Tag Archives: Trading

oil? ebola? the dollar?–why stock prices have been falling

October 14, 2014 By in Consumer Staples, Current Market Thoughts, economics, emerging markets, Energy, EU financial crisis, Industry Analysis, Mining, oil and natural gas, Securities regulation, shale oil and gas Tags: , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

In many ways, stock market commentators have an unenviable task.  At any given moment they have to come up with new and interesting reasons why stocks are rising or falling.   The media gurus’ difficulties are compounded by the fact that most are story presenters who have little understanding of investing and are therefore reliant on sources whose statements are many times influenced by their own private agendas.

After peaking in mid-September, US stocks have fallen by about 7% through yesterday/  This has erased most of their year-to-date price gains, although with dividends factored in the S&P is still up about 4% since New Year’s Day.

Among the current “explanations’ for the fall are:

–a falling oil price.  I don’t think this makes sense.  It would be one thing if world GDP were turning negative and demand were sagging as a result.  The current issue, however, is oversupply, being caused by the rise of shale oil/gas production in the US.

Yes, 10% of the S&P 500 consists of oil-related stocks, many of which are hurt by lower prices.  But, to simplify a bit, the other 90% of the index is a beneficiary.  Lower prices are bad for oil-producing nations in the Middle East, for Russia and for the rest of OPEC.  But they’re great for consumers.

Another point:  today’s production contracts with national oil companies provide that virtually all revenue from oil price increases above a certain level goes to the host country, not to the international oil firm that is developing the petroleum deposits.  Although this has been true for decades, my sense is that many investors still don’t get this.  The dynamic is much more consumers gain/emerging countries lose than the consensus thinks.

–ebola.  More about this tomorrow.  Ebola is scary.  The only model we have for what happens to stocks once investors become aware of pandemic possibilities is SARS.  On the other hand, Doctors Without Borders has been handling ebola patients for many years without a single infection of their own.  In my view, stocks would be way lower than they are today if investors viewed ebola a real threat.

–the dollar.  This is an issue, although almost no one is talking about it. The US dollar has risen against the euro by almost 10% since early May.  In back-of-the-envelope terms, 25% of the earnings of the S&P 500 is sourced in euro.  A 10% fall in the dollar value of the euro means that overall S&P earnings–without factoring in current Euroland economic weakness–will be 2.5% lower than previously thought.  Discounting this outcome would explain about half the recent market decline.

my take:

–technicals.  At the peak a few weeks ago, stocks had already discounted all the S&P earnings growth that’s likely for 2014.  In addition, the market had already also factored into prices, let’s say, a third of the expected earnings growth for the index next year. This is normal market behavior, granted, though, that we haven’t seen “normal” for the better part of a decade.

By September, potential short-term buyers couldn’t justify paying higher prices for stocks.  In addition, euro weakness + a lot of other miscellaneous stuff had put 2015 profits under threat.

We’re now in the process of determining how low prices have to go to bring buyers back.

Looking at past levels where lots of buying and selling has taken place ends up being a surprisingly effective tool for figuring out where buying will emerge again.  Don’t ask me why.  If this rule of thumb holds true, as I read the charts the key levels are 1840-80 (i.e., where we are as I’m writing this) and 1800.

making it clearer who pays for investment research

September 3, 2014 By in How your broker gets paid, Investment firms, Portfolio management, sell-side analysts, soft dollars, Trading Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

paying for research information

Who pays for the investment research that professionals use in managing our money?

We do, of course.

But this happens in two ways, one of them not transparent at all.

management fees

–We pay management fees, out of which the management company pays for its portfolio managers and securities analysts.  That’s straightforward enough.

research commissions aka soft dollars

–We also permit, whether we know it or not, our managers to pay higher commissions, or to allow higher bid-asked spreads, on trades they do with our money.  They are so-called “research commissions” or “soft dollars.”  These are not so transparent.  It’s our money, and it does to pay for  the manager’s newspaper subscriptions, Bloomberg machines, brokerage research reports…

In 2007, there was a movement afoot in the US, spearheaded by Fidelity, to eliminate soft dollars and have management companies pay for all its research out of the management fee income paid by customers.  This effort fell victim to the recession.

EU financial authorities have now revived the idea.  They’re proposing to ban research commissions completely–that is, they will demand that investment managers obtain the lowest price and best execution on all trades–that is, they won’t permit a certain portion to be paid for at, say, double the going rate in return for access to the work of the brokerage house security analysts.

consequences

According to the Financial Times, smaller investment management firms could have their operating income cut in half if they had to pay for all the research they get out of their own pockets.

But that won’t happen.  Every investment manager, big or small, will go over the list of research providers with a fine tooth comb and eliminate sources whose value is unclear but who are being paid anyway because it’s “just” a soft dollar payment.

I think there will be three main consequences of European action:

1.  Pressure for the US to follow suit will be enormous.  Balking by US managers will open the door for UK-based specialists on the US market to gain business from domestic managers.

2.  Analysts who produce original research will be much more highly prized;  those who do more prosaic “maintenance” research will be replaced by robots (not a joke, more a question of how quickly).

3.  The overall size of sell-side research will continue to shrink, not just boutique firms but at the big brokers as well.

 

missing the boat on dark pools

July 2, 2014 By in dark pools Tags: , , , 1 Comment

Maybe it’s the name, as some have suggested, but for whatever reason electronic crossing networks for stock trading are being portrayed in the press as insidious devices that need a large dose of sunlight shone on them.

That’s not right.  Electronic crossing networks exist for a good reason  …two, actually.

why use a dark pool?

Suppose you’re the manager of the Fidelity Magellan Fund and want to sell your entire holding in Bank of America (BAC).  As of its end of May disclosure, that amounted to 25.2 million shares.

Here’s the plan:

–average daily trading volume for BAC on the exchanges is 60.6 million shares.  Let’s say you don’t want to be more than 10% of daily volume, so that your selling doesn’t disturb the market too much.  That means it will take you four days to trade out of the position.

That’s pretty straightforward.  The real trick is to keep your identity and intentions secret for as long as possible, so that news of your selling doesn’t reach potential buyers and cause them to lower their bids.  This may be doubly important if you have a reputation as a shrewd investor.  Worse still if you bought BAC at the bottom when others thought you were crazy: your selling may be taken as a strong sign that the party is over for that stock.  So the exit door may get pretty crowded if others find out what you’re doing.

call a broker?

In my experience, if you’re Fidelity, calling one of the big brokerage houses and placing a sell order, even for a small amount of stock, is not the best idea.  Within minutes, that broker’s proprietary trading desk will likely know about your order.  Shortly after that, so too will other brokers.  Everyone’s sales desks will then begin to call the trading arms of institutional clients, spreading the information.  After all, these guys make their money by generating lots of trading commissions, not by taking the best care of you.

…and lose outperformance?

In my view, good trading + the ability to keep your actions below Wall Street’s radar, can be worth 100 basis points in annual performance.  This is like gold in keeping your money management clients happy …and getting new ones.

try a crossing network

Preserving this treasure is why crossing networks were invented and why professional money managers want to do business through them.

the second reason

The SEC mandates that managers it supervises obtain the lowest possible trading cost.  That’s crossing networks.  In other words, all other things being equal, professional money managers (ex hedge funds) have a positive obligation to use them.

the Barclays case

Most investors don’t want high-speed traders in their crossing networks.  The latter’s computers can quickly detect unusual trading activity, which allows them to trade against this movement, both in and out of the dark pool.  Put another way, the element of secrecy, the key feature of the crossing network, is lost.

Barclays is accused, among other things, of running a dark pool whose largest participant was a high-speed trader while telling other participants no such damaging influence was present.

 

The big brokers are now saying the solution to the Barclays problem is to abolish dark pools.  Of course, I’m sure they’d also like to get rid of discount brokers and no-load funds as well.  But the real issue is alleged deceptive business practices by one of the big brokers themselves.  Eliminating alternatives to their trading desks is no solution.  If you’re not a borker, it’s crazy.

 

 

 

 

 

Fidelity’s dark pool proposal–why?

April 28, 2014 By in dark pools, the SEC, Trading Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

Recently, Fidelity, one of the largest money managers in the world, has been sending feelers out to its peers to form a private “dark pool” in which they could all trade anonymously.

What’s this all about?

I’m not sure who made up the name “dark pool.”  But it glamorizes a pretty mundane operation.  A dark pool is a computer-driven trading network where professional investors buy and sell securities with each other in a low-cost anonymous way.

They’re meant to solve two problems that every large investor like Fidelity who’s subject to SEC regulation in the US has:

–in trading securities for their clients,money managers are required to obtain the lowest cost in making any trade as well as the best execution of the order.  Best execution, which I take to mean the most favorable price, given the circumstances at the time of the trade, is a rather vague and contentious concept.  But lowest cost, meaning the lowest commission or bid/ask spread paid to get the trade accomplished, is relatively clear.

It’s also very clear that dealing with a third-party broker isn’t the lowest cost way of doing business.  Dealing directly with another institution through a computer trading network may cut commission/spread costs in half.  As a result, increasing amounts of trade is being done through dark pools so institutions can establish that they’re working to fulfil the lowest-cost legal mandate.

–any money manager wants to keep his trading activity as secret as possible.  After all, no one wants others to be freeriding on investment ideas that a manager has developed after long and expensive research efforts.

This is a particularly pressing issue for managers with large amounts of money under management, since such a manager will often have orders that are so big they can take, say, a month to execute–sometimes longer.  The trickiest part of such trading is keeping the manager’s activity secret for as long as possible.

Again, brokerage house trading operations for third parties are not a great way to go.  They tend to leak like sieves.  Part of this is a function of order size.  The broker may approach potentially interested parties.  As/when the size of the order becomes apparent, the other party may be able to guess the identity of the institution the broker represents.

There’s mre than that, however.  Information is also a valuable resource.  In my experience, most important clients of a broker–and the broker’s own proprietary trading desk–would know the general outlines of a Fidelity order within minutes of its being placed.  The broker might not use the Fidelity name, but the description ” a large institution in Boston” would leave little to the imagination.  The idea is that smaller clients will regard this as valuable information and will compensate the broker with increased trading commissions in return for continuing access.  (My tendency would be to do less business with a broker who acts this way, but apparently I’m in the minority.)

Dark pools, though sometimes illiquid, are one solution to this problem.

It turns out, though, that the dark pools also have their issues.  One that I find interesting is that to obtain liquidity dark pools may allow high frequency traders to participate.  And, it turns out, they have found “big data” ways to figure out which orders are Fidelity’s–and to use this information to trade against them.

Fidelity’s response is to try to form a dark pool that will consist only of institutional investors, without high frequency traders.  Such a setup might have issues of its own.  If there are only, say, four major members it may be that the trading intentions of the others will be obvious to all.  But, in Fidelity’s view at least, that would be better than the current situation.