Monthly Archives: August 2016

real estate, a new S&P sector

August 31, 2016 By in real estate, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

To any professional investor from abroad, one of the oddities of the S&P 500 and other domestic indices is the relative absence of real estate and construction from them–despite the vast expanse of land in the US and the importance of the sector to the domestic economy.

This situation may be partially one of choice–that large real estate entities in the US have no trouble obtaining bank finance and, because of this, elect to remain private.  It’s also one of the myopia of index makers like S&P, however, which did not allow real estate investment trusts (REITs), the main corporate form of publicly traded real estate in the US, into its flagship S&P 500, until not much more than a decade ago.   Starting in 2001, REITs and other real estate companies have been included, but have been buried in the Financials sector.

a new sector

In the middle of next month, real estate will become truly visible in the S&P 500 for the first time, as the S&P creates an 11th sector to house them separately.

The new categorization would seem at first blush to be little more than paper shuffling, or an opportunity for the S&P to sell new index information.  I think it will have more than symbolic significance, though, both for property companies and for the residual Financials sector (mostly banks and brokers).  For the first time, investment professionals in the US will be forced to explicitly consider in the analysis of their investment performance the effect of their decisions about property and about banks/brokers as separate issues.

In other words, property will be hard to ignore.

I think the change will ultimately raise the level of knowledge about, and interest in, property stocks by American professionals to the level that’s common in the rest of the world.  If I’m correct, it will provide an extra cushion of support for REITs, which until now have been mostly supported by individual investors.  And–who knows?–it may mean that large family-controlled real estate companies will begin to consider public listing, raising the profile of the new sector further.

Wal-Mart (WMT), economic indicator and investment

August 30, 2016 By in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , 1 Comment

WMT and the economy

WMT is the largest retailer in the US (Costco (COST) is #2).  Despite its very large size, WMT has a distinct economic focus, one based in its roots as a chain of quasi-department stores for small towns.  About a third of its customers are relatively low income blue-collar workers, whose personal fortunes tend to be very highly linked to the strength of the overall economy.  Because of this, when WMT profits start to rise, as they have been over the past several quarters, it’s a sign that economic recovery is strongly rooted and has spread relatively widely.

WMT as an investment today

In the past, periods like this have also been good ones to own WMT shares.  Two factors, however, suggest to me that this time could be very different:

—the dollar stores.  During recessions, consumers tend not only to cut back on expenditures but also to trade down, that is, to patronize less expensive retailers.  In the case of many WMT customers, that means turning to the the dollar stores, whose target  customer has been a single head of household who earns $20,000 +/- a year, who walks to the store and who visits several times a week.  During the last downturn, the dollar stores decided to shift their business model and expand their product offerings in hopes of holding onto their new, more affluent former WMT customers when the economy improved.  The industry has also consolidated into a smaller number of larger firms, to the same end.

As a result, WMT has new competition for the low end of its market demographic, a segment that becomes more important as customers who have traded down to WMT from, say, Target, return to their former niche.

–like many traditional retailers, WMT hasn’t paid enough attention to the internet.  Its recent decision to acquire jet.com for $3 billion+ is evidence that WMT realizes it has to play catchup.   I think jet.com’s most important asset is its innovative top management.  Whether it will mesh well with traditional WMT executives remains an open question.

keeping nominal GDP growth above zero

August 29, 2016 By in economics, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , 3 Comments

A reader asked a question about this after my Stephen King post from last Friday.  I think the best place for an answer is here.

In most circumstances, what counts is real GDP, not nominal.  That latter is, after all, just real GDP + inflation.  However, what comes to mind when people start to look for instances where nominal GDP shrinks is the Great Depression   …or maybe Japan during the series of Lost Decades it has been experiencing since 1990.

A potentially huge economic problem during a period of declining nominal GDP is that virtually all borrowing contracts–bonds or bank debt–are written in nominal terms.    In many places, labor contracts are also framed the same way, with an x% increase in wages yearly over the term of the agreement.

The revenues that businesses generate to meet these obligations are a function of unit volumes and price changes.  If real GDP is falling by, say, 3% and prices rising by only 1%, overall revenues are contracting.  Given that operating costs are typically fixed over the short term, this means firms in the aggregate will have less income to meet debt repayments and salary obligations.  For highly operationally or financially leveraged companies, even small declines in revenues can be deadly.

If, on the other hand, volumes are down by 3% and prices are rising by 4%, then revenue growth will still be positive.  On the margin, at least, this means fewer layoffs and fewer insolvencies to act as an economic drag during a time  when governments are trying to stimulate demand.

 

The situation where nominal prices are actually falling–which we’re not talking about here– is far worse.  Consumer soon learn that waiting a month, or two or three, before buying will mean a lower price.  So they just stop buying.  Given that consumers make up the bulk of economic growth in developed economies, they can ill afford to get the idea in consumers’ heads that purchasing anything today is a bad idea.

Stephen King on productivity and monetary policy

August 26, 2016 By in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , 2 Comments

The Stephen King I’m writing about is an economic advisor to HSBC who was formerly the bank’s chief economist.  He’s one of the most interesting economists I’m aware of.  For instance, he was one of the first to warn of excesses in the US housing market a decade ago, and perhaps the most vocal in doing so.

Last week he weighed in on the issue of productivity in an Opinion article in the Financial Times.  His main points:

1. The current low level of productivity–+1% yearly in the US, flat to down elsewhere–may not be due to lack of infrastructure spending (Lawrence Summers) or that most productivity-enhancing inventions have already been made (Robert Gordon).  It may be instead that we’re seeing now is normal.  It’s the generation that rebuilt after WWII, creating high growth in productivity in the process, that’s the outlier.

2.  If #1 is true, then many of the mainstays of orthodox macroeconomic policy need to be reexamined.  In particular,

–if the world is being flooded with money, then capital is equally available at cheap prices to high productivity enterprises and low ones.  The result may be that the very process thought to be increasing economic growth is neutralizing the competitive advantage of high-productivity enterprises

–in a low-inflation, low-productivity world, interest rates will be “dragged down to incredibly low levels,” meaning recession-fighting monetary expansion may be difficult to achieve

–cultural expectations built over the past half century of ever increasing prosperity may prove to be too high.  This would be trouble for, say, pension or social security schemes around the world whose ability to deliver promised benefits assumes the robust real economic growth of the past can be extrapolated into the future.

3.  The ability of governments to create inflation may become increasingly important, as a means of keeping nominal GDP growth above zero during an economic downturn.  Monetary theorists around the globe have assumed that doing so involves only the simple expedient of increasing the money supply.  The past eight years in the US, however, have shown that creating inflation is much easier to theorize about than to do.

 

His overall conclusion:  the Lawrence Summers idea of secular stagnation–which can be addressed through increased infrastructure spending–is a much cheerier outlook than it appears at first blush.

Warren Buffett and Dow Chemical (DOW)

August 25, 2016 By in Convertibles, Preferred Stock, Stock ideas, stock market, Stock options, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , 1 Comment

Today’s Wall Street Journal contains a front page article that will be widely viewed on Wall Street, I think, as a bit of comic relief.

In times of financial stress, cash-short companies have tended to go to Berkshire Hathaway for financial assistance.  If successful, they receive both money and the implicit endorsement of Warren Buffet.

In 2009, it was DOW’s turn.  It wanted to acquire Rohm and Haas, another chemical company.   The best deal it could find for a needed $3 billion was in Omaha, where Berkshire took a private placement of $3 billion in DOW preferred stock, with an annual dividend yield of 8.5%.  The preferred has been convertible for some time now into DOW common (yielding 3.4%), at DOW’s option, provided DOW has traded above $53.72 for a period of at least 20 trading days out of 30.

DOW shares were trading below $20 each when the deal was struck seven years ago.

On July 26th, the shares breached the $53.72 barrier and traded above it for five consecutive days–the final two on extremely heavy volume–before falling back.  At the same time, according to the WSJ, short interest in the stock has risen sharply.  In other words, someone has been a heavy seller, using stock borrowed from others.

Who could that be?

Although nothing is stated outright, the strong implication of the article is that the shortseller is Berkshire, which stands to lose $150 million+ a year in dividend income on conversion.

Part of the Wall Street humor in the situation is that the playing field isn’t level.  It’s perfectly legal for Berkshire to sell DOW short, although it does seem to cut against the homespun image Mr. Buffett has been at pains to cultivate for years.  On the other hand, however, DOW would run the risk of being accused of trying to pump up its stock price (and the value of management stock options) if it went out of its way to absorb any unusual selling.