The Trump administration is, if the news reports I’ve been reading are correct, suggesting that it intends to “help” publicly-traded US companies by eliminating quarterly reporting in favor of semi-annual, as well as by doing away with much of the detailed disclosure these companies are now required to make to shareholders.

If we look at stocks traded in London, where a regime like the one the administration is suggesting is already in place, the market PE for a smaller group, but a close enough assortment of industries represented, is around 15. If we look at Hong Kong, where, again the reporting requirements seem to be like what the administration is aiming for, the market PE is just above 10x.

Arguably, then, the market response to a new regime where there’s much less information and investors are much more in the dark in holding domestic equities, should be a substantial, if perhaps gradual, contraction of the market PE from the current 20x.

I’m not sure I’d bank on gradual, however. There’s also the possibility that stocks decline sharply from the first day the new rules would be put into effect.

Those worst hurt by this would presumably be organizations, including many states and the federal government itself, with defined benefit pension plans. Individual savers with IRAs and 401ks also stand to fall substantially short of their financial goals as PE multiples contract. And, of course, company stock options would be word considerably less, so company cash flows would shrink as cash salaries rose.

The only winners, if that’s the right word, I can see from the dumbing down of current disclosure rules are firms whose financials don’t look so enticing in the sunlight.

I’ve just updated my Keeping Score page for August. …another drubbing for the American consumer. Not directly visible in the numbers but, as I see it, another month in the methodical destruction of the American military–and no sign of protest by the luminaries of either political party in Congress.

Back in the dim past, when I was working as a portfolio manager, I was at an early January strategy meeting one year that had been called to discuss strategy for the upcoming months. I said I thought this would be an especially difficult time to make money. Everyone else started laughing–apparently because that was what I said at the start of every year.

I’m finding this year to be very unusual–and difficult. Washington seems to be populated at present by an unusually large number of serial bunglers, so the road forward appears to be chock full of economic potholes. Hard, for me anyway, to figure which ones are safe to ignore. Also, and maybe because of government dysfunction, the typical rotation from one economic sector to another, based on valuation, doesn’t seem to me to be occurring.

To illustrate:

YTD sector performance, through yesterday:

Energy +37.7%

IT +23.7%

Materials +16.9%

Industrials +16.8%

S&P 500 +12.9%

Healthcare +10.6%

Staples +7.7%

Real estate +7.6%

Financials +5.5%

Utilities +1.3%

Communication services -.2%

Consumer discretionary -1.4%

The biggest winners have continued to be beneficiaries of the war in the Middle East–energy and defense industrials–and stuff that goes into AI data centers.

Consumer discretionary, usually a strong sector when the US is not in recession, as well as a place where a market busy elsewhere for a time will inevitably rotate to, is not only in the minus column but dead last in the rankings.

And as far as the winners go, Energy and Materials are tiny sectors at ~3% of the index each. IT, about a third of the index, is in the plus column vs. the S&P, but all the other four 10%+ sectors are underperforming.

There has been one significant rotation in the market this year–away from the owners of data centers (basically in the
Communication services sector) and toward in increased focus on the makers of the semiconductors (in IT) whose output will reside in them. But that’s an intra-sector move. So far there’s no sign I can see in the stock market of anticipation of any consumer-friendly, GDP growth enhancing, policy changes in Washington.

The one near-term implication of all this is to look outside the US for new growth ideas.

The short answer, I think, is that they’re sitting on their hands.

This is also unusual, in my experience.

We’ve had an immense run in the tech sector, both hardware and software, since early last year, which has left industries like domestic consumer staples in the dust. So one might reasonably expect that, at the very least, simply on a valuation basis, laggards would have their day in the sun–what jargon junkies might call a counter-trend rally. I thought this myself at around this time last year.

In particular, I thought that the administration’s effort to weaken the dollar might make companies with strong domestic brand names and distribution networks attractive acquisition targets for foreign firms seeking to expand their presence here. (This was Warren Buffett’s essential stock market insight, that intangible assets like brands and distribution infrastructure were worth their weight in gold. but appeared in company financials only as expenses.)

Neither has happened.

The reason for the first is pretty straightforward–shrinking the workforce, raising the price of imported raw materials and attacking the education system isn’t exactly a recipe for economic growth–nor is the lack of any opposition to the administration’s actions.

The second is less clear. ICE killings and imprisonments can’t be a plus. Nor can the amateur-hour (my view) conduct of the attack on Iran. But clearly potential buyers think the risk of acting now outweighs any potential reward.

As it turns out, I went back to school almost a decade ago in an MFA program for photo/video at SVA. The program, which has depended on foreign students (mostly from China) for over half its enrollment, is shutting down. The same is happening for iconic photography programs across the country. The reason is that foreigners are no longer coming here. I imagine the reason is some combination of fear of violence or imprisonment and the stigma of having an American degree.

There’s an interesting article in today’s Financial Times about US bank stocks. It’s about the banks’ private credit operations, but it also bears on the administration’s misguided (in my view) campaign to replace quarterly reporting with semi-annual reports.

Rightly or wrongly, I think of private credit as an expansion of the well-established practice of manufacturing companies factoring receivables.

Let’s say my company makes t-shirts. I buy cloth from a supplier who gives me 30 days to pay them. I make the shirts instantly and send them to a mass merchant who will only take them if I give it 90 days to pay me.

For one thing, this shows that I don’t have much market power. If the terms were reversed–the retailer pays me in 30 days and I only pay the contract manufacturer after 90–I’d be up to my ears in cash equal to 60 days worth of sales. But I’m in the opposite situation, with a perennial cash deficit.

How do I deal with this shortfall? Typically, I take out a short-term loan, using my receivables as collateral.

That kind of lending is basically what private credit does.

The blowup of auto parts supplier First Brands, which was in the negative working capital situation I described above, and which massively defaulted on its short-term loans, revealed to the investment world at large how gigantic the private credit market had become …and now risky it might turn out to be.

Given the opacity of the private credit market, and perhaps memories of the banking crisis of 2008 or the implosion of Long Term Capital ten years earlier, managements of the major commercial banks observed their PE ratios beginning to contract as investors began to worry about potential exposure to private credit.

The banks’ response has been to voluntarily increase disclosure, as a way of countering this PE erosion. According to the FT, this strategy is working.

I think this makes perfect sense. Less disclosure = higher risk = lower PE ratios in response.

But it’s also what I think can happen if the administration proceeds with plans to dilute disclosure requirements for all US-traded companies.