Tag Archives: finance

volatility, non-correlation …and beta

May 27, 2016 By in risk = volatility, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

risk as volatility

Today is about volatility as a measure of risk.

It’s the standard academic method of assessment.  It has a certain initial intuitive plausibility.  After all, if your portfolio values is going all over the map, that sounds bad compared with one that just stays in one place.  Of course, the latter strategy is less damaging when there’s no inflation.  And there’s embedded just below the surface the efficient markets assumption that the highest possible return one can achieve is the market return.  The extra movement created by active management is not only occasionally scary, it just subtracts from your wealth.

you can’t spend risk-adjusted dollars

One of my old bosses used to say that you can’t spend risk-adjusted dollars.  What he meant is that higher volatility may be the price of achieving higher returns.  It doesn’t follow from this, other than in the ivory tower, that lower volatility/lower return investing is just as good.

Take the following two portfolios:

–one is trending upward at the rate of 15% annually, but at the end of any given month, can be as much as either 10% above or 10% below that trend

–the other is trending upward at the rate of 10% annually, but at the end of any given month can be as much as either 3% above or 3% below the trend.

At the end of ten years, the first portfolio is up by 300%, +/- 10%.

The second is up by 160%, +/- 3%.

Try explaining to the second client that he’s just as well off as the first.

why use volatility

Why use volatility as a measure, then?

The main reason, I think, is that data are easily available for computers, so volatility has the feel of being objective.  Another is the semi-religious belief that outperformance is impossible, in which case having extra volatility is an undiluted negative.  (By the way, having a portfolio that outperforms the market day after day, month after month, in an up market is, by definition, more volatile than an index fund.)

caveats

For someone who needs the money tomorrow, or next week or next month, a long-term investment with short-term volatility is the last place we want money to be.

Older investors, who are using savings to live on, have got to have a substantial cash reserve to avoid having to sell potentially volatile holdings during a -10% phase.

And a portfolio that consistently produces low returns coupled with high volatility has trouble written all over it.

dividends in the US (ii): the 1970s

May 16, 2016 By in Dividends, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

Two significant inflationary forces marked the 1970s in the US:

–the two oil crises, one during 1973-74, the other during 1978-80, which drove the price of crude from under $2 a barrel at the start of the decade to over $35 at its end, and

–the start of runaway inflation in the US, only partly due to oil, that had prices rising by 8% yearly, with economists’ projections of +11% for the early 1980s.

Both had profound–and negative–effects on investor attitudes toward dividends.

inflation

Typical dividend stocks are of companies in mature, slow-but-steadily growing businesses that generate substantial free cash flow.  Think: consumer staples.  These firms usually have very little power to raise their prices.  In the best case, they can do so in line with historical inflation.  Even then, they run the risk of having customers switch to lower-cost substitutes.  Many times, though, prices are in a steady real decline.

In a world where inflation is  currently 5% and where price rises are accelerating to 8%+ per year, a stock now yielding 4%, with a dividend that can grow at best 5%, is unattractive.  Its yield is already negative in real terms and prospects are that it can only fall further behind.

oil

Before the oil crises–and again today–the big international oils were regarded as quasi-bonds, attractive mostly for their dividend yields.  In a (mistaken) attempt to shield consumers from an increasing oil price, the US passed price control laws in the mid-1970s that set a cap on the selling price of US-produced crude from wells drilled before the oil shocks began.  This made US-based firms that had large oil reserves relatively unattractive investments.

Interest shifted instead to smaller, non-dividend-paying exploration firms that had the potential to make large finds relative to their size.

conventional wisdom

In business school I learned the conventional wisdom of the time.  It was that paying a large, growing, dividend was a sign of weakness in a firm.  It supposedly meant that the management lacked creativity.  The best they could come up with was to return excess funds to shareholders.  Therefore, dividend stocks should be shunned.

How times have changed!

Tomorrow, reversal in the 1980s.

 

the proposed Aramco IPO: why?

April 26, 2016 By in oil and natural gas, Saudi Arabia, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , 1 Comment

Aramco and an IPO

Over the past few days, as a new, younger generation prepares to take over leadership of Saudi Arabia, the kingdom has been announcing plans to overhaul the structure of its radically oil-dependent economy.

The most concrete of these is a proposed IPO for the Saudi national oil company, Aramco (the Arabian American Oil Company before it was nationalized in the 1970s).  The idea would be to sell roughly a 5% interest in Aramco to the investing public, with a dual listing in Saudi Arabia and somewhere else.  The leading “somewhere else” contender is the US.

It’s not clear yet exactly what the future shareholders would have an ownership interest in.  Aramco contains all sorts of oil-related operations, from exploration and production to refining to petrochemical production.  The Saudis intend to restructure Aramco into a holding company with subsidiaries–structured presumably by type of business–before offering equity.  To me, it sounds as if the offering will be of stock in a subsidiary, not the holding company.

Why?

money

The obvious answer is that the kingdom wants to raise money to fund its budget deficit.  It figures the proposed IPO will raise $100 billion – $150 billion, a figure that already has investment bankers around the world salivating.  This, by the way, implies a total value for Aramco of $2 trillion – $3 trillion.

deeper motivation

But there’s almost invariably a deeper motivation when a country takes action like this.  It wants to focus and streamline operations of the to-be-IPOed company, either because current service is terrible and/or to generate more funds from operations to fill government coffers.  The IPO offers potential wealth and prestige to the management of the government-owned company if they run it well.  That substitutes for pre-IPO motivation, which may simply be to do the least work possible, and make the fewest waves, without getting fired.

better than they look

In my experience, such IPOs, however dreary the prospectus may sound, often do quite well for at least the first couple of years.  Two reasons:

–their scope for change becomes much wider when public scrutiny protects the manager from interference by politically-connected sluggards who like the status quo, and

–managers tend to, in a sense, stop working once they find out an IPO is in the offing.  Why make improvements today that will only make post-IPO earnings comparisons harder?  Better to save them for the time when the stock is publicly traded and holders of stock, stock options and management incentive plans will cash in on them.

in sum

The IPO itself is evidence that the Saudis are serious about a reorientation of their economic priorities.  Human nature argues that 2016 will be like wading through molasses for Aramco but that it will break very quickly from the gate after the IPO.

plusses and minuses of using book value

April 19, 2016 By in book value, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , 1 Comment

on the plus side…

–book value is a simple, easy to understand, concept.  Discount to book = cheap, premium to book = a potential red flag.

–it’s very useful for financials, which tend to have huge numbers of often complex, short-lived transactions with hordes of different customers, and where financial disclosure may not be so transparent (financials aren’t my favorite sector, by the way).  So the 30,000 foot view may be the best.

…maybe a plus?…

–in the inflationary world most of us grew up in, and that is still reflected in the financials of older companies, historical cost accounting tends to understate the current value of long-lived assets.  Think:  a piece of land bought in Manhattan or San Francisco in 1950 or an oilfield discovered in 1970–or 1925.  Many of the older retail chain acquisitions of the past twenty years have been motivated by the undervaluation on the balance sheet of owned real estate.

…definitely a minus

–in my experience, accountants tend to be very reluctant to compel managements to write down the value of assets whose worth has been impaired by, say, advanced age or technological obsolescence.

–more important, we are living in a period of rapid change.  The Internet is the most obvious new variable, although I think we tend to underestimate how profound its transformative power is.  In the US, we are also seeing a generational shift in economic power away from Baby Boomers and toward Millennials, who have distinctly non-Boomer preferences and a desire to live a different lifestyle from their parents.

Online shopping undermines the value of an extended physical store network.  Software (which by and large doesn’t appear on the balance sheet) replaces hardware (which does) as a key competitive edge between companies.

intangibles…

Warren Buffett’s key innovation as an investor was to recognize the value of intangibles like this in the 1950s.  In his case, it was that the positive effect of advertising expense and strong sales networks in establishing brand power appeared nowhere on the balance sheet.  In a world where his competitors were focused only on price-to-book, he could buy these very positive company attributes for free.  Price to book was still a solid tool, just not the whole picture.

…vs. structural change

The situation is different today.

The Internet is eroding the value of traditional distribution networks and of other physical assets positioned to serve yesterday’s world.  The shift in economic power to Millennials is likewise calling into question the value of physical assets positioned to serve Boomers.

In more concrete terms:

Tesla doesn’t need a car dealer distribution network to sell its cars.  A retailer can use Amazon, or Etsy or a proprietary website, rather than an owned store network.  A writer can self-publish.  These all represent radical declines in the capital needed to be in many businesses today.

Millennials like organic food and live in cities; Boomers eat processed food and live in the suburbs.

This all calls into question the present economic worth, still expressed on the balance sheet as book value, of past capital spending on what were at the time anti-competition “moats.”

Another issue:   I think that the institutional weight of the status quo has pressured managements of older companies into ignoring the need for substantial repositioning–including writedowns of no-longer viable assets–so they can compete in a 21st century environment.  Arguably, this makes low price to book a warning sign instead of an invitation to purchase.

the Sequoia Fund and redemption in kind

April 11, 2016 By in redemption in kind, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , 1 Comment

I read in the Wall Street Journal over the weekend that the Sequoia Fund (assets of around $5 billion) was experiencing heavy redemptions during 1Q16 and met them for some shareholders “in kind.”

Sequoia:  a first glance

I don’t know Sequoia at all.  A quick check of its December 2015 annual report shows the fund had what I judge to be a very unusual portfolio structure.  At that time Valeant Pharmaceuticals (VRX) made up 20% of assets (down from an even more whopping 28%+ in June of last year); Berkshire Hathaway, classes A and B, comprised another 13%.  That’s a third of the fund in two names.  Very concentrated, in my view.

Unfortunately for holders, VRX fell by 60% during the second half of 2015–during which time Sequoia boosted its position from 11.2 million shares to 12.8 million–before losing 2/3 of its remaining value since this January 1st. Hence the Sequoia redemptions …and the retirement of the fund’s senior portfolio manager.

The Journal reports that, in accordance with long-term fund policy, redemptions of $250,000 or more are being met substantially in kind, meaning that the seller is being paid mostly through a transfer of stock held in the fund portfolio, rather than in cash.  The WSJ cites one customer who received about 5% of his money in cash, the rest in shares of O’Reilly Automotive (ORLY).  That would probably mean less than 1,000 shares of a stock that trades 750,000+ shares a day.  So no liquidity problems.  Commission on the sale, other than benighted souls who patronize traditional high-cost brokers, isn’t a big deal, either.

How is this possible?

According to the WSJ (I haven’t checked, but I presume it’s a boilerplate feature of the prospectus), Sequoia discloses the policy of redemption in kind in its regulatory and marketing materials.

my thoughts:

I don’t ever recall hearing about redemptions in kind for retail investment products   before, although I suspect the provision is contained in every mutual fund and ETF prospectus.  The words “in kind” may not be there, but a general description of emergency measures likely is.

“In kind” strikes me as a draconian measure.  It certainly discourages/punishes redemptions.  And it’s not the sort of thing that encourages a customer to return at a later date.

It probably minimizes downward pressure on portfolio holdings from what would otherwise be forced selling by the fund.

It deals with tax issues in a way that doesn’t harm the redeeming customer and favors remaining shareholders.

How did the VRX position get so large?

 

More tomorrow.