Tag Archives: market tactics

more on the new coronavirus

January 27, 2020 By in coronavirus, Current Market Thoughts, Recent Market Action, securities markets, stock market, Uncategorized Tags: , , , 3 Comments

SARS

SARS emerged in China in November 2002.  Local authorities, later removed from office in disgrace, initially failed to sound an alarm about the new disease, apparently thinking reporting it would reflect badly on them and hoping it would just go away if ignored.

The world first became aware of SARS as a public health threat in February 2003.  The disease was declared under control in July 2003.  By that time there had been 8000+ reported cases and about 800 deaths.  The overwhelming majority of the fatalities were in China.  The elderly and the very young were the age groups hardest hit.

the new virus

As of yesterday, there had been 2700+ cases of the new coronavirus reported and 80+ deaths.

There are four differences I see between the SARS epidemic and this year’s outbreak:

–faster reporting and more aggressive quarantining today (the disease is passed through contact with an infected person’s bodily fluids.  There’s no medicine that works against it, so isolating victims is the only “cure”)

–symptoms emerge on average about ten days after infection, pretty much the same as with SARS.   But unlike the case with SARS, where carriers only became infectious after they showed symptoms, carriers of the new virus appear to be infectious from day one, long before they become visibly ill

–China is a much larger part of the world economy today than it was back then.  While the US has grown by 80% (using conventional GDP) since 2003, China is 12x the size it was then.  So the slowdown in global economic activity that will result from quarantine measures in China today will be greater than it was for SARS.  If SARS is a good indicator–and it’s the only one we have, so it is in a sense our best guide–the current outbreak will be well past the worst by mid-year

–SARS happened just as the world was beginning to recover from the recession caused by the internet bubble collapse of early 2000.  The new virus comes during year 11 of recovery from the downturn caused by the near-collapse of the US banking system from losses that piled up during years of wildly speculative lending and securities trading.  In other words, SARS happened when profits were beginning to boom and stocks really wanted to go up; in contrast, this virus is happening when profits are plateauing and stocks want to go sideways mostly because interest rates are crazy low.

investment thoughts

During the SARS outbreak business travel came to a screeching halt because people feared becoming sick/being quarantined in a foreign country. If it’s correct that the new virus can be passed on even before the carrier shows symptoms, the risk in using public transport is substantially greater.  So too the possibility that one’s home country will temporarily bar returnees from virus-infected areas.

Securities markets in China are currently closed for the New Year holiday.  It isn’t clear that they will reopen on schedule.  In the meantime, China-related selling pressure will likely be redirected to markets like New York.  Alibaba (BABA) shares (which I hold), for example, are down about 6% in pre-market trading.  At some point, assuming as I do that the SARS analogy will be a good indicator, there’ll be a buying opportunity.  For me, it’s not today, although if I weren’t a BABA holder I’d probably buy a little.

It will be interesting to see how AI handles trading today.

 

 

WeWork (WE) and Wall Street: my take

September 10, 2019 By in Current Market Thoughts, Strategy, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , 1 Comment

I’ll start out by underlining that I don’t know enough about WE to have a usable investment opinion about the offering’s merits.  I do have opinions, though.  It’s just that they’re more like my thoughts about the Mets than a way to make money.  Anyway, here goes:

in general

–the WE structure isn’t new.  Think: a savings and loan, or a hotel chain, or an airline or an offshore drilling company, or a container ship firm–or, for that matter, a cement plant or a coal mine.  All these involve owning expensive long-lived assets which are typically debt financed and whose use is sold bit by bit.   Although there may be attempts at branding, with varying degrees of success, in the final analysis these are commodity businesses.

–in good times, this is a favorable structure for a company to have.  Costs remain relatively constant as selling prices rise, so most of the increase drops down to the pre-tax line.  Rental/purchase contracts may limit annual price increases, but investors typically factor in anticipated rises relatively quickly

–in bad times, it’s not great.  Customers may stop purchasing with little notice, sometimes walking away from contracts or renegotiating them sharply downward (using the threat of termination as leverage).  Offshore drilling rigs are an extreme example of feast/famine cyclicality

–because of cyclicality, PE multiples for mature firms with this structure tend to be low.  When such companies come to market, they tend to try to ride a wave of energy generated by previously successful IPOs–meaning that simply the appearance of their offering documents is a sign of potential overheating

WE

–in the case of WE, investor perception appears to be frosty.  This is partly because of what I’ve just written.  Also, from what I’ve heard and read, the 350+-page prospectus is not particularly illuminating (I’ve flicked through it but haven’t analyzed it myself)

 

investment implications

The arrival of the WE prospectus coincides with a sharp selloff in the shares of recent tech-related IPOs.

Two possible reasons:

Wall Street thinks that the marketing campaign for WE heralds the end of the line for the current IPO frenzy, on the argument that the underwriters would be presenting a higher quality offering if they had one.  This is what I think is going on.

The other possibility I see is the week-long, humorous but kind of scary Alabama weather discussion, an episode I think makes anyone question the mental stability of Mssrs. Trump and Ross.

In any event, given that some newly-listed tech names have fallen by a quarter or more over the past week or so, I think it’s time to sift through the ashes.

 

Having said that, I do suspect that a significant rotation away from these former market darlings, triggered by WE but based on valuation, is now underway. This will only mark a fundamentally new direction for the stock market if the tariff wars go away completely.  I don’t think this will happen.  So I’d buy a partial position now and hope to pick up more on further weakness.  Remember, too, that this is a highly speculative corner of the market, so it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.

 

 

shrinking bond yields ii

July 11, 2019 By in Bond Environment, bond market, stocks vs. bonds, Treasury bonds, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , 1 Comment

why look at bonds? 

If we’re stock market investors, why are we interested in bonds anyway?  It’s because at bottom we’re not really interested in stocks per se.  We’re interested in liquid publicly-traded securities–i.e., stocks, bonds and cash.  We’re interested in publicly-traded securities because we can almost always sell them in an instant, and because there’s usually enough information available about them that we can make an educated decision.

 

comparing bonds with stocks

bond yields, at yesterday’s close

One-month Treasury bills = 2.18%

Ten-year Treasury notes = 2.07%

30-year Treasury bonds = 2.57%.

S&P 500

Current dividend yield on the index = 1.7%.

 

According to Yardeni Research (a reputable firm, but one I chose because it was the first name up in my Google search), index earnings for calendar year 2019 are estimated to be about $166, earning for the coming 12 months, about $176.

Based on this, the S&P at 3000 means a PE ratio of 18.0 for calendar year 2019, and 17.0 for the 12 months ending June 2020.

Inverting those figures, we obtain an “earnings yield,” a number we can use to compare with bond yields–the main difference being that we get bond interest payments in our pockets while our notional share of company managers remains with them.

The 2019 figure earnings yield for the S&P is 5.6%; for the forward 12 months, it’s 5.8%.

the result

During my time in the stock market, there has typically been a relatively stable relationship between the earnings yield and 10-/30-year Treasury yields.  (The notable exception was the period just before the 2008-09 recession, when, as I see it, reported financials massively misstated the profitability of banks around the world.  So although there was a big mismatch between bond and stock yields, faulty SEC filings made this invisible.)

At present, the earnings yield is more than double the government bond yield.  This is very unusual.  Perhaps more significant, the yield on the 10-year Treasury is barely above the dividend yield on stocks, a level that, in my experience, is breached only at market bottoms.

Despite the apparently large overvaluation of bonds vs. stocks, there continues to be a steady outflow from US stock mutual funds and into bond funds.

the valuation gap

Using earnings yield vs coupon rationale outlined above, stocks are way cheaper than bonds.  How can this be?

–for years, part of world central banks’ efforts to repair the damage done by the financial crisis has been to inject money into circulation by buying government bonds.  This has pushed up bond prices/pushed down yields.  Private investors have also been acting as arbitrageurs, selling the lowest-yielding bonds and buying the highest (in this case meaning Treasuries).  This process compresses yields and lowers them overall.

–large numbers of retiring Baby Boomers are reallocating portfolios away from           stocks

–I presume, but don’t know enough about the inner workings of the bond market to be sure, that a significant number of bond professionals are shorting Treasuries and buying riskier, less liquid corporate bonds with the proceeds.  This will one day end in tears (think:  Long Term Capital), but likely not in the near future.

currency

To the extent that 1 and 3 involve foreigners, who have to buy dollars to get into the game, their activity puts at least some upward pressure on the US currency.  The dollar has risen by about 2.4% over the past year on a trade-weighted basis, and by about 3% against the yen and the euro.  That’s not much.  In fact, I was surprised when calculating these figures how little the dollar has appreciated, given the outcry from the administration and its pressure on the Fed to weaken the dollar by lowering the overnight money rate. (My guess is that our withdrawing from the TPP, tariff wars, and the tarnishing of our image as a democracy have, especially in the Pacific, done much more to damage demand for US goods than the currency.)

high-yielding stocks as a substitute for bonds?

I haven’t done any work, so I really don’t know.  I do know a number of fellow investors who have been following this idea for more than five years.  So my guess is that there aren’t many undiscovered bargains in this area.

 

my bottom line

I’m less concerned now about the message low bond yields are sending than I was before I started to write these posts.  I still think the valuation mismatch between stocks and bonds will eventually be a problem for both markets.  But my guess is that normalization, if that’s the right word, won’t start until the EU begins to repair the serious fissures in its structure.  Maybe this is a worry for 2020, maybe not even then.

It seems to me that the US stock market’s main economic concern remains the damage from Mr. Trump’s misguided effort to resuscitate WWII-era industries in the US.  The best defense will likely be cloud-oriented cash-generating software-based US multinationals.  (see the comments by a former colleague attached to yesterday’s post).