Tag Archives: investment strategy

the best of all possible worlds/the invisible hand/modern portfolio theory …and stupid stuff

October 18, 2019 By in Strategy, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , 1 Comment

Leibniz

Scientific thinkers of the seventeenth- and eighteenth centuries in Europe described the universe as being like a gigantic, complex, smoothly-functioning watch.  This implies, they argued, that the cosmos must have been made by the supreme watchmaker = God.

G W Leibniz, the inventor of calculus, offered the idea (later lampooned by Voltaire in Candide) that ours is also the best of all possible worlds.  What about war, famine, disease, poverty…?  Leibniz’ view is that though we can imagine a world like ours, only better, that thought-experiment world is not possible.  Put a different way, Leibniz thought that behind the scenes God uses a calculus-like maximizing function for his creation.  The total amount of goodness in the world is the highest it can be.  Were we to make one existing bad thing better, other things would worsen enough that the sum total of good would be reduced.

Adam Smith

Around the same time Adam Smith introduced into economics basically the same idea, the “invisible hand” that directs individuals, all following their own self-interest, in a way that also somehow ends up serving the public interest.  This idea, still a staple of economics and finance, has the same, ultimately theological, roots–that behind the scenes a benificent God is working to create the best possible outcome.

since then

The scientific world has moved on since Leibniz and Smith, thanks to Hegel/Marx (social evolution), Schopenhauer (collective unconscious), Darwin (natural evolution), Kierkegaard (God of religion vs. god of science), Nietzsche (change without progress) and Freud (individual unconscious).

Twentieth-century physicists, starting with Einstein, have suggested that the universe is in fact messier and more unruly than Newton thought.

Nevertheless, the laissez faire assumption of the invisible hand that makes everything ok remains a key element of economic and financial theorizing.

Modern Portfolio Theory

Invented by academics over fifty years ago, MPT is what every MBA student learns in business school.  Its main conclusion is that the highest value portfolio (i.e., the best of all possible portfolios) is the market index.  A cynic might argue that the main attraction of a theory that says practical knowledge or experience in financial markets is useless is that it suits the interests of professors who possess neither.

However, the conclusion is not just convenient for the educational establishment.  It also fits squarely into the 18th century European Enlightenment view of the “invisible hand” guiding the market.

MPT requires a bunch of counter-intuitive assumptions, summed up in the efficient markets hypothesis, including that:

–everyone acts rationally

–everyone has the same information

–everyone has the same investment objectives

–everyone has the same investment time frame

–everyone has the same risk tolerances

–there are no dominant, market-moving players.

Granted all this, one can argue that any portfolio that differs from the market will be worse than the market.

The standard criticism of MPT is that it ignores the bouts of greed and fear that periodically take control of markets.  In fact, even while MPT was being formulated, markets were being roiled by the conglomerate mania of the late Sixties, the Nifty Fifty mania of the early Seventies and the wicked bear panic of 1974, when stocks were ultimately trading below net cash on the balance sheet and still went down every day.

Arguably anyone looking out an ivory tower window should have noticed that MPT had no way of talking about the crazy stuff that was roiling Wall Street almost constantly during that period–and which showed its assumptions were loony.  Nevertheless, theology trumped the facts.

today

In a way, MPT suits me fine.  The fewer people looking for undervalued companies the easier it is for the rest of us to find them.

However, one basic high-level assumption that even professional investors still make is that the economic/political system in the US functions relatively prudently and therefore the economy remains more or less stable.  But in essence this is only a different way of saying the “invisible hand” guides self-interest-seeking individuals in politics toward a socially beneficial result.

I’m not sure that’s true anymore, if it ever was.  For one thing, Washington has relied almost exclusively on monetary policy to fine-tune the US economy over the past generation–encouraging all sorts of unhealthy financial speculation and intensifying social inequality.  Washington has also done less than the ruling body of any other developed country to help citizens cope with dramatic structural economic changes over the past twenty years.  Resulting dissatisfaction has caused the rise to power of newcomers like Donald Trump who have pledged to address these issues but whose racism, venality and stunning incompetence appear to me to be doing large-scale economic and political damage to the country.

This development presents a significant issue for laissez faire theorists in the way deep emotionally-driven market declines do for the efficient markets hypothesis.  As a practical matter, though, the situation is far worse than that:  recent events in the US and UK illustrate, populating the halls of economic and political power with self-serving incompetents can do extraordinary amounts of damage.  Left unchecked, at some point this has to have a negative effect on stock returns.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

what to do on a rebound day

June 4, 2019 By in Current Market Thoughts, market rotation, Recent Market Action, stock market, Strategy, Uncategorized Tags: , , , 1 Comment

It doesn’t appear to me that the economic or political situation in the US has changed in any significant way overnight.  Yet stocks of most stripes are rising sharply.

What to do?   …or if you prefer, what am I doing?

Watching and analyzing.

A day like today contains lots of information, both about the tone of the market and about every portfolio’s holdings.  Over the past month, through 2:30 pm est today, the S&P is down by 4.8%.  The small-cap Russell 2000 has lost 7.7%, NASDAQ 7.8%.   All three important indices are up significantly so far today—NASDAQ +2.2%, Russell 2000 +1.9%, S&P 500 +1.8%.  So this is a general advance.  Everything is up by more or less the same amount, meaning investors aren’t homing in on size or foreign/domestic as indicators for their trading.

What we should all be looking for, I think, is what issues that should be going up–either because they’re high beta or have been beaten up recently–are shooting through the roof and which are lagging.  (“Lagging” means underperforming other similar companies or underperforming the overall market.)  The first category are probably keepers.  The poor price action for the latter says they should be subjects for further analysis to figure out why the market doesn’t appreciate their merits.  Maybe there aren’t any.  

We should also note defensive stocks that are at least keeping up with the S&P.  That’s better than they should be doing.  They may well be true defensives, meaning they stay with the market (more or less) on the way up and outperform on the way down.  This is a rare, and valuable, breed in today’s world, in my view, and can be a way to hedge downside risk.

 

 

Another topic:  Over the past few days, I’ve been in rural Pennsylvania filming my art school thesis project–yes, I’ve gone from stills to video–so I haven’t kept up with the news.  I’m surprised to see that the UK, which still remembers the enormous price it paid a generation ago resisting fascism, has done an abrupt about-face and allowed Mr. Trump to make a state visit.  The anticipated consequences of Brexit must be far more dire than the consensus expects.

the administration, the economy and the stock market

August 15, 2018 By in corporate income tax reform, corporate tax reform in the US, government economic policy, income tax rates, taxes, Trump, taxes and trade, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , 1 Comment

I’m taking off my hat as an American and putting on my hat as an investor for this post.

That is, I’m putting aside questions like whether the Trump agenda forms a coherent whole, whether Mr. Trump understands much/any of what he’s doing, whether Trump is implementing policies whispered in his ear by backers in the shadows–and why congressmen of both parties have been little more than rubber stamps for his proposals.

My main concern is the effect of his economic policies on stocks.

the tax cut

The top corporate tax rate was reduced from 35% to 21% late last year.  In addition, the wealthiest individuals received tax breaks, a continuation of the “trickle down” economics that has been the mainstay of Washington tax policy since the 1980s.

The new 21% rate is about average for the rest of the world.  This suggests that US corporations will no longer see much advantage in reincorporating abroad in low-tax jurisdictions.  The evidence so far is that they are also dismantling the elaborate tax avoidance schemes they have created by holding their intellectual property, and recognizing most of their profits, in foreign low-tax jurisdictions.  (An aside:  this should have a positive effect on the trade deficit since we are now recognizing the value of American IP as part of the cost of goods made by American companies overseas (think: smartphones.)

My view is that this development was fully discounted in share prices last year.

The original idea was that tax reform would also encompass tax simplification–the elimination of at least part of the rats nest of special interest tax breaks that plagues the federal tax code.  It’s conceivable that Mr. Trump could have used his enormous power over the majority Republican Party to achieve this laudable goal.  But he seems to have made no effort to do so.

Two important consequences of this last:

–the tax cut is a beg reduction in government income, meaning that it is a strong stimulus to economic activity.  That would have been extremely useful, say, nine years ago, but at full employment and above-trend growth, it puts the US at risk of overheating.

–who pays for this?  The bill’s proponents claim that the tax cut will pay for itself through higher growth.  The more likely outcome as things stand now, I think, is that Millennials will inherit a country with a least a trillion dollars more in sovereign debt than would otherwise be the case.

One positive consequence of the untimely fiscal stimulus is that it makes room for the Fed to remove its monetary stimulus (it now has rates at least 100 basis points lower than they should be) faster, and with greater confidence that will do no harm.

Two complications:  Mr. Trump has begun to jawbone the Fed not to do this, apparently thinking a supercharged, unstable economy will be to his advantage.  Also, higher rates raise the cost of borrowing to fund a higher government budget deficit + burgeoning government debt.

 

Tomorrow: the messy trade arena

revisiting (again) value investing

May 4, 2017 By in book value, from growth to value: the life cycle, growth vs value, Strategy, Uncategorized Tags: , , , 2 Comments

As regular readers will know, I’m a growth stock investor.  That’s even though I spent my first six years as an analyst/portfolio manager using value techniques almost exclusively–and then worked side by side with a motley crew of value investors for a ten-year period after that.

One way of describing the difference between growth and value is that:

–growth investors know when potentially price-moving news will happen (that is, when quarterly earnings are announced) but are less sure what that news will be

–value investors know what the news will be (if they’ve done their job right, they’re holding stocks where the market has already priced in every possible thing that could go wrong.  All they need is one thing to go right).  However, they may have little idea when good news will occur.

 

Each style has an inherent problem:

–for growth, it’s hard to find rising earnings during an economic downturn

–for value, it’s possible that a long time (say, two years) may pass before any of a portfolio’s diamonds in the rough are discovered by the market.  In that case, the manager will likely be fired before the portfolio pays off.  His/her successor will either reap the rewards of the predecessor or will dismantle the portfolio before any good stuff can occur.

 

At times, I do buy what I conceive of a value stocks.  Intel when it was $19, trading at 8x – 9x earnings and yielding almost 4% (I’ve since sold most of what I own) is an example.  But deep value investors would scoff at the notion that this is truly value.

 

For some time, I’ve been maintaining that value investing has lost its appeal in the 21th century.  Two reasons:

–the stronger one is that the shelf life of physical plant, traditional distribution networks and brand names is no longer “forever” in a globalized, Internet-driven world.  So buying companies that are rich in such assets but not making money is much, much riskier today than it used to be.  Such assets can erode in the twinkling of an eye.

–a weaker claim would be that while there are still value names, it’s hard/impossible to fill out a portfolio of, say, 100 of them, which is the traditional value portfolio structure, in today’s world.

 

I’m rehashing the growth/value debate here because I’m thinking the stronger position isn’t as unassailable as I’ve believed.

More tomorrow.