Winning Investment Strategies Shrinking - Weekly Blog # 608

Mike Lipper’s Monday Morning Musings

Winning Investment Strategies Shrinking

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

Premise: Winners are not Good Teachers
In the Northern Hemisphere this is the season where sports fans look forward to identifying the best team to crown as champion of their league. They celebrate the stars that did exceptionally well, but because we don’t like to pick on those that are down, we avoid focusing on the players that performed badly. This highlights the difference between a good sports or investment analyst and one likely to perform poorly in the future. As a contrarian I believe I learn far more from the mistakes of previously competent players than the exceptional winners.

Matter of fact, most winners owe their success to the mistakes made by others, something that is certainly true in military history. Many competitors try to model themselves after recently crowned champions,  but more often than not those who study a broader list of mistakes made by individuals, and their managements will be on the way to becoming future champions. (General George Washington was one who learned from early battle losses.)

Applying Lessons to Professional Investment Battles
Since every investor starts with some cash and perhaps some borrowing capability, all investments and investors are in competition. Most choose to stay in the middle of the pack rather than venturing out to the extremes. Nevertheless, it is not what a single investor or a single investment does, it is what others do that determines the absolute and relative profitability of the decision.

Why is this? It has to do with what is called the weight of money. (A lesson I learned from the real investment professionals at Fidelity.) Prices don’t move on the basis of brain power or information, but on the size of the flows into and out of investments. (This is the fundamental basis behind technical or market analysis.)

Flows follow Performance
Brains don’t move prices, conviction as measured by the size or the weight of money behind the flows do. No one is required to sign an affidavit as to why we do anything, it’s what we do and with what size or force. In viewing different asset classes we can see that the lack of  money going into commodities and some elements of real estate has led to flows into some equities and somewhat indiscriminately to fixed income.

Excessive Flows are Often Late
As with most investment rules and policies they can be taken to an extreme, which might be viewed as an antidote to the weight of money argument. One critical element of flows is who the sellers are at various prices, or for fixed income securities, yields. In many cases the sellers are more disciplined than the buyers. Owners of fixed income products are initially interested in current yield, but those like pension plans are also focused on the reinvestment of their interest payment receipts. When rates are too low they may decide to exit the fixed income asset class with their profits and explore total return vehicles, largely equity-oriented investments.

In the third quarter, worldwide equity funds had net redemptions of $3 billion, bond funds net inflows of $271 billion, and money-market funds net inflows of $311 billion. The smarter sellers may be speaking, especially if you consider that interest rates are among the lowest in 500 years, before the inflation caused by the discovery of South American gold. Even though rates are low, the yield curve is becoming a bit steeper. Currently, the thirty-year US Treasury yield is 2.35%, which may be the “market’s” guess of the long-term inflation rate. Some escapees from high-quality fixed income and some nervous equity investors are congregating in high yield paper/funds. Moody’s (*) has expressed their concern after rising prices in this category, fearing an increase in problems for future issuers.

(*) A position in our Private Financial Services Fund)

All is not Great in the Domestic Equity Arena

1. The US dollar’s rate of exchange is softening, making foreign investments more attractive. 
2. Too much attention is being paid to the S&P 500, which year-to-date is producing a return north of 30%, including reinvested dividends. What is not being noticed is the significant number of stocks producing lower returns, particularly the value-oriented and industrial company stocks found in many portfolios. The latter dealing with lackluster sales and weakening prices. 
3. Low interest rates are allowing companies that should close to limp along and depress prices. 
4. The very volatile American Association of Individual Investors sample survey, a contrarian indicator, showed 44% of investors being bullish vs. 20.5% bearish. (Most readings are in a 20-40% range.)
5. The oldest Central Bank in the world has given up using negative interest rates. Sweden, a very respected central bank, is now no longer one of the few negative interest rate users. I suspect some central banks and investment people with a knowledge of history see higher rates in their future, perhaps much higher.

A useful set of indicators
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) currently trades 3,099 issues and the NASDAQ 3,466. Historically the NYSE had more stringent listing standards, so on balance it has older and higher perceived quality. Both had 47 issues that were unchanged last week. The NYSE had 2.6% of its stocks hit new lows, whereas the NASDAQ had 20% hit new lows. The NASDAQ Composite has gained +38% this year and the DJIA +25%. On average the NASDAQ attracts more active traders than the senior exchange and thus may better reflect sentiment.



Question of the week: When was the last time you looked at your fixed income investments with the same scrutiny as you do your stock investments?



Did you miss my past few blogs? Click one of the links below to read.
https://mikelipper.blogspot.com/2019/12/faulty-decision-processes-at-change.html

https://mikelipper.blogspot.com/2019/12/investors-are-worrying-about-wrong.html

https://mikelipper.blogspot.com/2019/11/contrarian-stock-and-bond-fund-choices.html



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 - 2019
A. Michael Lipper, CFA

All rights reserved
Contact author for limited redistribution permission.

The Bill Gross Effect and the Need for Other Negative Indicators

Introduction

The huge amount of press covering Bill Gross’s changes of investment house was a wonderful occasion of misdirection. The day of the announcement I reviewed the average performance of ninety-six fund investment objectives for the week. Of the long-term taxable fund investment objective categories, only two were positive. The two that had plus signs in front of their weekly performance were Dedicated Short Bias Funds and Alternative Managed Future Funds. I believe the unanimous performance declines in every single domestic and international equity and bond fund is symptomatic of deep fundamental concerns.

Lessons from NY tracks

One of the personal learning institutions that has impacted my investment analysis career was the New York based horse racing tracks. The percentage of winning favorites was typically about 33%. One should look at the dollar returns from winning favorites after expenses paid in taxes and fees to the track. The winnings would not cover the losses in other races, let alone cover the expenses of getting to and into the track and an occasional hot dog.  From the track math I learned that there is a tendency for those who make mistakes to continue to make mistakes. In other words they could be negative indicators. How could this be?

At that time the New York racing crowd was the savviest in the country, perhaps like those following stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Clearly these bright people were being swayed into making uneconomic bets. They were following the results of past performance races. A horse that had recently won three or four races, regardless of conditions, was expected to repeat. The crowd could have included some member of the SEC staff who then required the phrase “past performance is no guaranty of future performance,” or similar language to be appended to all performance communications with the public. Unlike many politicians that worship at the foot of “Big Mo” or momentum, some regulators were appropriately concerned about momentum investing.

What are the historical odds of winning?

From my experience in looking at investing for more than fifty years, there are two matrixes that answer the question. The much more common one is to measure whether the price of the investment went up or down. For long-term investors, the odds are that 50% of the choices finish at higher prices. Why? The discouraged ones drop out of the class and, at least in the US, the long-term secular trend has been up. You have to live longer to win. Good managers probably win about 60% of the time. The truly great managers win over time probably about 66%. Just as the critical measure of a day at the track should be measured in terms of net dollars won after all expenses, so should performance results be assessed. Even better, if one was foolish enough to think going to the track as a business, one should look at the ratio of winnings to amounts wagered. On this basis I have seen people actually make money only being right some 40% of the time because they handled their money wisely and benefitted from the knowledge that winning positions grow in relative size compared to losing positions.

Lessons from Bill Gross’s departure

First, it is important to acknowledge that he had a very good long-term record that the institutional and individual communities translated into favorable momentum. Second, Bill was the pied piper for fixed-income investing which had some impact on equity investing. Third, none of our managed accounts owned funds that he managed and there was very little owned in some of the over $4 Billion in institutional portfolios of tax-exempt groups that have me on their investment committees.

What should have been included in the press coverage? First, in all likelihood we have seen the end of a thirty year bull market in bonds which began when the late and great Arnold Ganz told me that there was a generational need for bond managers; there were not enough to go around to all the openings he perceived would be coming. Considering that individual investors around the world were rushing into bond funds, the end of the bond bull market could be very destructive to the investment public and could cause interest rates to rise on government debt as there would be fewer buyers. By the way, many institutions with professionals on their investment committees own very little in the way of bonds.

Second, in later years Bill’s success was based in part on a very strong trading facility that he helped build. His great strength was in the timely use of derivatives. Banks are far and away the biggest dealers in derivatives, with PIMCO probably getting their first call and possible price concessions. Due to rapidly changing bank regulations, banks are cutting back on their inventories of derivatives. Thus, in his new home Bill may be offered less support than what he has been used to receiving.

Third, many news articles have been speculating on how much money will leave PIMCO. While this may be harmful to the fund management company’s bottom line, I suspect that it will be good for those investors that remain within a shrunken fund. There is no portfolio that I have observed that couldn’t be improved by judicious selling. A manager may love all of his/her holdings; however redemptions will force a ranking of those holdings that are least loved.

Fourth, Bill’s quick decision to join Janus, apparently his second choice, defies historical analysis. The board at Janus has a long history of making the wrong decisions in terms of senior executives. This could change.

The need for negative indicators

Since great managers in the long run are only right about 2/3 of the time, we would all like to improve our odds. From my experience those people who have been regularly wrong tend to persist in being wrong. My feeling is that these people are wrong about 75% of the time leaving them to be right 25% of the time. What we attempt to do is to take advantage of superior managers to enjoy them being right 2/3 of the time leaving 1/3 when they are wrong combined with the much smaller number of negative indicators that are only correct 1/4^th of the time. If we were absolutely successful we might potentially produce a 91% hit record. We don’t believe that we will achieve this result without your help identifying additional negative indicators.

Calling for negative indicators

I hesitantly nominate three groups to start your juices going as possible examples of negative indicators. The first is the current keepers of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA). In the last year according to Barron’s, they added three stocks. Two gained +5% and +1 % with the third declining -5%. They replaced three stocks that gained +47%, +8%, and +26%. These changes demonstrate their concerns for investors that are tied to the DJIA. Further, they have announced that in the future only those companies which are headquartered in the US would be eligible to be included into the World’s most famous stock indicator. They are following the action of the S&P 500 a few years ago. These choices will have an ironic impact. The next most popular index family, the Russell indices, are now owned by the London Stock Exchange, which might have its new owner’s proclivities in mind.

One might speculate that the keepers of the DJIA (which is now managed by a subsidiary largely owned by S&P which in turn is owned by McGraw Hill Financial^*) are defending themselves from a lawsuit by the Justice Department which it is alleged has to do with its downgrading of the credit rating of the US. Thus the announced DJIA move could be interpreted as an attempt to back the current Administration’s efforts to curtail tax inversions. Thus, we are seeing political capital topping investor capital. The history in the marketplace is that this is a short-term advantage and will actually just encourage more off-shore deals.

^*Owned personally and/or by the private financial services fund I manage.

The second negative indicator nomination is for the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CALPERS). This judgment is based on CALPERS’s decision to redeem some $4 Billion invested in hedge funds because they were too complex and too costly. I wonder what they thought they were investing into in the first place. There is a chance that their timing is exquisite. After far too many years of declining interest rates and generally rising stock prices, we have currently seen the beginnings of rising rates and falling stock prices. As stated above, the only two fund investment objectives that were up this week were Dedicated Short Biased Funds and Alternative Managed Futures Funds. In addition, a closed-end diversified currency fund had a surge in trading volume.

Caveat emptor

My private financial services fund (which is structured as a hedge fund) has not had a short position in many years. In addition I personally own shares in a non-US manager of one of the largest futures funds in the world. Further some of the non-profit investment committees that I sit on have quite successfully used hedge funds in their portfolios. Thus, I believe that CALPERS is a good nominee as a negative indicator.

The third nomination is the previously mentioned Janus Capital Management whose board of directors has consistently chosen the wrong people and the wrong diversification moves at the wrong times.

I am looking into making a fourth nomination, of a  prominent talking head or columnist who is brilliant about extrapolating yesterday’s news.

Please send me privately your nominations of negative indicators. In the meantime, invest well for the long-term and trade well in the short-term.

__________

Comment or email me a question to MikeLipper@Gmail.com  .

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 - 2014

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

Money Flows: Good, Bad & Ugly

Unrealistically most investment discussions focus largely on purchase decisions and almost all the rest of the time on when to sell. In contrast, as both an investment manager and a member of numerous investment committees, our most frequent interaction with an investment account deals with flows; money coming in or going out.

In a normal (or worse, “new normal”) period, the median performance as a percent of the assets committed is relatively small, often in single digits. Most outflows are discreet amounts of money dealing with meeting legal, tax, or other requirements. In an account that wishes to stay in business, outflows should on average represent 3-5% of the corpus, or better yet, an average of 20 quarters. Offsetting the outflows are inflows of new contributions and income from the investment portfolio. In most years inflows represent a significant part of the annual performance.

The good

Whenever we are required to send money out of an account, be it a mandatory redemption requirement for an IRA,  a transfer out of a corporate retirement plan or funding a grant, I use the event as an opportunity to review the account. Rarely in a single account do we receive significant inflows at the same time as the outflows. Nevertheless, we take the same opportunity with new money to review the account for the best allocation at the moment. Further in some regimented accounts, market price movement may require addressing the need to rebalance the list to the closet limit allocation.

At the time of the flows, we rapidly decide what is best for the account looking forward to its normal investment time horizon. Notice that this review focuses on the perceived future not the immediate results within the portfolio. This might well be a wonderful opportunity with new inflows to start an investment in a new security or fund.

Somewhat strange for me of all people to say, is that we do not let past performance dictate future actions. In effect, we make the use of flows an investment moment.

The bad

There are strict guidelines for account (administrative) managers in terms of flows, particularly in large financial institutions. They usually follow one of three procedures:

The first is to divide up the flow so that proportionately the flows do not change the present structure of the account.

The second approach, followed by some short-term performance driven funds, particularly hedge funds, is to put the bulk of the flows in the best short-term performing holdings.

The third approach, favored by value-focused investors, is to put new money in the currently worst performing holdings and if the flows of the account are outgoing, take some off the top performing and/or largest holdings.

Why are these bad approaches? These are mechanical reactions and foreclose the opportunity to have an investment input. I have found that these periods of inputs can lead me to rethink the portfolio now, rather than wait for a normal receipt of documents for my review or major market move. While many portfolio managers want to make dramatic moves, there are times that an initial gradual set of moves (and more importantly, evolving thinking) produce good results.

I guess I would rather think of myself and hopefully others think of me as an investment artist, not just an investment mechanic.

The ugly

The ugly comes in two categories: the first is an immediate reaction and the second is misinterpretation of a repeating phenomenon. 

A good example of the first was the stock market action late last week. On Thursday, June 27^th, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 114.35 points.  On a normal summer Friday, particularly coming into a holiday-shortened week, most short-term traders do not want to carry additional holdings over the weekend. During the day on Friday the 28^th, the DJIA was aimless. However, all of a sudden in the last few minutes of the trading session, the DJIA plunged -114.89.

Almost all of the weekend news media pontificated as to the meaning of this decline, relating to the views regarding the size of the Fed’s reduction of its bond buying program. The day before the same pundits took a more favorable view of the expected actions by the Fed. Only a few noted something that I knew for over a year. On the last trading day of June each year the Russell Indexes are officially reconstituted. Index funds, mutual fund or ETF, closet indexers, and other passive funds need to own the new list before the opening on Monday. My guess what happened is that it was relatively easy to deduce which IPOs and spinoffs would be added to the relevant indexes. Once that number is ascertained on the basis of present market capitalization, one can make a very good guess as to the number of stocks that had to leave the index to make room for the incomers. These had to be sold quickly so that capital can go into the new names.

Thus, I do not attach much significance to Friday’s afternoon performance. I know of one instance many years ago when there was a disproportionate mark-up during the last hour of the last day of the calendar year when the auditors threw out prices for statement purposes after 2:30. (The market closed at 3:30 those days.) In terms of quality of numbers I have been always cautious of believing results of last days of June and December.

Mutual fund flows misinterpreted

Over forty years ago the needs of the Wall Street trading community focused heavily on the net flows from mutual funds as a guide to very early trading directions the next day. Today, recognizing that mutual funds are the most transparent of all investment groups, people focus on net flows of funds to identify current and future investment attitude. Note that almost all of the focus is on net flows. Net flows are the mathematical sum of purchases, including reinvested distributions/dividends and redemptions without distinction of whether or not the redemption is a transfer to another fund in the same family.

The math treats that buying and selling have the same motivations or purposes. I believe that this is often inaccurate. Most redemptions, in my opinion,  are completions in that the original purpose of the investment has been met. Payments are necessary to meet tuition, medical, or housing needs as well as planned or unintended retirement. A switch from a stock portfolio to a Money Market fund or an Intermediate or Short Government Bond fund probably has more to do with the near-term need of investors than a view as to how attractive the equity market is currently.

As difficult as it is to fathom redemptions, purchases are more difficult particularly if they are the result of a commission-oriented adviser or broker. Due to competitive pressure egged on by the SEC, the sale of mutual funds (particularly to individuals) has become less profitable to both the individual sales person and his/her house. The sale of private placements, real estate, and hedge funds are more profitable for the intermediaries than selling funds whose results can be tracked every business day after the initial transaction.

Until the stock market goes higher and more speculative, I believe in many periods it will be difficult for equity funds to show more dollars of sales than the actuarially-driven redemptions of Money Market and high quality Short to Intermediate Bond funds. Thus, I would not use the headline numbers of mutual fund net flows. However, I will continue to analyze the net flows within various categories of equity funds and at a greater delay the relative flows among various funds with the same objectives.

Please share with me how you use flows.

_______________________

Did you miss Mike Lipper’s 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 - 2013 A. Michael Lipper, C.F.A.,
All Rights Reserved.
Contact author for limited redistribution permission.

Am I too Premature?

Popular media pundits are judged on the immediate impacts of their pronouncements. Sell-side analysts are judged on short-term performance. Portfolio managers are judged by their annual performance and consultants on three year views. Sounder investment managers award incentive compensation on four, eight and twelve year periods. As most of the money that I feel responsible for is long-term (in some cases life time and working on my family’s future, multiple generations), I attempt to focus way beyond the known horizons. As one shifts from the terrestrial telescopes to microscopes (all of which I am fortunately exposed to as a trustee at Caltech), one needs to adjust one’s focal length and duration of expectations. As someone who watches markets intensively for signs of longer-term importance, some of my thinking can be premature. I hope the concerns that I am about to express are premature.

New highs in prices, but not in emotions

Capturing the emotions around an event is often critical to understanding the event. The infamous and facetiously untrue question supposedly asked to Mrs. Lincoln after the assassination of her husband, “Other than that, how did you like the play?” was certainly the wrong approach to find out the impact of the murderous act. However, in our media sensitive world, gauging people’s emotions about an event can be an important clue as to the significance of the event. The string of new high readings on the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) and very close to new high readings on the Standard & Poor’s 500 did not produce wild euphoria on the floors of stock exchanges, in the general press or on Main Street. One could interpret this lack of enthusiasm as a symbol of either disbelief or lack of importance. There are possibly many reasons for these attitudes. I will suggest just two. The first is that many investors or former investors are not participating in the rise. Since the former market peak in 2007, according to the Investment Company Institute there have been net redemptions of $556 billion in domestically-focused equity mutual funds over the period. For the most part this money was diverted into bond funds and some internationally oriented funds. In all likelihood if this is the beginning of a new market expansion, this money and more will come back. The second indicator of disbelief or concern on a global basis is comparing the price of gold at the time of the 2007 peak and today; it has slightly more than doubled though it is down over the last 12 months.  Because of the actions or perhaps more correctly their inactions, investors and some central banks are fundamentally concerned about the intrinsic value of paper money. (This concern seems to be more tied to money’s value than a fear of rampant inflation which could be caused by some of the currency warriors’ actions.)

Did last week’s stock price and volume actions give us a clue?

Changing my focal length from the distant time horizon to the last four or five days is an attempt to mine from the current events to the future, with all the hazards of any market focused prediction. Please bear in mind the source of the data used is from the New York Stock Exchange, in an era where the exchange has lost market share to other trading sites, but its data may well be representative. Allow me to focus on financials not just because of my private financial services fund, but during the week the financial sector was the best performing of the ten large sectors in the marketplace. Paying attention to the price and volume statistics of three stocks can be useful when viewing the potential excitement of additional DJIA new highs.

On Tuesday, Moody’s¹  traded 3.7 million shares, closing at $50.06; by the end of the week it worked higher to a $50.95 close, but its volume dropped  more than half to 1.7 million shares. One could interpret this result as higher prices did not increase the amount of stock for sale, perhaps a bullish sign. A more normal result was in the action of T. Rowe Price² which on Tuesday traded 1.35 million shares with a closing price of $73.93; by Friday the closing price had crept up to $75.20 with volume of 1.35 million shares traded, which suggests that the size of the buyers and sellers were equally matched and at these levels price changes were not causing significant changes in the level of transactions. However, in contrast to these two rather placid pictures, what was happening in JPMorgan Chase³ was quite different. The week started with the stock closing at $49.10 on 17.7 million shares. While the stock rose to a peak on Thursday it closed on Friday at $50.20 on 32.3 million shares traded. (On Friday the Federal Reserve announced its stress test results for the 18 largest banks, which is likely to suggest that the Fed will approve most if not all of the bank’s request in terms of dividends and stock buybacks.) The significant increase in the volume on Friday suggests to me that there is an increase in the minds of potential sellers that the current level is an appropriate exit level. In the coming week and going forward, new elements are likely to enter the minds of buyers and sellers of these three financial leaders. Relative to the rest of the market, I would suggest some new impetus is likely to be needed to drive these stocks higher in the short term.

What is happening and important in the broader market and economy?

The earnings of the companies within the S&P500 parallel the earnings of corporate America. For some time we have gotten used to these numbers rising. They did not grow in the fourth quarter. If growth continues to slow, earnings could decline which if sustained could hurt the general level of the market. Rates of change are often unstable, shrinking and then expanding. One impetus to an expansion of earnings could well come from a major increase in US domiciled companies’ capital expenditures. In their periodic reports the Royce Funds⁴ noted that ISI reports that in the US the average age of industrial equipment is 5.8 years and the average age of plants is 15.5 years. These represent the oldest conditions since 1965. Royce uses this to buttress their argument for sizeable investments within the industrial sector. While I agree that at some point there will be a need to replace some industrial capacity, I question whether they will be replaced with the same products and plants that now exist. What will be replaced domestically will be with more technologically-driven products and plants. With rising wages in the developing world, there will be some new plants brought on stream in the US, but with most of them in Right to Work states with attractive business incentives. Nevertheless, at some point, industrial America will commit with courage and global prudence to US production.

Disclosures:

^{1 & 2}   Owned by my private financial services fund 

³        Owned personally

⁴        Some of our managed accounts own Royce funds

Currencies vs. GDP 

In my opinion, one of the best parts of the Economist magazine is its two final pages of comparative statistics. In the current edition it has GDP estimates for 2013 as well as changes relative to the US dollar of the same countries’ currencies. Compared to most, the US’s tepid 2% GDP estimate is quite high with only eleven countries with a larger GDP estimate. (Readers can request the list by emailing or calling me.) Almost all of these countries have seen the value of their currencies decline relative to the US dollar. For those of us who invest for dollar focused investors, the lower valuation of the local currencies translates into lower performance results of International funds. To the extent that the undeclared, but significant currency wars escalate, our performance reports will suffer; even though in many cases the earnings of the companies that we invest in directly or in funds will grow better than those in the US. Further, in numerous cases the outlook for many multi-national and local companies is very attractive as they meet the rising needs of various populations.

How do you put these concerns into portfolios?

As is my nature, I am probably premature and possibly too premature. Thus I am not an advocate of raising cash today through disinvestment in equities. What I am suggesting is that until the next major bottom is reached to reduce commitments to ETFs and most quant strategies that do not permit the use of cash as an investment vehicle. In my selection of active equity managers I will be searching for those rare managers that can raise significant amounts of cash at the right inflection point. These are rare skills particularly when combined with reasonably full equity commitments.

Share with me your views as to whether or not I am too premature.

_____________________________________________________

Did someone forward this blog to you?  Please subscribe using the email or RSS sign-ups on the left side of Mike Lipper’s Blog.

Copyright © 2008 - 2013 A. Michael Lipper, C.F.A.,

All Rights Reserved.

Contact author for limited redistribution permission.