities there is a high level of confidence that history will repeat itself and these vehicles will perform relatively well. The incomplete data part of the picture deals with off board trades, the aggregate size of the intraday trading long and short, the financial condition of the market makers and authorized participants that can create and contract the size of an ETF. Further correlations within markets are widening with very few large cap stocks rising and pushing major indices higher whereas the majority of stocks within the S&P 500 declined in 2015. Other signs of changing demand include an increase in the level of the VIX. Further, over the last sixteen years bonds out- performed stocks, while some believe that for the next sixteen years stocks are expected to outperform bonds.

Change in the structures of demand for securities is likely to cause a change in the structure of the market that was not anticipated.

Question for the week if not the year: What changes in the structure of the market are you prepared for?

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Could this Weekend be a Turning Point?

In the US, as in other countries on other days, Memorial Day is set aside to honor those that have sacrificed their lives in war to protect our nation and its citizens. In observance of Memorial Day, US financial markets are closed.

Watch global markets before US markets opens on Tuesday

As of this writing, the Japanese market is down -3.5%. One reason that the market is lower is that the Bank of Japan leader indicated it could tolerate a 3% yield.  Another reason the market is down is news that Chinese leaders have announced that they are willing to grow more slowly. At the moment, US futures and the price of gold are weakening slightly. Also the Australian dollar is weakening against the US dollar.

With the US markets closed on Monday and relatively thin trading in much of Asia, prices could trade freely with sharp moves both ways. Unless the afternoon session in Tokyo reverses direction, the results may not be pleasant by the time New York opens Tuesday morning.

Positive views

There are mixed implications derived from what I have seen this past week.  First, let me deal with the positives.

Shoppers shop

In almost all countries of the world retail shopping is by far the largest sport in terms of involvement and money transferred and thus well worth examining. The Memorial Day weekend is considered the unofficial kick-off to the summer shopping season in the US. In our community the weather on Saturday was cool and wet. When we went over to the Mall at Short Hills, a very glitzy place to do our indoor walking and getting a bite of lunch, parking was difficult. We encountered crowds with large shopping bags. (Other weekends some of the aisles within the enclosed mall and a few entire stores could have been profitably converted into bowling alleys.) We walked and had lunch and returned home for me to read. My champion “black belt” shopper of a wife went back to the Mall and ran into friends who were also shopping. When she left she should have auctioned off her parking space which was in great demand. Her competitive shopping eye reported that the crowd was approaching those at Christmas time. Perhaps it was the unseasonable weather or advertised sales prices from an investment viewpoint; the key was a lot of people were spending money at good prices.

Borrowers borrow

Another example of people making investment decisions is that the size of margin debt (borrowed money) has just exceeded the old record established in June, 2007. A number of retail brokerage firms have commented that the proceeds of this debt have not been put into additional securities investment. My guess is that an important portion has been in “non-purpose” loans, probably used for real estate purchases. The brokers point out that it is easier and involves less collateral to use futures, particularly on ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds). Nevertheless buyers are buying.

Cash is trash

One of the reasons people are being led into using securities for their spare cash or buying power is that cash has become increasingly considered trash in their minds. Almost every day I look at the average rate being paid on bank money market accounts. This week it dropped to the lowest level that I can remember of 0.46%. The central bank manipulators around the world are driving people into the market, but looking at the large amount invested in money market funds and bank accounts, there is a lot more remaining.

Incomplete gravity

After the considerable rise we have seen and benefitted from this year, many of us had expected a correction. Some have been waiting for this expected correction and keeping their trash/cash on the sidelines before committing to the pressures by the monetary authorities. Thus we had two consecutive down days on Wednesday and Thursday. But on Friday, with light volume, we had a minor up day. There are two remarkable observations to make. The first is that lower prices did not bring more sellers or an increase in buyers to the marketplace. The second item is we have not had three consecutive down days for the last 100 trading days. My friends at Caltech assure me that what goes up must come down according to laws of physics. Market technicians would generally expect a trading correction in the range of ten percent of the prior rise before a subsequent gain. For whatever reason investors, are not now ready to leave the party.

The best market timers are now bullish

In this week’s Barron’s my friend Mark Hulbert noted that in his long study of market timing newsletters the ones that have had the best record of correctly getting turns in the market remain very optimistic. From my standpoint what is more important is that the timers who have gotten the turns wrong are relatively reserved, with significant portions of their recommended portfolios out of the market. The reason I believe that being mindful of the laggards is more important than the good prognosticators being bullish is that in my continuing study of mutual funds and other managers it is not unusual to see good records lead to occasional bad results. There appears to be much more consistency in poor predictors staying bad. Finding negative predicators is very valuable indeed.

Mutual fund buyers are beginning to believe

My old firm, now known as Lipper Inc., which is an affiliate of Thomson Reuters, measures mutual fund performance and net sales around the world. Using the first quarter and reporting in euros, funds sold to Europeans in Europe had inflows of 116.5 billion compared with the US’s industry inflows of 155.4bn. Perhaps more important was the gain in Germany of 7.3bn which may be a retail leader for the continent. Large net inflows were seen in Thailand, 16.2bn and South Korea, 12.1bn (all in euros).

The first quarter numbers predate both the turbulence in the Tokyo market last week and the prior surge in Japan created by its adoption of a highly charged “QE” monetary policy, which in May probably brought a tidal wave of money into funds investing in Japan not only from within the country, but also from the US, Europe, and the rest of Asia. My guess is that judging by the rise in the Tokyo market (until this week) we are talking in excess of $50 billion in positive fund flows. All of these flows indicate that individual investors, along with institutional investors, recognize and want to participate in momentum wherever they sense it.

There are important negatives

When the Chairman of the Federal Reserve indicated that its staff has been directed to study ways it could ease off in its Quantitative Easing (QE) policies, the US markets caught a slight cold (under 2%), but the Tokyo market got pneumonia, falling 7% in one day.  This decline demonstrated how dependent Japan is on US Quantitative Easing and how thinly traded the Tokyo market is.

In his May 25^th long economic letter, John Mauldin focused on what the current government of Japan is attempting to do with its extreme QE policies, which until this week was working both in the local stock market and Japanese exports. Mauldin is a believer that QE won’t work in the long-term in that Japan has fired the first official shot in a currency war that will be met with Asian and perhaps other competitive devaluations. His real fear is that it will work for awhile and allow Japan’s share of the world’s wealth to get much larger on the back of absorbing all of the savings in Japan. When that is not sufficient to grow Japan out of its twenty year deflation and as its enlarged bubble bursts, it will materially hurt the US and others. The title of his piece sums up his views: “The Mother of All Painted-In Corners.”

“The Ghost of 1994 Haunts Financial Markets”

“The Ghost of 1994 Haunts Financial Markets” is the title of Moody’s latest capital market research report. In the piece Ben Garber reminds us what happened to the markets when the Federal Reserve unexpectedly and sharply raised interest rates. This led to some of the worst performance returns on record. While the Fed is conscious of this fear and that may be why the astute President of the New York Federal Reserve Bank is stating that it would take the Fed a number of months to decide to raise rates and a further number of months to effect the change. My concern and perhaps others fear that the need to make a change could be sprung on the Fed by unforeseen events, they do happen. Moody’s is also a bit skeptical as to whether Japan can accomplish what it needs to do to get some growth out of its economy without both a US GDP expansion and the cooperation of the currency markets. These are wise concerns.

What should we do now?

My recommendation is for long-term oriented investors to continue with their current policies. For those that believe in managing accounts through asset allocation changes, I would urge you to average in and out of positions. For those that have to report results this calendar-year, going to large cash position could be prudent. I believe we are in an emotional news cycle that can stampede markets on a daily basis without much total new movement this calendar year. The year 2014 also looks problematic until we see who will chair various committees in the US Senate plus the actual new policies by the leaders in Germany and China.

Do you have differing views?

_______________________

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