Category Archives: securities markets

cryptocurrencies

August 2, 2017 By in cryptocurrency, currency markets, Strategy, Uncategorized Tags: , Leave a comment

This is not a subject I know much about, although I’ve gotten a lot of excellent information over the past half year from one of my my sons and from my son-in law.  So I only have three comments:

–the past few months have shown all the characteristics of a speculative mania in the cryptocurrency world.  The rash of recent ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings), done in incredible speed with scanty documentation and in which buyers seem to receive nothing useful for their money, remind me a lot of the final days of the internet mania of late 1999-early 2000

–the secondary market, that is, trading by parties other than the the original creator of the tokens, is very illiquid and woefully inadequate.  I think this is the main reason the bitcoin etf, GBTC, trades at a huge premium to NAV

…but

–some form of cryptocurrency (at this point, the chief contenders seem to be bitcoin and ethereum) may end up being the new gold.  We can already see their flight capital attractiveness in the collapsing economy of Venezuela.

There’s a wider point than just this, though.  Ultimately, national currencies depend for their viability on belief in the integrity and fiscal soundness of the governments that issue them, and the economic prospects of the economies that form their tax bases.

The big issue with governments, however, is their seemingly irresistible urge to wriggle out from under their sovereign debt by inflating away the real value of their borrowings.  Venezuela’s current inflation of 1000%+ means that if you lend Caracas the price of a car today, a year from now the bolivars you get back won’t cover much more than a Big Mac.

Yes, this is a crazy example, but the point remains, I think, that most governments (Germany–and maybe China–being the only exceptions that come to mind) are more than willing to “debase” their currencies, as gold bugs would put it.  Look at Japan.  What about the UK?  Even the US had a go at this in the 1970s.

 

To be clear, I’m not advocating buying bitcoin (I do own a miniscule amount through holding shares in the Ark Invest Web x.0 ETF (ARKW)).  I think it’s something to keep an eye on, however.  I can see that something like bitcoin could ultimately replace gold as an alternative investment.  After all, when you get down to it, gold is just a shiny kind of dirt.

I also think that even in stable economies investors are beginning to look for a way to hedge their dollar holdings, thinking that the post-WWII world order led by the US is nearing the end of its useful life.  No clear replacement is in sight.  And the three national currency contenders, the dollar, the euro and the renminbi, all have rapidly aging populations–meaning, if Japan is any indication, an imminent slowdown in economic growth power.

 

 

 

…finally, internet again

July 31, 2017 By in currency markets, Current Market Thoughts, securities markets, stock market Tags: , Leave a comment

I’ve been travelling in the rural Northwest the past week and have had only intermittent internet access   …until now.

Stepping back from the day-to-day, has its advantages, though.  Having little up-to-the-minute data, I’ve been forced to look at the longer-range stock market picture. 
The first two or three months after the election, the dollar and stocks both rose as investors celebrated the presidential results.  The strongest groups were Energy, Materials and Industrials–the ones that would benefit both from an acceleration in economic growth and implementation of the professed Trump agenda of tax reform and infrastructure spending.

This period ended rght around the inaguration.  It was replaced by a market that embraced secular growth areas of Technology and Healthcare.  The dollar began to drift downward, as well.  This sector/currency shift was partly, I think, a rotation from leaders to laggards that happens in every market that’s not going sideways.  Part was also concern that delivering on the Trump agenda might not be as easy as investors had supposed over the previous months.

During 2Q17, the stock market began to understand how deep the problems are that the Republican party and the adminstration are having in getting anything done.  The main direct consequence of this loss of confidence has been a sharp fall in the dollar, I think, on the idea that failure of the administration and congress to engineer fisal stimulus would translate into a slower pace of interest rate increases by the Fed.  A weaker dollar benefits multinationals, so IT continued to be a winner, along with many members of the Staples group, which also has large foreign exposure.

This last movement has also played itself out in recent weeks, I think.  The market as a whole, and major tech stocks in particular, have begun to move sideways, expressing Wall Street’s belief (mine, too) that they’ve gone up enough for now.  As I see it, action has been based chiefly on relative valuation– rotations deeper into IT via smaller stocks and back into the Trump stock winners of late 2016.  
The kind of movement described in the last paragrah doesn’t typically last long.  At some point, the market will return to the question of whether structural reform in Washington is possible.  As I see it, the underlying notion investors now have is that important change can and will happen, although people may have substantially different pictures of how this will occur.  

It seems to me that as long as investors hold this belief, the US stock market will move sideways to up, driven by earnings gains.

evaluating management: returns

July 18, 2017 By in evaluating companies, return on equity, return on equity vs. return on capital, Uncategorized Tags: , Leave a comment

One of the most straightforward ways of evaluating how a company management is doing is by looking at the returns it achieves on the money it invests on behalf of shareholders.  Like most things in finance, this starts out as a very simple task, but soon enough adds refinements that make the evaluation process look a lot more complex than it actually is.

We’ll start with return on equity.

initial equity

A new company forms and sells 1000 shares to investors at $10 each, for a total of $10,000.  It invests all of that money one January 1 of its first year.

During that year it earns $1000 in net income.

Its return on equity for year 1 is 10% ($1000/$10,000).  At this point it has no long-term debt, so its return on capital (capital = equity plus long-term debt) is also 10%.

equity grows

If the company pays no dividends, it now has $11,000 in equity (capital, too) at the beginning of year 2.  To maintain a 10% return on equity (and capital) it must earn $1,100 in year 2.

book value

The total amount of equity a company has to invest is also called “book value,” because it’s the value of the equity entry on the company’s financial records (books).

All other factors being equal, a company whose management achieves a high return on equity tends to trade at a premium to book value.  One that continually produces sub-par returns tends to trade at a discount.  The financial sector in particular, because it’s hard to figure out the tons of transactions that the big firms routinely execute, tends to trade on price to book.

 

Tomorrow, adding debt to the picture.

Verizon (VZ) and Disney (DIS)

July 13, 2017 By in mergers and acquisitions, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

A short while ago, rumors began circulating on Wall Street that VZ is interested in acquiring DIS.

Yesterday, the CEO of VZ said the company has no interest.

some sense…

The rumors made a little sense, in my view, for two reasons:

–the cellphone market in the US is maturing.  The main competitors to VZ all appear to be acquiring content producers to make that the next battleground for attracting and keeping customers, and

–the Japanese firm Softbank, which controls Sprint, seems intent on disrupting the current service price structure in the same way is did years ago in its home country.

…but really?

On the other hand, it seems to me that DIS is too big a mouthful for VZ to swallow.

How so?

–DIS and VZ are both about the same size, each with total equity value of around $175 billion.  If we figure that VZ would have to offer (at least) a 20% premium to the current DIS stock price, the total bill would be north of $200 billion.

How would VZ finance a large deal like this?  VZ’s first instinct would be to use debt.  But it already has $115 billion in borrowings on the balance sheet, so an additional $200 billion might be hard to manage, even though DIS is relatively debt-free.

Equity?  …a combination of debt and equity?

An open question is whether shareholders in an entertainment company like DIS would be content to hold shares in a quasi-utility.  If not, VZ shares might come under enough pressure for both parties to want to tear up a potential agreement.

dismember DIS?

VZ might also think of selling off the pieces of DIS–like the theme parks–that it doesn’t want.  The issue here is that all the parts of DIS, except maybe ESPN, are increasingly closely interwoven through cross-promotion, theme park attractions and merchandise marketing.  So it’s not clear the company can be neatly sectioned off.

Also, as the history of DIS’s film efforts illustrates, the company is not only a repository of intellectual property.  It’s the product of the work of a cadre of highly creative entertainers.  Retaining key people after a takeover–particularly if it were an unfriendly one–would be a significant worry.

From what might be considered an office politics point of view, VZ’s top management must have to consider the possibility that after a short amount of time, they would be ushered out the door and the DIS management would take their place running the combined firm.  Would key DIS decision makers want to work for a communications utility?

my bottom line

All in all, an interesting rumor in the sense that it highlights the weakness of VZ’s competitive position, but otherwise hard to believe.

 

 

 

bonds …a threat to stocks?

July 12, 2017 By in Bond Environment, bond market, interest rates, stocks vs. bonds, Strategy, Uncategorized Tags: , , , Leave a comment

I read an odd article in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, an opinion piece that in the US bonds are a current threat to stocks.  Although not explicitly stated, the idea seems to be that the US is in the grip of cult-like devotion to stocks.  One day, however, after a series of Fed monetary policy tightening steps, the blinders we’re wearing will drop off.  We’ll suddenly see that higher yields have made bonds an attractive alternative to equities   …and there’ll be a severe correction in the stock market as we all reallocate our portfolios.

What I find odd about this picture:

–the dividend yield on the S&P 500 is just about 2%, which compares with the yield of 2.3% on a 10-year Treasury bond.  So Treasuries aren’t significantly more attractive than stocks today, especially since we know that rates are headed up–meaning bond prices are headed down.  Actually, bonds have been seriously overvalued against stocks for years, although they are less so today than in years past

–from 2009 onward, individual investors have steadily reallocated away from stocks to the perceived safety of bonds, thereby missing out on the bull market in stocks.  If anything there’s cult-like devotion to bonds, not stocks

–past periods of Fed interest rate hikes have been marked by falling bond prices and stock prices moving sideways.  So stocks have been the better bet while rates are moving upward.  Maybe this time will be different, but those last five words are among the scariest an investor can utter.

 

Still, there’s the kernel of an important idea in the article.

At some point, through some combination of stock market rises and bond market falls, bonds will no longer be heavily overvalued vs. stocks and become serious competition for investor savings.

Where is that point?  What is the yield level where holders of stocks will seriously consider reallocating to bonds?

I’m not sure.

Two thoughts, though:

–I think the typical total return on holding stocks will continue be around 8% annually.  For me, the return on bonds has got to be at least 4% before they have any appeal.  So the Fed has a lot of interest-rate boosting work to do before I’d feel any urge to reallocate

–movement in yield for the 10-year Treasury from 2.3% to 4.0% means that the price of today’s bonds will go down.  So, while there is a clear argument for holding cash during a period of interest rate hikes, I don’t see any for holding bonds–and particularly none for holding bonds on the idea that stocks might fall in price as rates rise

Of course, I’m an inveterate holder of stocks.  And this is an interesting question to ask yourself.  What yield on bonds would make them attractive to you?