Posts filed under ‘Education’
Cutting Losses with Fisher’s 3 Golden Sell Rules
Returning readers to Investing Caffeine understand this is a location to cover a wide assortment of investing topics, ranging from electric cars and professional poker to taxes and globalization. Investing Caffeine is also a location that profiles great investors and their associated investment lessons.
Today we are going to revisit investing giant Phil Fisher, but rather than rehashing his accomplishments and overall philosophy, we will dig deeper into his selling discipline. For most investors, selling securities is much more difficult than buying them. The average investor often lacks emotional self-control and is unable to be honest with himself. Since most investors hate being wrong, their egos prevent taking losses on positions, even if it is the proper, rational decision. Often the end result is an inability to sell deteriorating stocks until capitulating near price bottoms.
Selling may be more difficult for most, but Fisher actually has a simpler and crisper number of sell rules as compared to his buy rules (3 vs. 15). Here are Fisher’s three sell rules:
1) Wrong Facts: There are times after a security is purchased that the investor realizes the facts do not support the supposed rosy reasons of the original purchase. If the purchase thesis was initially built on a shaky foundation, then the shares should be sold.
2) Changing Facts: The facts of the original purchase may have been deemed correct, but facts can change negatively over the passage of time. Management deterioration and/or the exhaustion of growth opportunities are a few reasons why a security should be sold according to Fisher.
3) Scarcity of Cash: If there is a shortage of cash available, and if a unique opportunity presents itself, then Fisher advises the sale of other securities to fund the purchase.
Reasons Not to Sell
Prognostications or gut feelings about a potential market decline are not reasons to sell in Fisher’s eyes. Selling out of fear generally is a poor and costly idea. Fisher explains:
“When a bear market has come, I have not seen one time in ten when the investor actually got back into the same shares before they had gone up above his selling price.”
In Fisher’s mind, another reason not to sell stocks is solely based on valuation. Longer-term earnings power and comparable company ratios should be considered before spontaneous sales. What appears expensive today may look cheap tomorrow.
There are many reasons to buy and sell a stock, but like most good long –term investors, Fisher has managed to explain his three-point sale plan in simplistic terms the masses can understand. If you are committed to cutting investment losses, I advise you to follow investment legend Phil Fisher – cutting losses will actually help prevent your portfolio from splitting apart.
Wade W. Slome, CFA, CFP®
Plan. Invest. Prosper.
DISCLOSURE: Sidoxia Capital Management (SCM) and some of its clients own certain exchange traded funds, but at the time of publishing SCM had no direct position in any other security referenced in this article. No information accessed through the Investing Caffeine (IC) website constitutes investment, financial, legal, tax or other advice nor is to be relied on in making an investment or other decision. Please read disclosure language on IC “Contact” page.
Avoiding Automobile and Portfolio Crashes
Personal opinions of oneself don’t always mirror reality. Self perceptions relating to both driving and investing can be inflated. For example, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reports that 95% of crashes are caused by human error, but 75% of drivers say they are better drivers than most.
Contributing factors to crashes include: 1) Distractions; 2) Alcohol; 3) Unsafe behavior (i.e., speeding); 4) Time of day (fatality rate is 3x higher at night); 5) Lack of safety belt; 6) Weather; and 7) Time of week (weekends are worst crash days).
A spokesman for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety is quick to point out that driving behind the wheel is the riskiest activity most people engage in on a daily basis – more than 40,000 driving related fatalities occur each year. Careful common sense helps while driving, but driving sober at 4 a.m. (very few drivers on the road) on a weekday with your seatbelt on won’t hurt either.
Avoiding a Portfolio Crash
Another dangerous activity frequently undertaken by Americans is investing, despite people’s inflated beliefs of their money management capabilities. Investing, however, does not have to be harmful if proper precautions are taken.
Here is some of the hazardous behaviors that should be avoided by those maneuvering an investment portfolio:
1) Trading Too Much: Excessive trading leads to undue commissions, transaction costs, bid-ask spread, impact costs. Many of these costs are opaque or invisible and won’t necessarily be evident right away. But like a leaky boat, direct and indirect trading costs have the potential of sinking your portfolio.
2) Worrying about the Economy Too Much: The country experiences about two recessions a decade, nonetheless our economy continues to grow. If macroeconomics still worry you, then look abroad for even healthier growth – considerable international exposure should aid the long-term success of your portfolio and assist you in sleeping better at night.
3) Emotionally Reacting – Not Objectively Planning: News is bad, so sell. News is good, so buy. This type of conduct is a recipe for portfolio disaster. Better to do as Warren Buffett says, “Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful.” The long-term fundamental prospects for any investment are much more important than the daily headlines that get the emotional juices flowing.
4) Hostage to Short-term Time Horizon: Rather than worry about the next 10 days, you should be focused on the next 10 years. The further out you can set your time horizon, the better off you will be. Patience is a virtue.
5) Incongruent Portfolio with Risk: Many retirees got caught flat-footed in the midst of the global financial crisis of 2008-09 with investment portfolios heavy in equities and real estate. Diversified portfolios including fixed-income, commodities, international exposure, cash, and alternative investments should be optimized to meet your specific objectives, constraints, risk tolerance, and time horizon.
6) Timing the Market: Attempting to time the market can be hazardous to your investment health (see Market Timing article). If you really want to make money, then avoid the masses – the grass is greener and the eating better away from the herd.
Driving and investing can both be dangerous activities that command responsible behavior. Do yourself a favor and protect yourself and your portfolio from crashing by taking the appropriate precautions and avoiding the common hazardous mistakes.
Read Full Forbes Article on Driving Dangers
Wade W. Slome, CFA, CFP®
Plan. Invest. Prosper.
DISCLOSURE: Sidoxia Capital Management (SCM) and some of its clients hold positions in certain exchange traded funds (ETFs), but at the time of publishing had no direct position in any other security referenced in this article. No information accessed through the Investing Caffeine (IC) website constitutes investment, financial, legal, tax or other advice nor is to be relied on in making an investment or other decision. Please read disclosure language on IC Contact page.
Winning the Loser’s Game
During periods of heightened volatility like those recently experienced, it’s easy to get caught up in the emotional heat of the moment. I find time is better spent returning to essential investing fundamentals, like the ones I read in the investment classic by Charles Ellis, Winning the Loser’s Game – “WTLG”. To put my enthusiasm in perspective, WTLG has even achieved the elite and privileged distinction of making the distinguished “Recommended Reading” list of Investing Caffeine (located along the right-side of the page). Wow…now I know you are really impressed.
The Man, The Myth, the Ellis
For those not familiar with Charley Ellis, he has a long, storied investment career. Not only has he authored 12 books, including compilations on Goldman Sachs (GS) and Capital Group, but his professional career dates back prior to 1972, when he founded institutional consulting firm Greenwich Associates. Besides earning a college degree from Yale University, and an MBA from Harvard Business School, he also garnered a PhD from New York University. Ellis also is a director at the Vanguard Group and served as Investment Committee chair at Yale University along investment great David Swensen (read also Super Swensen) from 1992 – 2008.
With this tremendous investment experience come tremendous insights. The original book, which was published in 1998, is already worth its weight in gold (even at $1,384 per ounce), but the fifth edition of WTLG is even more valuable because it has been updated with Ellis’s perspectives on the 2008-2009 financial crisis.
Because the breadth of topics covered is so vast and indispensable, I will break the WTLG review into a few parts for digestibility. I will start off with the these hand-picked nuggets:
Defining the “Loser’s Game”
Here is how Charles Ellis describes the investment “loser’s game”:
“For professional investors, “the ‘money game’ we call investment management evolved in recent decades from a winner’s game to a loser’s game because a basic change has occurred in the investment environment: The market came to be dominated in the 1970s and 1980s by the very institutions that were striving to win by outperforming the market. No longer is the active investment manager competing with cautious custodians or amateurs who are out of touch with the market. Now he or she competes with other hardworking investment experts in a loser’s game where the secret to winning is to lose less than others lose.”
Underperformance by Active Managers
Readers that have followed Investing Caffeine for a while understand how I feel about passive (low-cost do-nothing strategy) and active management (portfolio managers constantly buying and selling) – read Darts, Monkeys & Pros. Ellis’s views are not a whole lot different than mine – here is what he has to say while not holding back any punches:
“The basic assumption that most institutional investors can outperform the market is false. The institutions are the market. They cannot, as a group, outperform themselves. In fact, given the cost of active management – fees, commissions, market impact of big transactions, and so forth-85 percent of investment managers have and will continue over the long term to underperform the overall market.”
He goes on to say individuals do even worse, especially those that day trade, which he calls a “sucker’s game.”
Exceptions to the Rule
Ellis’s bias towards passive management is clear because “over the long term 85 percent of active managers fall short of the market. And it’s nearly impossible to figure out ahead of time which managers will make it into the top 15 percent.” He does, however, acknowledge there is a minority of professionals that can beat the market by making fewer mistakes or taking advantage of others’ mistakes. Ellis advocates a slow approach to investing, which bases “decisions on research with a long-term focus that will catch other investors obsessing about the short term and cavitating – producing bubbles.” This is the strategy and approach I aim to achieve.
Gaining an Unfair Competitive Advantage
According to Ellis, there are four ways to gain an unfair competitive advantage in the investment world:
1) Physical Approach: Beat others by carrying heavier brief cases and working longer hours.
2) Intellectual Approach: Outperform by thinking more deeply and further out in the future.
3) Calm-Rational Approach: Ellis describes this path to success as “benign neglect” – a method that beats the others by ignoring both favorable and adverse market conditions, which may lead to suboptimal decisions.
4) Join ‘em Approach: The easiest way to beat active managers is to invest through index funds. If you can’t beat index funds, then join ‘em.
The Case for Stocks
Investor time horizon plays a large role on asset allocation, but time is on investors’ side for long-term equity investors:
“That’s why in the long term, the risks are clearly lowest for stocks, but in the short term, the risks are just as clearly highest for stocks.”
Expanding on that point, Ellis points out the following:
“Any funds that will stay invested for 10 years or longer should be in stocks. Any funds that will be invested for less than two to three years should be in “cash” or money market instruments.”
While many people may feel stock investing is dead, but Ellis points out that equities should return more in the long-run:
“There must be a higher rate of return on stocks to persuade investors to accept risks of equity investing.”
The Power of Regression to the Mean
Investors do more damage to performance by chasing winners and punishing losers because they lose the powerful benefits of “regression to the mean.” Ellis describes this tendency for behavior to move toward an average as “a persistently powerful phenomenon in physics and sociology – and in investing.” He goes on to add, good investors know “that the farther current events are away from the mean at the center of the bell curve, the stronger the forces of reversion, or regression, to the mean, are pulling the current data toward the center.”
The Power of Compounding
For a 75 year period (roughly 1925 – 2000) analyzed by Ellis, he determines $1 invested in stocks would have grown to $105.96, if dividends were not reinvested. If, however, dividends are reinvested, the power of compounding kicks in significantly. For the same 75 year period, the equivalent $1 would have grown to $2,591.79 – almost 25x’s more than the other method (see also Penny Saved is Billion Earned).
Ellis throws in another compounding example:
“Remember that if investments increase by 7 percent per annum after income tax, they will double every 10 years, so $1 million can become $1 billion in 100 years (before adjusting for inflation).”
The Lessons of History
As philosopher George Santayana stated – “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Details of every market are different, but as Ellis notes, “The major characteristics of markets are remarkably similar over time.”
Ellis appreciates the importance of history plays in analyzing the markets:
“The more you study market history, the better; the more you know about how securities markets have behaved in the past, the more you’ll understand their true nature and how they probably will behave in the future. Such an understanding enables us to live rationally with markets that would otherwise seem wholly irrational.”
Home Sweet International Home
Although Ellis’s recommendation to diversify internationally is not controversial, his allocation recommendation regarding “full diversification” is a bit more provocative:
“For Americans, this would mean about half our portfolios would be invested outside the United States.”
This seems high by traditional standards, but considering our country’s shrinking share of global GDP (Gross Domestic Product), along with our relatively small share of the globe’s population (about 5% of the world’s total), the 50% percentage doesn’t seem as high at first blush.
Beware the Broker
This is not new territory for me (see Financial Sharks, Fees/Exploitation, and Credential Shell Game), and Ellis warns investors on industry sales practices:
“Those oh so caring and helpful salespeople make their money by convincing you to change funds. Friendly as they may be, they may be no friend to your long-term investment success.”
Unlike a lot of other investing books, which cover a few aspects to investing, Winning the Loser’s Game covers a gamut of crucial investment lessons in a straightforward, understandable fashion. A lot of people play the investing game, but as Charles Ellis details, many more investors and speculators lose than win. For any investor, from amateur to professional, reading Ellis’s Winning the Loser’s Game and following his philosophy will not only help increase the odds of your portfolio winning, but will also limit your losses in sleep hours.
Wade W. Slome, CFA, CFP®
Plan. Invest. Prosper.
DISCLOSURE: Sidoxia Capital Management (SCM) and some of its clients own certain exchange traded funds, but at the time of publishing SCM had no direct position in GS, or any other security referenced in this article. No information accessed through the Investing Caffeine (IC) website constitutes investment, financial, legal, tax or other advice nor is to be relied on in making an investment or other decision. Please read disclosure language on IC “Contact” page.
Financial Markets Recharge with a Nap…Zzzzzz
This article is an excerpt from a previously released Sidoxia Capital Management complimentary newsletter (January 4, 2016). Subscribe on the right side of the page for the complete text.
Did you enjoy your New Year’s festivities? If you were like me and ate excessively and drank too much egg nog, you may have decided along the line to take a nap. It’s not a bad idea to recharge those batteries before implementing those New Year’s resolutions and jumping on the treadmill. That’s exactly what happened in the financial markets this year. After six consecutive years of positive returns in the Dow Jones Industrial Average (2009 – 2014), stock markets took a snooze in 2015, as measured by the S&P 500 and Dow, which were each down -0.7% and -2.2%, respectively. And bonds didn’t fare any better, evidenced by the -1.9% decline in the Aggregate Bond ETF (AGG), over the same time period. Given the deep-seated fears about the Federal Reserve potentially catapulting interest rates higher in 2015, investors effectively took a big yawn by barely nudging the 10-year Treasury Note yield higher by +0.1% from 2.2% to 2.3%.
Even though 2015 ended up being a quiet year overall, there were plenty of sweet dreams mixed in with scary nightmares during the year-long nap:
INVESTMENT SWEET DREAMS
Diamonds in the Rough: While 2015 stock prices were generally flat to down around the globe (Vanguard Total Word -4.2%), there was some sunshine and rainbows gleaming for a number of segments in the market. For example, handsome gains were achieved in the NASDAQ index (+5.7%); Biotech Index – BTK (+10.9%); Consumer Discretionary ETF – XLY (+8.3%); Health Care ETF – VHT (+5.8%); Information Technology ETF – VGT (+4.6%); along with numerous other investment areas.
Fuel Fantasy Driven by Low Gas Prices: Gas prices averaged $2.01 per gallon nationally in December (see chart below), marking the lowest prices seen since 2009. Each penny in lower gas prices roughly equates to $1 billion in savings, which has strengthened consumers’ balance sheets and contributed to the multi-year economic expansion. Although these savings have partially gone to pay down personal debt, these gas reserves have also provided a financial tailwind for record auto sales (estimated 17.5million in 2015) and a slow but steady recovery in the housing market. The outlook for “lower-for-longer” oil prices is further supported by an expanding oil glut from new, upcoming Iranian supplies. Due to the lifting of economic sanctions related to the global nuclear deal, Iran is expected to deliver crude oil to an already over-supplied world energy market during the first quarter of 2016. Additionally, the removal of the 40-year ban on U.S. oil exports -could provide a near-term ceiling on energy prices as well.
Counting Cash Cows
Catching some shut-eye after reading frightening 2015 headlines on the China slowdown, $96 billion Greek bailout/elections, and Paris/San Bernardino terrorist attacks forced some nervous investors to count sheep to fall asleep. However, long-term investors understand that underpinning this long-lived bull market are record revenues, profits, and cash flows. The record $4.7 trillion dollars in 2015 estimated mergers along with approximately $1 trillion in dividends and share buybacks (see chart below) is strong confirmation that investors should be concentrating on counting more cash cows than sheep, if they want to sleep comfortably.
INVESTMENT NIGHTMARES
Creepy Commodities: Putting aside the -30% collapse in WTI crude oil prices last year, commodity investors overall were exhausted in 2015. The -24% decline in the CRB Commodity Index and the -11% weakening in the Gold Index (GLD) was further proof that a strong U.S. dollar, coupled with stagnant global growth, caused investors a lot of tossing and turning. While bad for commodity exporting countries, the collapse in commodity prices will ultimately keep a lid on inflation and eventually become stimulative for those consumers suffering from lower standards of living.
Dollar Dread: The +25% spike in the value of the U.S. dollar over the last 18 months has made life tough for multinational companies. If your business received approximately 35-40% of their profits overseas and suddenly your goods cost 25% more than international competitors, you might grind your teeth in your sleep too. Monetary policies around the globe, including the European Union, will have an impact on the direction of future foreign exchange rates, but after a spike in the value of the dollar in early 2015, there are signs this scary move may now be stabilizing. Although multinationals are getting squeezed, now is the time for consumers to load up on cheap imports and take that bargain foreign vacation they have long been waiting for.
January has been a challenging month the last couple years, and inevitably there will be additional unknown turbulence ahead – the opening day of 2016 not being an exception (i.e., China slowdown concerns and Mideast tensions). However, given near record-low interest rates, record corporate profits, and accommodative central bank policies, the 2015 nap taken by global stock markets should supply the necessary energy to provide a lift to financial markets in the year ahead.
Wade W. Slome, CFA, CFP®
Plan. Invest. Prosper.
DISCLOSURE: Sidoxia Capital Management (SCM) and some of its clients hold positions VHT, AGG, and in certain exchange traded funds (ETFs), but at the time of publishing had no direct position VT, BTK, XLY, VGT, GLD, or in any other security referenced in this article. No information accessed through the Investing Caffeine (IC) website constitutes investment, financial, legal, tax or other advice nor is to be relied on in making an investment or other decision. Please read disclosure language on IC Contact page.
10 Ways to Destroy Your Portfolio
With the increased frequency of heightened volatility, investing has never been as challenging as it is today. However, the importance of investing has never been more crucial either, due to rising life expectancies, corrosive effects of inflation, and the uncertainty surrounding the sustainability of government programs like Social Security, Medicare, and pensions.
If you are not wasting enough money from our structurally flawed and loosely regulated investment industry that is inundated with conflicts of interest, here are 10 additional ways to destroy your investment portfolio:
#1. Watch and React to Sensationalist News Stories: Typically, strategists and pundits do a wonderful job of parroting the consensus du jour. With the advent of the internet, and 24/7 news cycles, it is difficult to not get caught up in the daily vicissitudes. However, the accuracy of the so-called media experts is no better than weather forecasters’ accuracy in predicting the weather three Saturdays from now at 10:23 a.m. Investors would be better served by listening to and learning from successful, seasoned veterans (see Investing Caffeine Profiles).
#2. Invest for the Short-Term and Attempt Market Timing: Investing is a marathon, and not a sprint, yet countless investors have the arrogance to believe they can time the market. A few get lucky and time the proper entry point, but the same investors often fail to time the appropriate exit point. The process works similarly in reverse, which hammers home the idea that you can be 200% wrong when you are constantly switching your portfolio positions.
#3. Blindly Invest Without Knowing Fees: Like a dripping faucet, fees, transaction costs, taxes, and other charges may not be noticeable in the short-run, but combined, these portfolio expenses can be devastating in the long-run. Whether you or your broker/advisor knowingly or unknowingly is churning your account, the practice should be immediately halted. Passive investment products and strategies like ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds), index funds, and low turnover (long time horizon / tax-efficient) investing strategies are the way to go for investors.
#4. Use Technical Analysis as a Primary Strategy: Warren Buffett openly recognizes the problem with technical analysis as evidenced by his statement, “I realized technical analysis didn’t work when I turned the charts upside down and didn’t get a different answer.” Legendary fund manager Peter Lynch adds, “Charts are great for predicting the past.” Most indicators are about as helpful as astrology, but in rare instances some facets can serve as a useful device (like a Lob Wedge in golf).
#5. Panic-Sell out of Fear & Panic-Buy out of Greed: Emotions can devastate portfolio returns when investors’ trading activity follows the herd in good times and bad. As the old saying goes, “The herd is lead to the slaughterhouse.” Gary Helms rightly identifies the role that overconfidence plays when ininvesting when he states,”If you have a great thought and write it down, it will look stupid 10 hours later.” The best investment returns are earned by traveling down the less followed path. Or as Rob Arnott describes, “In investing, what is comfortable is rarely profitable.” Get a broad range of opinions and continually test your investment thesis to make sure peer pressure is not driving key investment decisions.
#6. Ignore Valuation and Yield: Valuation is like good pitching in baseball…very important. Valuation may not cause all of your investments to win, but this factor should be an integral part of your investment process. Successful investors think about valuation similarly to skilled sports handicappers. Steven Crist summed it up beautifully when he said, “There are no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ horses, just correctly or incorrectly priced ones.” The same principle applies to investments. Dividends and yields should not be overlooked – these elements are an essential part of an investor’s long-run total return.
#7. Buy and Forget: “Buy-and-hold” is good for stocks that go up in price, and bad for stocks that go flat or decline in value. Wow, how deeply profound. As I have written in the past, there are always reasons of why you should not invest for the long-term and instead sell your position, such as: 1) new competition; 2) cost pressures; 3) slowing growth; 4) management change; 5) excessive valuation; 6) change in industry regulation; 7) slowing economy; 8 ) loss of market share; 9) product obsolescence; 10) etc, etc, etc. You get the idea.
#8. Over-Concentrate Your Portfolio: If you own a top-heavy portfolio with large weightings, sleeping at night can be challenging, and also force average investors to make bad decisions at the wrong times (i.e., buy high and sell low). While over-concentration can be risky, over-diversification can eat away at performance as well – owning a 100 different mutual funds is costly and inefficient.
#9. Stuff Money Under Your Mattress: With interest rates at the lowest levels in a generation, stuffing money under the mattress in the form of CDs (Certificates of Deposit), money market accounts, and low-yielding Treasuries that are earning next to nothing is counter-productive for many investors. Compounding this problem is inflation, a silent killer that will quietly disintegrate your hard earned investment portfolio. In other words, a penny saved inefficiently will lead to a penny depreciating rapidly.
#10. Forget Your Mistakes: Investing is difficult enough without naively repeating the same mistakes. As Albert Einstein said, “Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.” Mistakes will be made and it behooves investors to document them and learn from them. Brushing your mistakes under the carpet may make you temporarily feel better emotionally, but will not help your financial returns.
As the year approaches a close, do yourself a favor and evaluate whether you are committing any of these damaging habits. Investing is tough enough already, without adding further ways of destroying your portfolio.
Wade W. Slome, CFA, CFP®
Plan. Invest. Prosper.
DISCLOSURE: Sidoxia Capital Management (SCM) and some of its clients own certain exchange traded funds, but at the time of publishing SCM had no direct position in any other security referenced in this article. No information accessed through the Investing Caffeine (IC) website constitutes investment, financial, legal, tax or other advice nor is to be relied on in making an investment or other decision. Please read disclosure language on IC “Contact” page.
Bargain Hunting for Doorbuster Discounts
This article is an excerpt from a previously released Sidoxia Capital Management complimentary newsletter (December 1, 2015). Subscribe on the right side of the page for the complete text.
It’s that time of year again when an estimated 135 million bargain shoppers set aside personal dignity and topple innocent children in the name of Black Friday holiday weekend, doorbuster discounts. Whether you are buying a new big screen television at Amazon for half-off or a new low-cost index fund, everyone appreciates a good value or bargain, which amplifies the importance of the price you pay. Even though consumers are estimated to have spent $83 billion over the post-turkey-coma, holiday weekend, this spending splurge only represents a fraction of the total 2015 holiday shopping season frenzy. When all is said and done, the average person is projected to dole out $805 for the full holiday shopping season (see chart below) – just slightly higher than the $802 spent over the same period last year.
While consumers have displayed guarded optimism in their spending plans, Americans have demonstrated the same cautiousness in their investing behavior, as evidenced by the muted 2015 stock market gains. More specifically, for the month of November, stock prices increased by +0.32% for the Dow Jones Industrial Average (17,720) and +0.05% for the S&P 500 index (2,080). For the first 11 months of the year, the stock market results do not look much different. The Dow has barely slipped by -0.58% and the S&P 500 has inched up by +1.01%.
Given all the negative headlines and geopolitical concerns swirling around, how have stock prices managed to stay afloat? In the face of significant uncertainty, here are some of the calming factors that have supported the U.S. financial markets:
- Jobs Piling Up: The slowly-but-surely expanding economy has created about 13 million new jobs since late 2009 and the unemployment rate has been chopped in half (from a peak of 10% to 5%).
Source: Calafia Beach Pundit
- Housing Recovery: New and existing home sales are recovering and home prices are approaching previous record levels, as the Case-Shiller price indices indicate below.
Source: Calculated Risk Blog
- Strong Consumer: Cars are flying off the shelves at a record annualized pace of 18 million units – a level not seen since 2000. Lower oil and gasoline prices have freed up cash for consumers to pay down debt and load up on durable goods, like some fresh new wheels.
Source: Calculated Risk Blog
Despite a number of positive factors supporting stock prices near all-time record highs and providing plenty of attractive opportunities, there are plenty of risks to consider. If you watch the alarming nightly news stories on TV or read the scary newspaper headlines, you’re more likely to think it’s Halloween season rather than Christmas season.
At the center of the recent angst are the recent coordinated terrorist attacks that took place in Paris, killing some 130 people. With ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) claiming responsibility for the horrific acts, political and military resources have been concentrated on the ISIS occupied territories of Syria and Iraq. Although I do not want to diminish the effects of the appalling and destructive attacks in Paris, the events should be placed in proper context. This is not the first or last large terrorist attack – terrorism is here to stay. As I show in the chart below, there have been more than 200 terrorist attacks that have killed more than 10 people since the 9/11 attacks. Much of the Western military power has turned a blind eye towards these post-9/11 attacks because many of them have taken place off of U.S. or Western country soil. With the recent downing of the Russian airliner (killing all 224 passengers), coupled with the Paris terror attacks, ISIS has gained the full military attention of the French, Americans, and Russians. As a result, political willpower is gaining momentum to heighten military involvement.
Source: Wikipedia
Investor anxiety isn’t solely focused outside our borders. The never ending saga of when the Federal Reserve will initiate its first Federal Funds interest rate target increase could finally be coming to an end. According to the CME futures market, there currently is a 78% probability of a 0.25% interest rate increase on December 16th. As I have said many times before, interest rates are currently near generational lows, and the widely communicated position of Federal Reserve Chairwoman Yellen (i.e., shallow slope of future interest rate hike trajectory) means much of the initial rate increase pain has likely been anticipated already by market participants. After all, a shift in your credit card interest rate from 19.00% to 19.25% or an adjustment to your mortgage rate from 3.90% to 4.15% is unlikely to have a major effect on consumer spending. In fact, the initial rate hike may be considered a vote of confidence by Yellen to the sustainability of the current economic expansion.
Shopping Without My Rose Colored Glasses
Regardless of the state of the economic environment, proper investing should be instituted through an unemotional decision-making process, just as going shopping should be an unemotional endeavor. Price and value should be the key criteria used when buying a specific investment or holiday gift. Unfortunately for many, emotions such as greed, fear, impatience, and instant gratification overwhelm objective measurements such as price and value.
As I have noted on many occasions, over the long-run, money unemotionally moves to where it is treated best. From a long-term perspective, that has meant more capital has migrated to democratic and capitalistic countries with a strong rule of law. Closed, autocratic societies operating under corrupt regimes have been the big economic losers.
With all of that set aside, the last six years have created tremendous investment opportunities due to the extreme investor risk aversion created by the financial crisis – hence the more than tripling in U.S. stock prices since March 2009.
When comparing the yield (i.e., profit earned on an investment) between stocks and bonds, as shown in the chart below, you can see that stock investors are being treated significantly better than bond investors (6.1% vs. 4.0%). Not only are bond investors receiving a lower yield than stock investors, but bond investors also have no hope of achieving higher payouts in the future. Stocks, on the other hand, earn the opportunity of a double positive whammy. Not only are stocks currently receiving a higher yield, but stockholders could achieve a significantly higher yield in the future. For example, if S&P 500 earnings can grow at their historic rate of about 7%, then the current stock earnings yield of 6.1% would about double to 12.0% over the next decade at current prices. The inflated price and relative attractiveness of stocks looks that much better if you compare the 6.1% earnings yield to the paltry 2.2% 10-Year Treasury yield.
Source: Yardeni.com
This analysis doesn’t mean everyone should pile 100% of their portfolios into stocks, but it does show how expensively nervous investors are valuing bonds. Time horizon, risk tolerance, and diversification should always be pillars to a disciplined, systematic investment strategy, but as long as these disparities remain between the earnings yields on stocks and bonds, long-term investors should be able to shop for plenty of doorbuster discount bargain opportunities.
Wade W. Slome, CFA, CFP®
Plan. Invest. Prosper.
DISCLOSURE: Sidoxia Capital Management (SCM) and some of its clients hold positions in AMZN and certain exchange traded funds (ETFs), but at the time of publishing had no direct position in any other security referenced in this article. No information accessed through the Investing Caffeine (IC) website constitutes investment, financial, legal, tax or other advice nor is to be relied on in making an investment or other decision. Please read disclosure language on IC Contact page.
The 10 Investment Commandments
Moses ascended Mount Sinai to receive the powerful spiritual words of the Ten Commandments from God on two stone tablets and then went on to share the all-important, moral imperatives with his people. If Moses was alive today and was a professional investor, I’m sure he would have downloaded the “10 Investment Commandments” from Charles Ellis’s Winning the Loser’s Game on his e-reader, and then share the knowledge with all investors. I’m the furthest thing from Moses, but in his absence, I will be happy to share Ellis’s valuable and useful 10 Investment Commandments for individual investors:
1) “Save. Invest your savings in your future happiness and security and education for your kids.”
2) “Don’t speculate. If you must ‘play the market’ to satisfy an emotional itch, recognize that you are gambling on your ability to beat the pros so limit the amounts you play with to the same amounts you would gamble with the pros at Las Vegas.”
3) “Don’t do anything in investing primarily for tax reasons.”
4) “Don’t think of your home as an investment. Think of it as a place to live with your family-period.”
5) “Never do commodities….Dealing in commodities is really only price speculation. It’s not investing because there’s no economic productivity or value added.”
6) “Don’t be confused about stockbrokers and mutual fund salespeople. They are usually very nice people, but their job is not to make money for you. Their job is to make money from you.”
7) “Don’t invest in new or ‘interesting’ investments. They are all too often designed to be sold to investors, not to be owned by investors.”
8) “Don’t invest in bonds just because you’ve heard that bonds are conservative or for safety of either income or capital. Bond prices can fluctuate nearly as much as stock prices do, and bonds are a poor defense against the major risk of long-term investing – inflation.”
9) “Write out your long-term goals, your long-term investing program, and your estate plan – and stay with them.”
10) “Distrust your feelings. When you feel euphoric, you’re probably in for a bruising.”
We all commit sins, some more than others, and investors are no different. A simple periodic review of Charles Ellis’s “10 Investing Commandments” will spiritually align your portfolios and prevent the number of investment sins you make.
Read More about Charles Ellis (article #1 and article #2)
Wade W. Slome, CFA, CFP®
Plan. Invest. Prosper.
DISCLOSURE: Sidoxia Capital Management (SCM) and some of its clients own certain exchange traded funds, but at the time of publishing SCM had no direct position in any other security referenced in this article. No information accessed through the Investing Caffeine (IC) website constitutes investment, financial, legal, tax or other advice nor is to be relied on in making an investment or other decision. Please read disclosure language on IC “Contact” page.
To Test or Retest?
In Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet, the main character Prince Hamlet raises the existential question to himself, “To be, or not to be, that is the question?” With the recent -13% correction in the S&P 500 index, and subsequent mini-rebound, a lot of investors have also been talking to themselves and asking the fundamental question, “To test or retest, that is the question?” The inability of Fed Chairwoman dove, Janet Yellen, to increase the Federal Funds interest rate target by 0.25% after nine years only increased short-term uncertainty.
For investors playing in the stock market, uncertainty and corrections are par for the course. Howard Getson at Capitalogix recently pointed out the following.
Since 1900, on average, we’ve experienced…
- -5% market corrections: 3 times/year.
- -10% market corrections: 1 time/ year.
- -20% market corrections: 1 time/3.5 years.
However, no market correction is the same. Sure it would be nice if, during every bull market, the pain from any -10% correction lasted a second – similar to ripping off a Band-Aid. Unfortunately, when you live through such rapid and violent corrections, as we just did, volatility tends to stick around for a while. And in many instances, any brief rebound in stock prices is met with another downdraft in prices that retests the recent lows in prices.
In the recent correction example, a retest of the lows would mean another -5% drop, on top of Friday’s -2% cut, to a level of 1,867 on the S&P 500 index. This is definitely a realistic probability (see chart below).
Chart Source: Investors.com (Powered by IBD)
Although corrections are quite common, violent corrections are less common. Scott St. Clair, an analyst at MarketSmith, a division of William O’Neil & Co., recently did a study examining the frequency of 10%+ corrections occurring in four days or less across the three major indices (Dow Jones Industrial, S&P 500, and NASDAQ). Before the latest -15% decline in the NASDAQ from August 19th to August 24th, St. Clair only identified drops of -10% or more (in four trading sessions) eight previous times since the Great Depression (six of the eight periods are listed below).
- DJIA May 1940 -26% in eight days
- DJIA May 1962 -16% in 10 days
- S&P 500 Aug 1998 -15% in five days
- S&P 500 July 2002 -25% in 13 days
- S&P 500 October 2008 -33% in 15 days.
- S&P 500 August 2011 -19% in 13 days
Following all these corrections, the market always rebounded, but what St. Clair showed was in many cases stock prices had to retest the previous lows before advancing again.
As Mark Twain said, “History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes,” which explains why this study is a useful historical exercise to prepare investors for potential future downdrafts. With that said, for long-term investors, much of this utility is marginal at best and useless at worst.
If you can’t handle the volatility, you need a more diversified portfolio, or you need to park your money in a savings account or CD and watch it melt away to inflation.
In reviewing corrections, famed growth investor Peter Lynch said it best:
“I can’t recall ever once having seen the name of a market timer on Forbes’ annual list of the richest people in the world. If it were truly possible to predict corrections, you’d think somebody would have made billions by doing it.”
Whether the August 24th low was the only test of this correction, or investors retest it again, is a moot point. Ignoring irrelevant headlines and focusing your attention on a low-cost, tax-efficient, globally diversified investment portfolio is a better use of your time. That is a tenet for which Hamlet would certainly be willing to die.
Wade W. Slome, CFA, CFP®
Plan. Invest. Prosper.
DISCLOSURE: Sidoxia Capital Management (SCM) and some of its clients hold positions in certain exchange traded funds (ETFs) , but at the time of publishing, SCM had no direct position in any other security referenced in this article. No information accessed through the Investing Caffeine (IC) website constitutes investment, financial, legal, tax or other advice nor is to be relied on in making an investment or other decision. Please read disclosure language on IC Contact page.
Playing the Field with Your Investments
For some, casually dating can be fun and exciting. The same goes for trading and speculating – the freedom to make free- wheeling, non-committal purchases can be exhilarating. Unfortunately the costs (fiscally and emotionally) of short-term dating/investing often outweigh the benefits.
Fortunately, in the investment world, you can get to know an investment pretty well through fundamental research that is widely available (e.g., 10Ks, 10Qs, press releases, analyst days, quarterly conference calls, management interviews, trade rags, research reports). Unlike dating, researching stocks can be very cheap, and you do not need to worry about being rejected.
Dating is important early in adulthood because we make many mistakes choosing whom we date, but in the process we learn from our misjudgments and discover the important qualities we value in relationships. The same goes for stocks. Nothing beats experience, and in my long investment career, I can honestly say I’ve dated/traded a lot of pigs and gained valuable lessons that have improved my investing capabilities. Now, however, I don’t just casually date my investments – I factor in a rigorous, disciplined process that requires a serious commitment. I no longer enter positions lightly.
One of my investment heroes, Peter Lynch, appropriately stated, “In stocks as in romance, ease of divorce is not a sound basis for commitment. If you’ve chosen wisely to begin with, you won’t want a divorce.”
Charles Ellis shared these thoughts on relationships with mutual funds:
“If you invest in mutual funds and make mutual funds investment changes in less than 10 years…you’re really just ‘dating.’ Investing in mutual funds should be marital – for richer, for poorer, and so on; mutual fund decisions should be entered into soberly and advisedly and for the truly long term.”
No relationship comes without wild swings, and stocks are no different. If you want to survive the volatile ups and downs of a relationship (or stock ownership), you better do your homework before blindly jumping into bed. The consequences can be punishing.
Buy and Hold is Dead…Unless Stocks Go Up
If you are serious about your investments, I believe you must be mentally willing to commit to a relationship with your stock, not for a day, not for a week, or not for a month, but rather for years. Now, I know this is blasphemy in the age when “buy-and-hold” investing is considered dead, but I refute that basic premise whole-heartedly…with a few caveats.
Sure, buy-and-hold is a stupid strategy when stocks do nothing for a decade – like they have done in the 2000s, but buying and holding was an absolutely brilliant strategy in the 1980s and 1990s. Moreover, even in the miserable 2000s, there have been many buy-and-hold investments that have made owners a fortune (see Questioning Buy & Hold ). So, the moral of the story for me is “buy-and-hold” is good for stocks that go up in price, and bad for stocks that go flat or down in price. Wow, how deeply profound!
To measure my personal commitment to an investment prospect, a bachelorette investment I am courting must pass another test…a test from another one of my investment idols, Phil Fisher, called the three-year rule. This is what the late Mr. Fisher had to say about this topic:
“While I realized thoroughly that if I were to make the kinds of profits that are made possible by [my] process … it was vital that I have some sort of quantitative check… With this in mind, I established what I called my three-year rule.” Fisher adds, “I have repeated again and again to my clients that when I purchase something for them, not to judge the results in a matter of a month or a year, but allow me a three year period.”
Certainly, there will be situations where an investment thesis is wrong, valuation explodes, or there are superior investment opportunities that will trigger a sale before the three-year minimum expires. Nonetheless, I follow Fisher’s rule in principle in hopes of setting the bar high enough to only let the best ideas into both my client and personal portfolios.
As I have written in the past, there are always reasons of why you should not invest for the long-term and instead sell your position, such as: 1) new competition; 2) cost pressures; 3) slowing growth; 4) management change; 5) valuation; 6) change in industry regulation; 7) slowing economy; 8 ) loss of market share; 9) product obsolescence; 10) etc, etc, etc. You get the idea.
Don Hays summed it up best: “Long term is not a popular time-horizon for today’s hedge fund short-term mentality. Every wiggle is interpreted as a new secular trend.”
Peter Lynch shares similar sympathies when it comes to noise in the marketplace:
“Whatever method you use to pick stocks or stock mutual funds, your ultimate success or failure will depend on your ability to ignore the worries of the world long enough to allow your investments to succeed.”
Every once in a while there is validity to some of the concerns, but more often than not, the scare campaigns are merely Chicken Little calling for the world to come to an end.
Patience is a Virtue
In the instant gratification society we live in, patience is difficult to come by, and for many people ignoring the constant chatter of fear is challenging. Pundits spend every waking hour trying to explain each blip in the market, but in the short-run, prices often move up or down irrespective of the daily headlines. Explaining this randomness, Peter Lynch said the following:
“Often, there is no correlation between the success of a company’s operations and the success of its stock over a few months or even a few years. In the long term, there is a 100% correlation between the success of a company and the success of its stock. It pays to be patient, and to own successful companies.”
Long-term investing, like long-term relationships, is not a new concept. Investment time horizons have been shortening for decades, so talking about the long-term is generally considered heresy. Rather than casually date a stock position, perhaps you should commit to a long-term relationship and divorce your field-playing habits. Now that sounds like a sweet kiss of success.
Wade W. Slome, CFA, CFP®
Plan. Invest. Prosper.
DISCLOSURE: Sidoxia Capital Management (SCM) and some of its clients own certain exchange traded funds, but at the time of publishing SCM had no direct position in any other security referenced in this article. No information accessed through the Investing Caffeine (IC) website constitutes investment, financial, legal, tax or other advice nor is to be relied on in making an investment or other decision. Please read disclosure language on IC “Contact” page.
Investors Take a Vacation
This article is an excerpt from a previously released Sidoxia Capital Management complimentary newsletter (August 3, 2015). Subscribe on the right side of the page for the complete text.
It’s summertime and the stock market has taken a vacation, and it’s unclear when prices will return from a seven month break. It may seem like a calm sunset walk along the beach now that Greek worries have temporarily subsided, but concerns have shifted to an impending Federal Reserve interest rate hike, declining commodity prices, and a Chinese stock market crash, which could lead to a painful sunburn.
If you think about it, stock investors have basically been on unpaid vacation since the beginning of the year, with the Dow Jones Industrial Index (17,690) down -0.7% for 2015 and the S&P 500 (2,104) up + 2.2% over the same time period (see chart below). Despite mixed results for the year, all three main stock indexes rebounded in July (including the tech-heavy NASDAQ +2.8% for the month) after posting negative returns in June. Overall for 2015, sector performance has been muddled. There has been plenty of sunshine on the Healthcare sector (+11.7%), but Energy stocks have been stuck in the doldrums (-13.4%), over the same timeframe.
Source: Yahoo! Finance
Chinese Investors Suffer Heat Stroke
Despite gains for U.S. stocks in July, the overheated Chinese stock marketcaused some heat stroke for global investors with the Shanghai Composite index posting its worst one month loss (-15%) in six years, wiping out about $4 trillion in market value. Before coming back down to earth, the Chinese stock market inflated by more than +150% from 2014.
Driving the speculative fervor were an unprecedented opening of 12 million monthly accounts during spring, according to Steven Rattner, a seasoned financier, investor, and a New York Times journalist. Margin accounts operate much like a credit card for individuals, which allowed these investors to aggressively gamble on the China market upswing, but during the downdraft investors were forced to sell stocks to generate proceeds for outstanding loan repayments. It’s estimated that 25% of these investors only have an elementary education and a significant number of them are illiterate. Further exacerbating the sell-off were Chinese regulators artificially intervening by halting trading in about 500 companies on the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges last Friday, equivalent to approximately 18% of all listings.
Although China, as the second largest economy on the globe, is much more economically important than a country like Greece, recent events should be placed into proper context. For starters, as you can see from the chart below, the Chinese stock market is no stranger to volatility. According to Fundstrat Global Advisors, the Shanghai composite index has experienced 10 bear markets over the last 25 years, and the recent downdraft doesn’t compare to the roughly -75% decline we saw in 2007-2008. Moreover, there is no strong correlation between the Chinese stock market. Only 15% of Chinese households own stocks, or measured differently, only 6% of household assets are held in stocks, says economic-consulting firm IHS Global Insight. More important than the question, “What will happen to the Chinese stock market?,” is the question, “What will happen to the Chinese stock economy?,” which has been on a perennial slowdown of late. Nevertheless, China has a 7%+ economic growth rate and the highest savings rate of any major country, both factors for which the U.S. economy would kill.
Source: Yardeni.com
Don’t Take a Financial Planning Vacation
While the financial markets continue to bounce around and interest rates oscillate based on guesswork of a Federal Reserve interest rate hike in September, many families are now returning from vacations, or squeezing one in before the back-to-school period. The sad but true fact is many Americans spend more time planning their family vacation than they do planning for their financial futures. Unfortunately, individuals cannot afford to take a vacation from their investment and financial planning. At the risk of stating the obvious, planning for retirement will have a much more profound impact on your future years than a well-planned trip to Hawaii or the Bahamas.
We live in an instant gratification society where “spend now, save later” is a mantra followed by many. There’s nothing wrong with splurging on a vacation, and to maintain sanity and family cohesion it is almost a necessity. However, this objective does not have to come at the expense of compromising financial responsibility – or in other words spending within your means. Investing is a lot like consistent dieting and exercising…it’s easy to understand, but difficult to sustainably execute. Vacations, on the other hand, are easy to understand, and easy to execute, especially if you have a credit card with an available balance.
It’s never too late to work on your financial planning muscle. As I discuss in a previous article (Getting to Your Number) , one of the first key steps is to calculate an annual budget relative to your income, so one can somewhat accurately determine how much money can be saved/invested for retirement. Circumstances always change, but having a base-case scenario will help determine whether your retirement goals are achievable. If expectations are overly optimistic, spending cuts, revenue enhancing adjustments, and/or retirement date changes can still be made.
When it comes to the stock market, there are never a shortage of concerns. Today, worries include a Greek eurozone exit (“Grexit”); decelerating China economic growth and a declining Chinese stock market; and the viability of Donald’s Trump’s presidential campaign (or lack thereof). While it may be true that stock prices are on a temporary vacation, your financial and investment planning strategies cannot afford to go on vacation.
Wade W. Slome, CFA, CFP®
Plan. Invest. Prosper.
DISCLOSURE: Sidoxia Capital Management (SCM) and some of its clients hold positions in certain exchange traded funds (ETFs), but at the time of publishing, SCM had no direct position in any other security referenced in this article. No information accessed through the Investing Caffeine (IC) website constitutes investment, financial, legal, tax or other advice nor is to be relied on in making an investment or other decision. Please read disclosure language on IC Contact page.
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