Monthly Archives: February 2015

the move to Europe

February 27, 2015 By in Current Market Thoughts, Portfolio management, Strategy Tags: , , , , , 1 Comment

Increasing numbers of US-oriented equity investors are announcing that they’re shifting assets away from the US toward the EU.  Actually, while managers may phrase their statements as intentions, no one is going to reveal plans they have yet to carry out, so we should figure that the announcer have already done the lion’s share of their buying.  Now they wouldn’t mind if other follow their lead.

The rationale for doing so is clear:  US stocks are pricy, the EU is not; and the EU is arguably following on the same general economic trajectory as North America, only with a two-year lag.  If so, buyers get the equivalent of 2013 prices.

The move isn’t without risks, however.  While it does appear that Grexit is already in the rear view mirror–and, admittedly, I’ve been arguing that losing Greece as a member would be a speed bump for the EU, not a catastrophe–there’s some chance worries will resurface later in the year.

The main issue for investors as I see it, however, is a tactical one–how to play the euro.  Here’s where I genuinely don’t know–and why I hesitate to make the load-up-on-the-EU move myself.

Two choices:

–figure that the EU will remain in economic intensive care and that the euro will therefore remain weak.  This implies buying EU-based multinationals with hefty US exposure.  In euros their earnings will look great   …and EU portfolio managers will tilt their portfolios in this direction.  Multinationals have clearly been the way to go since the EU began to slow down last summer.   The problem with this is that the idea may be getting pretty long in the tooth

–figure that the dollar-earners are all played out and buy the next logical development–the revival of the domestic EU economy.  This would mean buying purely domestic firms.  They will do well if the euro begins to strengthen against the greenback and/or if the EU starts to show relative economic strength.

I’m still on the fence.

I have 5%-10% of my IRA/401k money in actively managed Vanguard Europe mutual funds.  That’s a more or less permanent position–meaning I haven’t changed the allocation in years.  A month or two ago I added shares of IHG to my actively managed taxable account.  I’d held IHG for a long while and sold in the middle of last year.  I’ve recently become more enthusiastic about hotels–I added MAR at the same time–and also wanted to added dollar earners based in Europe.

That’s it.

Intellectually, I think adding domestic EU exposure is the right step.  I just can’t bring myself to pull the trigger.

Instead, I’ve stuck with looking for tech/Millennial exposure in the US.  I guess I think it’s too soon.

Any thoughts?

science and math vs. academic finance (pension consultants, too)

February 26, 2015 By in Academic Theories, Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) Tags: , , Leave a comment

“Evaluating Trading Strategies”

The Buttonwood column in the February 21st issue of The Economist talks about a recent article published in the Journal of Portfolio Management, titled “Evaluating Trading Strategies,” authored by Profs. Campbell Harvey of Duke and Yan Liu of Texas A&M.

Long ago, I’d come to think of the difference between academic financial theorists and portfolio managers as somewhat like that between teachers of academic literary theory and actual authors.  That is to say, the two sets of people live in very different worlds, with little in common    …and without that much relevance for each other.

Three exceptions with finance:

–academics are often used as front men for various investment schemes, such as in the case of the ill-fated Long-Term Capital Management, which raised a huge amount of money to implement a strategy of buying illiquid bonds and collapsed shortly thereafter–destabilizing the world financial system in the process

–they often sit as window dressing on the boards of directors of financial companies, and

–their theories inform much of the methodology of the investment consultants on whose advice pension fund managers rely heavily.

its conclusion

The article has an emperor’s new clothes aspect to it.

Simply put, it says that academic finance researchers routinely use a standard for testing for the statistical significance of their findings that is much too weak and alrady discredited in mainstream scienticif research.  Because of this failing, in statistical work in finance large numbers of false.  This is through ignorance, not malice.

As the authors put it:

“So where does this leave us? …Most of the empirical research in finance, whether published in academic journals or put into production as an active trading strategy by an investment manager, is likely false.  …half the financial products (promising outperformance) that companies are selling to clients are false”

Who knows whether this article will have any long-term effects?

In the real world, very few people take academic finance theories seriously–except for pension funds, which rely heavily on consultants who use it to legitimize their advice.  The conclusion that the “advice” is little more than picking numbers out of a hat (arguably even less reliable than that method) has the potential to really shake up this chronically poor-performing sector.

Macau casinos, February 25, 2015

February 25, 2015 By in Casinos, China, Entertainment, Hong Kong, Macau, Recent Market Action Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

Macau casino stocks in Hong Kong took a drubbing overnight, continuing weakness shown by US parents in Wall Street trading yesterday.  The US stocks are down again as I’m writing this.

Why?

Analysts had been estimating (guessing/hoping is probably a more accurate description) that the amount lost by gamblers during the current Lunar New Year month would come in at slightly more than half what they left at the tables during the comparable period last year.  With the month nearly gone, data so far indicate that the actuals will come in at somewhat less than half the 2014 take.  Hence the selloff.

If there’s a positive story for the Macau casinos–and I think there is a strong one–it has little to do with whether this month is good or not.

Current weakness is the result of  a campaign by Beijing that’s now deep in its second year.  The idea is to restore faith in the Communist Party by discouraging flashy over-the-top consumption by the politically well-connected.  It’s also aimed at quashing corrupt local government get-rich-quick schemes involving crazy real estate developments and unneeded, heavily polluting basic industry projects.  This two-pronged attack, which has had a negative effect on high-roller gambling in Macau, has lasted much longer than anyone, myself included, had predicted.  The February-to-date casino results seem to indicate that Beijing has not yet taken its foot off the regulatory accelerator.

The positive case has three parts:

–the development of the Cotai Strip along Las Vegas lines is creating a new, more lucrative, less volatile gambling market in Macau.  It’s for middle-class Chinese visitors who want a gambling vacation that also includes resort dining and entertainment.  This business has been expanding very rapidly.  It now accounts for about three-quarters of the SAR’s gambling profits.  Non-gambling attractions in Macau are still in their profit childhood.  In pre-recession Las Vegas, however, resort profit equaled that of the casinos.  So there’s plenty of room for expansion

–at some point–who know when–the current anti-corruption campaign will abate and high-roller business in Macau will begin to stabilize and then gradually expand again.  Beijing’s crackdown began in 2013 but only started to cause serious high-roller attrition in Macau in late spring last year.  So positive year-on-year earnings comparisons are unlikely before autumn.

–the stocks are reasonably priced–cheap, if you believe the first two points.

The Macau casino stocks are now what I would call a value idea–meaning that we have a good sense of what will happen but are pretty much at sea about when.  High dividend yields argue that we’re gin paid to wait.

One technical note:  the stocks hit relative low points about a month ago and have come back to those lows over the past few days.  It would be a sign that they may be finally bottoming if they can stay above the month-ago lows as the weak February results are officially announced.   Technicians would regard a breakdown below these lows would be a good thing in the US, but bad news in Hong Kong.

should brokers be fiduciaries?

February 24, 2015 By in Getting financial advice, How your broker gets paid, Industry Analysis, Investment firms, Where are the customers' yachts? Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

…my answer is Yes.

In his recent spate of initiatives, President Obama is proposing that retail brokers be legally declared to be fiduciaries, the way investment advisers already are.   I’ve written about this before, when the SEC carried out a study of the topic, ordered in the Dodd Frank Act, which it published in early 2011.  Nothing happened back then.  Probably the same result this time.

The issue?

As I see it the change would mean that, for example:

–unlike today, your broker would have to point out, when he gives you a computer-generated analysis of your financial needs and a resulting asset allocation, that the names suggested consist solely of funds that pay fees to be on the list–and that potentially better-performing, lower cost funds that don’t pay have been excluded.

–that his (about 90% of traditional brokers are men) favorite fund families, whose offerings he always touts to you, also treat big producers like him (and a companion, usually) to periodic educational seminars at a sunny resorts in return.

More than that, depending on how any new regulations are written, he might also have to tell you that the trade his firm is charging $300 for could be executed just as well at a discount broker for less than $10.

brokers say No!

Brokerage houses are strongly opposed to Mr. Obama.  They’ve apparently already raised enough of a lobbying fuss in a very short time to cause the President to weaken his proposal.

How so?  From a business perspective, wouldn’t it make sense for traditional brokers to hold themselves to a higher standard of conduct?   They might thereby improve their very low standing  in the public mind and possibly stem the continual loss of market share they’re suffered over the past decades.

Two practical problems:

loss of skills

–over the past twenty years, brokers have homogenized their sales forces, moving them away from having their own thoughts and opinions about stock and bond markets to being marketers of pre-packaged products and ideas developed at central headquarters.

The ascendancy of pure marketing over investment savvy may have had sound reasoning behind it (although I regard it as one more triumph for the former in the battle of jocks (traders) vs. nerds (researchers) that I’ve witnessed through my Wall Street career).  However, most of the experienced researchers who had the skills to shape an investment policy and retrain the sales force have been fired either before or during the recent recession.

It’s easier in the short run to lobby against change than to revamp operations–or rehire the newly laid-off nerds needed to accomplish the task.

red ink = loss of bonuses

–in almost any phase of economic (or any other kind of) life, the status quo is extremely powerful.

Traditional retail brokerage is extremely high cost.  Remember, the retail broker himself nets only about half the fees he generates.  The rest goes to support very elaborate–and now seriously outmoded–bricks-and-mortar infrastructure and central overhead.  Lowering fees to get closer to discount broker levels, spending to raise the quality of proprietary products sold or consolidating real estate would all diminish–or even temporarily erase–operating income.  In a culture that values short-term trading profits over all else, it’s hard to develop support for a move like this.

 

small cap or large, in the US today?

February 23, 2015 By in Constructing a Portfolio, Current Market Thoughts, Portfolio management, Recent Market Action Tags: , , , , , 1 Comment

I think today’s US stock market circumstances favor medium-sized companies over their larger brethren.

Several reasons:

–large stocks have outperformed smaller ones for the past several years

–historically, the relationship between PEs for large and smaller cap stocks is all over the map.  One reason for this is that large and small seem to take turns having multi-year runs as the focus of investor interest.  At present, there looks to me to be no overall price advantage for either group.  Not the most ringing endorsement for small, but at least valuations don’t appear stretched

–large stocks are more likely to have exposure to Europe, where currency weakness is wreaking havoc on the results in US dollars of operations there.  Smaller companies are more likely to be predominantly focused on the US, where growth is better –and just now reaching down to second-tier firms—and currency isn’t an issue

–brokerage house analysts, who are a notoriously bullish lot, have been reducing their earnings estimates for 2015 sharply, based on 4Q14 earnings reports and managements’ forward guidance.  Much of the decline is due either to energy or currency, where analysts should arguably have done a better job.  Still, the picture that’s emerging for 2015 from Wall Street is of flat-to-barely-up earnings per share for the year.  This implies to me that portfolio managers will be willing–eager, actually–to give a hearing to niche companies they haven’t needed to bother with until now–provided they can show, say, 10% eps growth.

 

As a result, in looking for new individual stocks, I’ve been shifting my eye toward smaller cap names (also toward te h, but that’s another post…).

One caveat:  my experience is that small cap is a catchbasin for a class of perennially weak companies that manage to stay in business, but who are unable/unwilling to create earnings growth.  These may also be highly illiquid.  These can be interesting targets for seasoned value investors with long investment horizons.  The rest of us should stay away.