Category Archives: mutual fund holders and financial advisors

institutional vs. individual investment decisions

August 1, 2014 By in Analyzing performance, How your broker gets paid, Investment firms, mutual fund holders and financial advisors, reasons analysts mis-estimate company earnings, sell-side analysts Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

This is a follow-up to my post from yesterday on perils of relying on an analyst’s investment recommendations.

The FINRA article I mentioned in that post comments that institutional investment decisions can be motivated by considerations that differ markedly from those we as individuals face.

What does this mean?  Here are some examples:

1.  for almost two decades, endowments (like those for universities) have made large investments in highly illiquid “alternative” assets.  They argue that their financial circumstances allow them to take liquidity risk in search of extra-high returns because they won’t need the money for, say, 25 years.

Such investments present several problems for you and me:

generally speaking, endowments haven’t cashed out of many of these investments, so it’s not clear how well they’ve done

we probably don’t have a 20-year+ investment time frame, and

we definitely will only be able to participate in alternatives on much less favorable terms than big institutions.  In retail-oriented projects, the organizers reap most of the rewards.

2.  An institution may try to offset the risk of “roll-the-dice” investments by being very conservative in other areas.  Without knowing its overall investment strategy, it’s hard to know how to evaluate any one part.  So when an institutional portfolio manager says he has a huge weighting in Treasury securities, it may be that he’s acting on instructions from his client, or it may be to offset the risk of holding a ton of risky emerging markets debt.

3.  Portfolio management is a craft skill that sometimes operates on less-than-obvious rules.  The IT sector, for instance, is the largest component of the S&P 500, making up almost 20% of the index.  The largest constituents are Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Google,  and Intel.

Let’s say I’m a PM and I don’t like the IT sector right now.  I probably won’t express my opinion by having no technology stocks.  To make up a number, I may elect to have 15% of my portfolio in IT.  If I’m right, I’ll make gains by having the “missing” 5% invested in a better=performing sector.  I may also decide that, because I want to be defensive in this area, I’ll shift my emphasis toward the biggest, lowest-multiple, most mature companies.

Boring!!

But that’s the point.  These will probably go down the least in a bad market.

As a result, I may end up having 3% of my portfolio in AAPL and another 3% in MSFT.  They may also be the largest holdings in my portfolio.  A cursory glance at my holding may give the impression that I like AAPL and MSFT.  I do, but only in the sense that I expect that they’d go down–they’ll lose less than smaller IT stocks, gaining me outperformance.   They’re my hedging alternative to making an all-or-nothing bet against IT.

Another situation:  let’s say I have no clue how AAPL will perform.  I may decide that I should concentrate my attention elsewhere in the portfolio, where (I hope) I can add value.  The easiest–and safest–thing I can do with AAPL is to neutralize it.  That is, I hold the market weight in the stock.  Yes, I won’t gain any outperformance this way, but I won’t lose any, either.  Because AAPL is the largest stock in the S&P 500, AAPL may end up being my largest position.  But, again, this doesn’t mean I like it.  It means I don’t want the stock to hurt me.

Will I explain any of this in an interview?  Yes, I’ll try.  But reporters’ eyes will glaze over.  What they’ll come away with is the idea they came in with–that my largest positions must be my favorites, and they’re AAPL and MSFT.

 

 

 

the FINRA Guide to Understanding Analysts’ Recommendations

July 31, 2014 By in Getting financial advice, How your broker gets paid, Industry Analysis, Investment firms, mutual fund holders and financial advisors, reasons analysts mis-estimate company earnings, sell-side analysts, sell-side analysts vs. strategists Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

Yesterday someone sent me a link to Understanding Securities Analyst Recommendations, written by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), the brokerage industry trade organization.

The short article is surprisingly candid and contains important information, although couched in very abstract language.

The highlights (paraphrased by me):

–brokerage house analysts, and the brokerage houses themselves, are subject to enormous potential conflicts of interest when it come s to saying what they think the future performance of a given stock may be.  For instance, –a company may select a brokerage house for lucrative investment banking business based on how favorably the firm rates its stock

–conversely, it may refuse to give corporate information to analysts who rate the stock unfavorably.  The company may “forget” to return phone calls, avoid appearing at conferences sponsored by the analyst, refuse to appear with the analyst at public or private investor meetings, or not acknowledge requests for information from institutional investors that are directed through the offending analyst.  The company may even more overtly try to get the analyst fired.

–very large money management companies may build up gigantic positions in the stock of a given company.  Powerful portfolio managers may have large stakes riding on the stock’s performance–and the positions may well be too big to sell quickly, in any event.  So they may pressure brokers and their analysts to maintain a favorable opinion on the stock.  Their threat–to withhold trading commissions from a firm that downgrades the stock.  Same thing about firing the analyst, too.

–as a result, the terms brokers use to rate stocks may not be self-evident.  “Buy,” for example. may not be a particularly good rating.  “Strong Buy” or “Conviction Buy” may be what we’d ordinarily understand as”buy.”  “Buy” may be closer to “Eh” or “Hold.”  Of course, analysts may also have one official opinion in writing and another that it expresses verbally to clients.

Two other worthwhile points the article makes:

–some analysts may not be highly skilled, so their recommendation may not be worth much.  Rookies may not have enough experience, for instance, and they may be more susceptible to outside pressure than others.  Analysts may not know a spreadsheet from a hole in the ground but have the ear of management.  (Oddly, old-fashioned managements continue to give information to favored analysts that they deny to shareholders.)

–the fact that a portfolio manager owns a stocks, even if it’s a large position and if his analyst appears on TV saying positive things about it, the manager may hold the stock for completely different reasons (more on this tomorrow). Anyway, the FINRA page is well worth reading.

Wall Street firms are running out of retail brokers

June 27, 2014 By in Getting financial advice, How your broker gets paid, Investment firms, mutual fund holders and financial advisors, Where are the customers' yachts? Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

In the post-recession world, traditional brokerage/investment banking firms have become much more interested in the steady income that can come from providing financial advice to individuals.  This is partly due to the demise of proprietary trading, partly a new respect for recurring income.   But Wall Street is finding it hard to maintain its retail sales forces.

One would think that with the Baby Boom beginning to retire, and having 401ks and IRAs rather than traditional pensions to support them in their “golden” years, there would be a lot of demand from this quarter for professional investment advice.  Yet, brokerage firms are finding it hard to recruit salesmen.  The demographics of the big (or “full service,” as they’re called) brokerage forces themselves are also telling:  lots of over-fifties, few under-thirties.  Why is this?

In general:

1.  The internet has replaced financial services as the destination of choice for ambitious college graduates.

2.  Brokerage firms have traditionally been hostile toward women, thereby eliminating half the possible job candidates.

3.  Being a financial adviser is–something I kind of get, but kind of don’t–a relatively low status position, down there with used car salesman.

Specifically:

4.  People under the age of, say, fifty (maybe it’s sixty, though) would prefer to deal with a discount broker over the internet than face-to-face with a traditional brokerage salesman.  I have no short answer as to why, but they do–even when introduced to an honest, competent broker by their parents.  Of course, maybe that in itself is the kiss of death.

5.  Traditional brokerage firms have decimated their research departments as cost-cutting measures during the recession.  This eliminates the only reason I personally would consider a traditional broker.

6.  A broker typically gets a little less than half of the commission revenue he generates (see my post on how your broker gets paid for more detail).  The rest goes to the firm, which uses part of that to pay for offices, recordkeeping, and marketing…   For many years, however, firms like Fidelity, Charles Schwab or other, more low-profile companies have been willing to provide established brokers with back-office support for a small fraction of that amount.  I’m not current on today’s arrangements, but while I was working a broker could easily increase his “net” commission from 45% to 80% by switching to one of these firms.  Yes, he might have to provide his own office, but the headline is that he could increase his income by 78% with the move.

 

What’s new about this situation isn’t that it’s happening–this has been going on for well over a decade–but that traditional brokers are finally concerned.   Their retail business model is broken, however, and I don’t see it getting fixed any time soon.  My question is how Baby Boomers are going to get the financial advice they need to manager their money during retirement.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bill Miller and the Legg Mason Capital Management Value Trust mutual fund

November 21, 2011 By in Current Market Thoughts, Getting financial advice, How your broker gets paid, Industry Analysis, Investment firms, mutual fund holders and financial advisors, Portfolio management Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Last week, Bill Miller of Legg Mason announced that he is stepping down as portfolio manager of that firm’s Capital Management Value Trust fund after 20+ years at the helm.

Mr. Miller was once the envy of equity portfolio managers everywhere for the fame and fortune his beating the S&P 500 for 15 years in a row brought hi.  In recent times, he has become the embodiment of very pm’s worst nightmares, however.

His previously hot hand–which had earned him designation by Morningstar as a “Manager of the Decade” turned icy-cold in 2006.  Ensuing weak performance erased the gains in relative performance his portfolio had made since “the streak” began in 1991.  The assets in his fund fell by almost 90% from the peak of $21 billion +.

my thoughts

I should say at the outset that I don’t know Mr. Miller and that I haven’t studied his portfolio composition carefully.  And I’m not interested enough to look up his past SEC filings to try to document my impressions.  With that warning, here’s what I think:

1.  It took Legg Mason a very long time–and the loss of the vast majority of Value Trust’s assets–before it made the change.  At the asset peak, the fund was generating management fees for LM at a $140 million annual clip.  It’s now generating under $20 million.

Why not act sooner?

Part of the reason is likely that after sagging in 2006-2008, the Value Trust outperformed in 2009.  More important, I think, is that the fund’s marketing has been all about “the streak” and the extraordinary investing prowess of Mr. Miller.   It’s a good story and an easy sell.  But it’s a risky strategy.  If it’s all about the numbers, and someone with even better results comes around–and invariably someone will–what do you do? You’ve already made the argument to your client to switch into the Value Trust because of the numbers; how can you now argue against numbers that tell him to switch out?

This selling direction also gives the manager himself a huge amount of power.  What’s the Bill Miller show without Bill Miller?  So if Mr. Miller wants to continue to run a concentrated portfolio with a strong emphasis on financials, despite steady underperformance, how do you stop him not to?

2.  I’ve never regarded Mr. Miller as a typical value investor, although he’s always described as one and the Value Trust (note the name) is classified with other value vehicles by rating services.  I have two reasons:

–Value investors are belt-and-suspenders kind of guys.  They run highly diversified portfolios, typically with 100-200 names–sometimes more.  Growth investors, in contrast, typically hold 50-60.  Looking up the Capital Management Value Trust on Google Finance told me it has only 46 names. (By the way, in my experience ratings services never pick up high concentration as a source of risk.)

–Both value and growth investors look for “undervalued” securities (only shortsellers want to find overvalued stocks).  That isn’t what the “value” in value investing signifies.  It means a certain approach to finding undervaluation.

Value investors look at the here-and-now.  Their holdings are typically asset-rich companies that have encountered temporary difficulties, which have been crushed by Wall Street and which are now trading at unduly depressed valuations as a result.  Growth investors, in contrast, look for companies whose future earnings prospects are being underestimated by the market.

In this sense, too, I don’t think Mr. Miller is a plain-vanilla value investor.  He has been happy to hold large positions in stocks like Amazon or AOL (in its heyday)–names I think other value practitioners wouldn’t give a second look because the whole story has been the rate of future earnings growth.

I have no idea how Mr. Miller squares this circle.  (The fund’s largest positions are now in technology, according to Google Finance.  But it’s not the same thing.  Today’s stocks are eBay and Microsoft.  Apple, the largest holding, is still a growth stock, unlike the others.  But AAPL trades at a very low PE multiple of current earnings.)

3.  Despite this flexibility, and the issue of heavy concentration aside, it seems to me that classic value behavior has been the Value Trust’s recent problem.  Relative to history, financials were trading at low price to book value (i.e., the balance sheet value of shareholders’ equity) ratios when Mr. Miller bought them.  In hindsight, that was a mistake.

There may have been a second.  If the stocks a growth investor buys underperform, he typically stops buying or lightens up.  Value investors tend to do the opposite.  They regard such stocks as being even cheaper than when they initially bought–and double up.  I suspect the latter is what Mr. Miller did.

two oddities

1. In the early part of my career, alternating cycles of outperformance by value and growth stocks were relatively brief.  Given a year, or two at the most, there would be little to chose between the numbers generated by one style or the other.  The 1990s, however, saw a multi-year value cycle in the early part of the decade, followed by a massive multi-year growth cycle–culminating in the Internet Bubble–at the end.  Despite the fact that the tide was running strongly against value during the latter years, Mr. Miller continued to outperform the S&P 500.  If he did so with value stocks, that’s his crowning achievement.

2.  After creating a strong business franchise under the Miller name, neither he nor Legg Mason did much to protect it.

 

 

brokers and standards of care: the SEC study

January 30, 2011 By in Getting financial advice, How your broker gets paid, Industry Analysis, Investment firms, mutual fund holders and financial advisors, Portfolio management, Where are the customers' yachts? Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

the report

Last Wednesday the SEC published the results of a study on the differing legal obligations of brokers and investment advisers to their clients.

The SEC’s bottom line:

–while customers are generally satisfied with the investment advice they receive, they don’t really know what standards of conduct their brokers or investment advisers are legally held to.  In addition, they sometimes mistakenly think brokers are required to perform to the same high standard as investment advisers.

–the standard of conduct for brokers should be raised to match that for investment advisers, “when providing investment advice about securities to retail customers.”

why the study?

One might think that it was driven by the realization that millions of Baby Boomers will be retiring in the US over the next decade or so.  The vast majority–government workers are the biggest exception–will not have the security of defined benefit pension plans backed by their former employers. Instead, they have the money they’ve saved in IRAs or 401ks, for which they will have investment responsibility, to support them in retirement.

That’s not the reason, though.  The SEC did the study because it was ordered to in the recently-passed Dodd-Frank Act.

broker or investment adviser:  what’s the difference?

in law…

Investment advisers are regulated by the Investment Advisers Act of 1940.

Broker-dealers are regulated under the anti-fraud provisions of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Act of 1934.

Broker-dealers are specifically excluded from regulation under the Investment Advisers Act.

…and in practice

Investment advisers are fiduciaries.  In practical terms, this means three things:

–the adviser must do what’s best for the client

–the adviser must put the client’s interests ahead of his own, and

–the adviser has to make extensive disclosure of possible conflicts of interest.

Broker-dealers are not fiduciaries.  As a result,

–although brokers aren’t permitted to act in a way that harms their clients,

–they can recommend an investment that is less good than another but which provides a higher profit to the broker.

I’m not sure what the technical requirements for disclosure of conflicts of interest are for a broker.  My experience is that such disclosures are, at best, buried in the middle of large amounts of fine print and couched in language that only a specialist would understand. Goldman’s trading “huddles,” exposed in an article in the Wall Street Journal in 2009, are a recent example of differential treatment of institutional clients, not retail, but it’s still a good illustration of the broker mindset.

The huddles are weekly meetings of analysts and traders that ended up generating ideas, some of which go against Goldman’s official stock recommendations.  These trading ideas are communicated only to a few of the firm’s highest revenue-generating clients.  The official recommendations aren’t changed, so most clients continue to be told the opposite story.  (I just looked at a recent Goldman research report.  This practice is described in paragraph 25 of 30 paragraphs of fine print, covering three pages of the report’s total length of seven.).

if brokers are required to become fiduciaries, what changes?

It may be an exaggeration to say that this would radically change the fundamentals of the retail brokerage industry…but, on second thought, that may not be so far from the truth.  For example,

quality of fund recommendations

1.  Some retail-oriented brokerage houses have their own in-house fund management groups.  In many cases, the records of such proprietary funds is mediocre at best.  Yet brokers are encouraged to sell these funds to clients.  In my view, the main factor–other than the underperformance clients experience–is their greater profitability of in-house funds to the firm. If brokers were fiduciaries, presumably they would have to point out that third-party funds have better track records, or to disclose their financial interest.

2.  Brokers might have to disclose that in general no-load funds sold by Vanguard or Fidelity are a better deal that the load funds brokers sell.

3.  When you go into a brokerage office to have an asset allocation analysis done, it may be that the mutual fund recommendations that the computer spits out come only from fund groups that have paid to have their names displayed to customers–or who have agreed to rebate to the brokerage a portion of the management fee earned on shares sold.  Fund groups that decline to pay get no exposure. In other words, the fund recommendations aren’t the objective assessment they appear to be.

A fiduciary couldn’t do this without clear disclosure.  Actually, I think a fiduciary who tried to do this would be run out of town.

4.  If an individual broker does enough business with a given fund group, he may qualify to bring himself and a guest to  an all expense-paid educational seminar (including nightly entertainment),  in, say, Las Vegas, or San Diego or Disneyworld.  Has any broker ever mentioned that possibility when recommending a fund to you?

quality of stock recommendations

5.  Institutional Investor magazine publishes a yearly ranking of brokerage house research and a list of All-American analysts in each industry.  If brokers were fiduciaries, I think they’d have to tell you if, as many have, they’ve laid off most of their experienced researchers during the recession.  So they have no ranked analysts anymore.  And the report you’ve just been handed recommending XYZ Corp as a “buy” was written by a replacement who only has six months experience, no formal training in securities analysis, and is learning to do research on the fly.

All of this would be a little like watching your meal being prepared in the kitchen of a restaurant that probably won’t pass health inspection.  Certainly, brokers don’t want to be forced to allow you this peek under the covers.

are any changes likely, based on the SEC findings?

I doubt it.  Opposition from “full service” brokerage houses would be too great.  It’s also interesting to note that, while the study was done by the staff of the SEC as Dodd-Frank mandated, its conclusions weren’t endorsed by the SEC.

But this did give me another chance to write about some of the less obvious practices of the retail brokerage industry.  So at least that’s something.