Tag Archives: market timing

Buffett Lost $90 Billion By Not Following His Own Advice

Every year, investors anxiously await the release of Warren Buffett’s annual letter to see what the “Oracle of Omaha” has to say about the markets, economy, and where he is placing his money.

Before we blindly heed Buffett’s advice we must factor in that he has long been a source of contradiction. As Michael Lebowitz previously penned:

“The general platitudes of market and economic optimism Buffett shares in his CNBC interviews, letters to investors and shareholder meetings often run counter to the actions he has taken in his investment approach.

This year was no different as Buffett wrote in his annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders:

“If something close to current rates should prevail over the coming decades and if corporate tax rates also remain near the low level businesses now enjoy, it is almost certain that equities will over time perform far better than long-term, fixed-rate debt instruments. These elements, coupled with the ‘American Tailwind,’ will make ‘equities the much better long-term choice for the individual who does not use borrowed money and who can control his or her emotions.”

To clarify, Buffett is suggesting that over the coming decades, it will be better to be invested in equities (aka S&P 500 Index) versus Treasury bonds, given that the yield on bonds is so low.

That point doesn’t quite square with facts. Buffett is now holding his largest amount of cash in the history of the firm.

As the old saying goes: “Follow the money.” 

If Buffett thinks stocks will outperform bonds, then why is holding $128 billion in short term bonds?

There is an important distinction to be made if you choose to follow Mr. Buffett’s advice. It is true that stocks will outperform bonds over the long-term given the right starting valuations and a long enough time frame. Currently, using Warren Buffett’s favorite measure of valuations (Market Capitalization to GDP), there is a substantial risk of low returns from stocks over the next decade.

While valuations DO NOT predict market crashes, they are very predictive of future returns on investments from current levels.

Period.

I previously quoted Cliff Asness on this issue in particular:

“Ten-year forward average returns fall nearly monotonically as starting Shiller P/E’s increase. Also, as starting Shiller P/E’s go up, worst cases get worse and best cases get weaker.

If today’s Shiller P/E is 30x, and your long-term plan calls for a 10% nominal return on the stock market, you are assuming a best case scenario to play out in a market that is drastically above the average case from these valuations. We can prove that by looking at forward 10-year total returns versus various levels of PE ratios historically.

Importantly, this is likely the reason that Buffett is sitting on $128 billion in historically low yielding bonds. The graph below provides further evidence using his favorite valuation indicator, market cap to GDP.

Not surprisingly, like every other measure of valuation, forward return expectations are substantially lower over the next 10-years as opposed to the past 10-years.

“Price is what you pay, value is what you get.” – Warren Buffett

Do What I Say, Not What I Do

So the question is this:

“If Warren is suggesting you should just invest in the index and hold on, why is he sitting on so much cash?”

The immediate observation is that he is just waiting on a “good deal” to come along. He has been vocal about looking for a new acquisition. However, he hasn’t done so. Why, “valuations”  are sky high.

Unfortunately, “good deals” based on valuations, and market crashes, have typically been highly correlated throughout history. As he said in his letter:

“Anything can happen to stock prices tomorrow. Occasionally, there will be major drops in the market, perhaps of 50% magnitude or even greater.”

Interestingly, while Buffett has been telling everyone else to buy a stock index, and avoid bonds, he has been doing exactly the opposite by “buying bonds.”

Make no mistake, Buffett is indeed a great investor, and has made a tremendous amount of money for his shareholders over the years. One of the reasons for this is that at times of market excesses he has preferred holding cash.At the time he is leaving money on the table, but that cash can be deployed when markets are panicking and value appears. Remember, Buffett had cash on hand in 2008 to lend to Goldman Sachs at 10%.

The downside to holding cash is that performance of Berkshire Hathaway is no longer outperforming the S&P in recent years. This is due to the shear “size” of the company as Buffett no longer has the luxury of making small value-based acquisitions of a few hundred million in value. Such acquisitions don’t “move the needle” in terms of returns for shareholders. Berkshire has grown to the point it has essentially become an index itself.

The chart below shows Buffett’s annual cash holdings versus the S&P 500 ($SPY) over the last several years.

So, what would have happened if Buffett had taken his own advice and invested his cash into the S&P 500 index rather than bonds. The index is highly liquid, so he could have sold the index at any time he needed cash for an acquisition, and the shares could have been lent out for an additional return on his investment.

However, the chart below shows the difference in market cap of the Berkshire Hathaway currently, with the cash invested in the S&P 500 index, as compared to the returns of the S&P 500 index. Not surprisingly, returns to shareholders improved over the last decade.

While it may not look like much on a percentage basis, the cumulative return lost to Berkshire Shareholders over the last decade was roughly $90 Billion dollars.

Or rather, a $1000 investment in 2010 would have grown to nearly $4000 versus just $3500.

Summary

As Michael Lebowitz previously wrote:

“Warren Buffett is without question the modern day icon of American investors. He has become a living legend, and the respect he receives is warranted. He has certainly been a remarkable steward of wealth for himself and his clients.

Where we are challenged with regard to his approach, is the way in which he shirks his responsibilities as a leader. To our knowledge, he is not being overtly dishonest but he certainly has a way of rationalizing what appears to be obvious contradictions. Because of his global following and the weight given to each word he utters, the fact that his actions often do not match the spirit of his words is troubling.”

Warren Buffett did not amass his fortune by following the herd but by leading it.

He is sitting on a $128 Billion in cash for a reason. Buffett is fully aware of the gains he has forgone, yet still continues his ways. Buffet is not dumb!

Before taking his advice to buy an index and hold on, you may want to consider more carefully why he is telling you to “do as I say, not as I do.” 

Market Bubbles: It’s Not The Price, It’s The Mentality.

“Actually, one of the dangers is that people could be throwing risk to the wind and this [market] could be a runaway. We sometimes call that a melt-up and produces prices too high and then if there’s a shock, you come down to Earth and that could impact sentiment. I think this market is fully valued and not undervalued, but I don’t think it’s overvalued,” Jeremy Siegel

Here is an interesting thing.

“Market bubbles have NOTHING to do with valuations or fundamentals.”

Hold on…don’t start screaming “heretic,” and building gallows just yet.

Let me explain.

I can’t entirely agree with Siegel on the market being “fairly valued.” As shown in the chart below, the S&P 500 is currently trading nearly 90% above its long-term median, which is expensive from a historical perspective.

However, since stock market “bubbles” are a reflection of speculation, greed, emotional biases; valuations are only a reflection of those emotions.

In other words, bubbles can exist even at times when valuations and fundamentals might argue otherwise. Let me show you an elementary example of what I mean. The chart below is the long-term valuation of the S&P 500 going back to 1871.

Notice that with the exception of only 1929, 2000, and 2007, every other major market crash occurred with valuations at levels LOWER than they are currently. 

Secondly, all market crashes have been the result of things unrelated to valuation levels such as liquidity issues, government actions, monetary policy mistakes, recessions, or inflationary spikes. Those events were the catalyst, or trigger, that started the “reversion in sentiment” by investors.

For Every Buyer

You will commonly hear that “for every buyer, there must be a seller.”

This is a true statement. The issue becomes at “what price.” What moves prices up and down, in a normal market environment, is the price level at which a buyer and seller complete a transaction.

Market crashes are an “emotionally” driven imbalance in supply and demand.

In a market crash, the number of people wanting to “sell” vastly overwhelms the number of people willing to “buy.” It is at these moments that prices drop precipitously as “sellers” drop the levels at which they are willing to dump their shares in a desperate attempt to find a “buyer.” This has nothing to do with fundamentals. It is strictly an emotional panic, which is ultimately reflected by a sharp devaluation in market fundamentals.

Bob Bronson once penned:

“It can be most reasonably assumed that markets are sufficient enough that every bubble is significantly different than the previous one, and even all earlier bubbles. In fact, it’s to be expected that a new bubble will always be different than the previous one(s) since investors will only bid up prices to extreme overvaluation levels if they are sure it is not repeating what led to the last, or previous bubbles. Comparing the current extreme overvaluation to the dotcom is intellectually silly.

I would argue that when comparisons to previous bubbles become most popular – like now – it’s a reliable timing marker of the top in a current bubble. As an analogy, no matter how thoroughly a fatal car crash is studied, there will still be other fatal car crashes in the future, even if the previous accident-causing mistakes are avoided.”

Comparing the current market to any previous period in the market is rather pointless. The current market is not like 1995, 1999, or 2007? Valuations, economics, drivers, etc. are all different from cycle to the next. Most importantly, however, the financial markets adapt to the cause of the previous “fatal crashes,” but that adaptation won’t prevent the next one.

It’s All Relative

Last week, in our MacroView, I touched on George Soros’ theory on bubbles, which is worth expanding a bit on in the context of this article.

Financial markets, far from accurately reflecting all the available knowledge, always provide a distorted view of reality. The degree of distortion may vary from time to time. Sometimes it’s quite insignificant, at other times it is quite pronounced. When there is a significant divergence between market prices and the underlying reality, the markets are far from equilibrium conditions.

Every bubble has two components:

  1. An underlying trend that prevails in reality, and; 
  2. A misconception relating to that trend.

When positive feedback develops between the trend and the misconception, a boom-bust process is set into motion. The process is liable to be tested by negative feedback along the way, and if it is strong enough to survive these tests, both the trend and the misconception will be reinforced. Eventually, market expectations become so far removed from reality that people are forced to recognize that a misconception is involved. A twilight period ensues during which doubts grow, and more people lose faith, but the prevailing trend is sustained by inertia.

As Chuck Prince, former head of Citigroup, said, ‘As long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance. We are still dancing.’ Eventually, a tipping point is reached when the trend is reversed; it then becomes self-reinforcing in the opposite direction.”

Typically bubbles have an asymmetric shape. The boom is long and slow to start. It accelerates gradually until it flattens out again during the twilight period. The bust is short and steep because it involves the forced liquidation of unsound positions.

The chart below is an example of asymmetric bubbles.

The pattern of bubbles is interesting because it changes the argument from a fundamental view to a technical view. Prices reflect the psychology of the market, which can create a feedback loop between the markets and fundamentals.

This pattern of bubbles can be seen at every bull market peak in history. The chart below utilizes Dr. Robert Shiller’s stock market data going back to 1900 on an inflation-adjusted basis with an overlay of the asymmetrical bubble shape.

As Soro’s went on to state:

Financial markets do not play a purely passive role; they can also affect the so-called fundamentals they are supposed to reflect. These two functions, that financial markets perform, work in opposite directions.

  • In the passive or cognitive function, the fundamentals are supposed to determine market prices. 
  • In the active or manipulative function market, prices find ways of influencing the fundamentals. 

When both functions operate at the same time, they interfere with each other. The supposedly independent variable of one function is the dependent variable of the other, so that neither function has a truly independent variable. As a result, neither market prices nor the underlying reality is fully determined. Both suffer from an element of uncertainty that cannot be quantified.”

Currently, there is a strong belief the financial markets are not in a bubble, and the arguments supporting that belief are based on comparisons to past market bubbles.

It is likely that in a world where there is virtually “no fear” of a market correction, an overwhelming sense of “urgency” to be invested, and a continual drone of “bullish chatter;” the markets are poised for the unexpected, unanticipated, and inevitable event.

Reflections

When thinking about excess, it is easy to see the reflections of excess in various places. Not just in asset prices but also in “stuff.” All financial assets are just claims on real wealth, not actual wealth itself. A pile of money has use and utility because you can buy stuff with it. But real wealth is the “stuff” — food, clothes, land, oil, and so forth.  If you couldn’t buy anything with your money/stocks/bonds, their worth would revert to the value of the paper they’re printed on (if you’re lucky enough to hold an actual certificate). 

But trouble begins when the system gets seriously out of whack.

“GDP” is a measure of the number of goods and services available and financial asset prices represent the claims (it’s not a very accurate measure of real wealth, but it’s the best one we’ve got.) Notice the divergence of asset prices from GDP as excesses develop.

What we see is that the claims on the economy should, quite intuitively, track the economy itself. Excesses occur whenever the claims on the economy, the so-called financial assets (stocks, bonds, and derivatives), get too far ahead of the economy itself.

This is a very important point. 

“The claims on the economy are just that: claims. They are not the economy itself!”

Take a step back from the media, and Wall Street commentary, for a moment and make an honest assessment of the financial markets today.

The increase in speculative risks, combined with excess leverage, leave the markets vulnerable to a sizable correction at some point in the future. The only missing ingredient for such a correction is the catalyst to bring “fear” into an overly complacent marketplace.  

It is all reminiscent of the market peak of 1929 when Dr. Irving Fisher uttered his now famous words: “Stocks have now reached a permanently high plateau.” 

This “time IS different.” 

However, “this time” is only different from the standpoint the variables are not exactly the same as they have been previously. The variables never are, but the outcome is always the same.

The Next Decade: Valuations & The Destiny Of Low Returns

Jani Ziedins via Cracked Market recently penned an interesting post:

“As for what comes next, is this bull market tired? Is a crash long overdue? Not if you look at history. Stocks rallied for nearly 20 years between the early 1980s and the late 1990s. By that measure, we could easily see another decade of strong gains before the next “Big One”. Of course, the worst day in stock market history happened during that 20-year bull market in 1987, so we cannot be complacent. But the prognosis for the next 10 years is still good even if we run into a few 20% corrections along the way.”

After a decade of strong, liquidity-driven, post-crisis returns in the financial markets, investors are hopeful the next decade will deliver the same, or better. As Bob Farrell once quipped:

“Bull markets are more fun than bear markets.” 

However, from an investment standpoint, the real question is:

“Can the next decade deliver above average returns, or not?”

Lower Returns Ahead?

Brian Livingston, via MarketWatch, previously wrote an article on the subject of valuation measures and forward returns.

“Stephen Jones, a financial and economic analyst who works in New York City, tracks the formulas that several market wizards have disclosed. He recently updated his numbers through Dec. 31, 2018, and shared them with me. Buffett, Shiller, and the other boldface names had nothing to do with Jones’s calculations. He crunched the financial celebrities’ formulas himself, based on their public statements.

“The graph above doesn’t show the S&P 500’s price levels. Instead, it reveals how well the projection methods estimated the market’s 10-year rate of return in the past. The round markers on the right are the forecasts for the 10 years that lie ahead of us. All of the numbers for the S&P 500 include dividends but exclude the consumer-price index’s inflationary effect on stock prices.”

  • Shiller’s P/E10 predicts a +2.6% annualized real total return.
  • Buffett’s MV/GDP says -2.0%.
  • Tobin’s “q” ratio indicates -0.5%.
  • Jones’s Composite says -4.1%.

(Jones uses Buffett’s formula but adjusts for demographic changes.) 

Here is the important point:

“The predictions might seem far apart, but they aren’t. The forecasts are all much lower than the S&P 500’s annualized real total return of about 6% from 1964 through 2018.”

While these are not guarantees, and should never be used to try and “time the market,” they are historically strong predictors of future returns.

As Jones notes:

“The market’s return over the past 10 years,” Jones explains, “has outperformed all major forecasts from 10 years prior by more than any other 10-year period.”

Of course, as noted above, this is due to the unprecedented stimulation the Federal Reserve pumped into the financial markets. Regardless, markets have a strong tendency to revert to their average performance over time, which is not nearly as much fun as it sounds.

The late Jack Bogle, founder of Vanguard, also noted some concern from high valuations:

“The valuations of stocks are, by my standards, rather high, butmy standards, however, are high.”

When considering stock valuations, Bogle’s method differs from Wall Street’s. For his price-to-earnings multiple, Bogle uses the past 12-months of reported earnings by corporations, GAAP earnings, which includes “all of the bad stuff.” Wall Street analysts look at operating earnings, “earnings without all that bad stuff,” and come up with a price-to-earnings multiple of something in the range of 17 or 18, versus current real valuations which are pushing nearly 30x earnings.

“If you believe the way we look at it, much more realistically I think, the P/E is relatively high. I believe strongly that [investors] should be realizing valuations are fairly full, and if they are nervous they could easily sell off a portion of their stocks.” – Jack Bogle

These views are vastly different than the optimistic views currently being bantered about for the next decade.

However, this is where an important distinction needs to be made.

Starting Valuations Matter Most

What Jani Ziedins missed in his observation was the starting level of valuations which preceded those 20-year “secular bull markets.”  This was a point I made previously:

“The chart below shows the history of secular bull market periods going back to 1871 using data from Dr. Robert Shiller. One thing you will notice is that secular bull markets tend to begin with CAPE 10 valuations around 10x earnings or even less. They tend to end around 23-25x earnings or greater. (Over the long-term valuations do matter.)”

The two previous 20-year secular bull markets begin with valuations in single digits. At the end of the first decade of those secular advances, valuations were still trading below 20x.

The 1920-1929 secular advance most closely mimics the current 2010 cycle. While valuations started below 5x earnings in 1919, they eclipsed 30x earnings ten-years later in 1929. The rest, as they say, is history. Or rather, maybe “past is prologue” is more fitting.

Low Returns Mean High Volatility

When low future rates of return are discussed, it is not meant that each year will be low, but rather the return for the entire period will be low. The chart below shows 10-year rolling REAL, inflation-adjusted, returns in the markets. (Note: Spikes in 10-year returns, which occurred because the 50% decline in 2008 dropped out of the equation, has previously denoted peaks in forward annual returns.)

(Important note: Many advisers/analysts often pen that the market has never had a 10 or 20-year negative return. That is only on a nominal basis and should be disregarded as inflation must be included in the debate.)

There are two important points to take away from the data.

  1. There are several periods throughout history where market returns were not only low, but negative.(Given that most people only have 20-30 functional years to save for retirement, a 20-year low return period can devastate those plans.)
  2. Periods of low returns follow periods of excessive market valuations and encompass the majority of negative return years. (Read more about this chart here)

“Importantly, it is worth noting that negative returns tend to cluster during periods of declining valuations. These ‘clusters’ of negative returns are what define ‘secular bear markets.’” 

While valuations are often dismissed in the short-term because there is not an immediate impact on price returns. Valuations, by their very nature, are HORRIBLE predictors of 12-month returns and should never be used in any investment strategy which has such a focus. However, in the longer term, valuations are strong predictors of expected returns.

The chart below shows Dr. Robert Shiller’s cyclically adjusted P/E ratio combined with Tobin’s Q-ratio. Again, valuations only appear cheap when compared to the peak in 2000. Outside of that exception, the financial markets are, without question, expensive. 

Furthermore, note that forward 10-year returns do NOT improve from historically expensive valuations, but decline rather sharply.

Warren Buffett’s favorite valuation measure is also screaming valuation concerns (which may explain why he is sitting on $128 billion in cash.). The following measure is the price of the Wilshire 5000 market capitalization level divided by GDP. Again, as noted above, asset prices should be reflective of underlying economic growth rather than the “irrational exuberance” of investors. 

Again, with this indicator at the highest valuation level in history, it is a bit presumptuous to assume that forward returns will continue to remain elevated,.

Bull Now, Pay Later

In the short-term, the bull market continues as the flood of liquidity, and accommodative actions, from global Central Banks, has lulled investors into a state of complacency rarely seen historically. As Richard Thaler, the famous University of Chicago professor who won the Nobel Prize in economics stated:

We seem to be living in the riskiest moment of our lives, and yet the stock market seems to be napping. I admit to not understanding it.

I don’t know about you, but I’m nervous, and it seems like when investors are nervous, they’re prone to being spooked. Nothing seems to spook the market.”

While market analysts continue to come up with a variety of rationalizations to justify high valuations, none of them hold up under real scrutiny. The problem is the Central Bank interventions boost asset prices in the short-term, in the long-term, there is an inherently negative impact on economic growth. As such, it leads to the repetitive cycle of monetary policy.

  1. Using monetary policy to drag forward future consumption leaves a larger void in the future that must be continually refilled.
  2. Monetary policy does not create self-sustaining economic growth and therefore requires ever larger amounts of monetary policy to maintain the same level of activity.
  3. The filling of the “gap” between fundamentals and reality leads to consumer contraction and ultimately a recession as economic activity recedes.
  4. Job losses rise, wealth effect diminishes and real wealth is destroyed. 
  5. Middle class shrinks further.
  6. Central banks act to provide more liquidity to offset recessionary drag and restart economic growth by dragging forward future consumption. 
  7. Wash, Rinse, Repeat.

If you don’t believe me, here is the evidence.

The stock market has returned more than 125% since 2007 peak, which is roughly 3x the growth in corporate sales and 5x more than GDP.

It is critical to remember the stock market is NOT the economy. The stock market should be reflective of underlying economic growth which drives actual revenue growth. Furthermore, GDP growth and stock returns are not highly correlated. In fact, some analysis suggests that they are negatively correlated and perhaps fairly strongly so (-0.40).

However, in the meantime, the promise of another decade of a continued bull market is very enticing as the “fear of missing out” overrides the “fear of loss.”

Let me conclude with this quote from Vitaliy Katsenelson which sums up our investing view:

Our goal is to win a war, and to do that we may need to lose a few battles in the interim.

Yes, we want to make money, but it is even more important not to lose it. If the market continues to mount even higher, we will likely lag behind. The stocks we own will become fully valued, and we’ll sell them. If our cash balances continue to rise, then they will. We are not going to sacrifice our standards and thus let our portfolio be a byproduct of forced or irrational decisions.

We are willing to lose a few battles, but those losses will be necessary to win the war. Timing the market is an impossible endeavor. We don’t know anyone who has done it successfully on a consistent and repeated basis. In the short run, stock market movements are completely random – as random as you’re trying to guess the next card at the blackjack table.”

For long-term investors, the reality that a clearly overpriced market will eventually mean revert should be a clear warning sign. Given the exceptionally high probability the next decade will be disappointing, gambling your financial future on a 100% stock portfolio is likely not advisable.

The 5-Laws Of Human Stupidity & How To Be A “Non-Stupid” Investor

This past weekend, I was digging through some old articles and ran across one that needed to be readdressed on “human stupidity” as it relates to investing.

The background was a study done in 1976 by a professor of economic history at the University of California, Berkeley. Carol M. Cipolla published an essay outlining the fundamental laws of a force he perceived as humanity’s greatest existential threat: Stupidity.

Stupid people, according to Cipolla, share several identifying traits:

  • they are abundant,
  • they are irrational, and;
  • they cause problems for others without apparent benefit to themselves

The result is that “stupidity” lowers society’s total well-being and there are no defenses against stupidity. According to Cipolla:

“The only way a society can avoid being crushed by the burden of its idiots is if the non-stupid work even harder to offset the losses of their stupid brethren.”

Of course, if we look at the world around us today, watch or read the diatribe produced by financial and news outlets, or pay attention to politics, it certainly seems that since the advent of the “smartphone” and “social media” the percentage of “stupidity” has clearly risen. (Either that, or we are just more aware of the massive amount of “stupidity” around us. Thankfully, it seems to be contained primarily in Florida.)

We can’t really do much about the seemingly rising level of “general stupidity,” however, we can apply Cipolla’s five basic laws of human stupidity to investing and the mistakes investors repeatedly make over time.

Law 1: Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.

“No matter how many idiots you suspect yourself surrounded by you are invariably low-balling the total.” – Cipolla

In investing, the problem of investor “stupidity” is compounded by a variety of biased assumptions that are made.  Individuals assume that when the media publishes something, the superficial factors like the commentator’s job, education level, or other traits suggest they can’t possibly be stupid. We, therefore, attach credibility to their opinion as long as it confirms our own.

This is called “confirmation bias.”

If we believe the stock market is going to rise, then we tend only to seek out news and information that supports our view. This confirmation bias is a primary driver of the psychological investing cycle of individuals as shown below. I discussed this previously in why “Media Headlines Will Lead You To Ruin.”

As individuals, we want “affirmation” our current thought processes are correct. As human beings, we hate being told we are wrong, so we tend to seek out sources that tell us we are “right.”

This is why “social media” has become such a pervasive problem in the spread of misinformation as individuals huddle into their own “echo chambers” which excludes both intelligent debates and, in many cases, actual facts. It is always important to consider both sides of every debate equally and analyze the data accordingly. Being right and making money are not mutually exclusive.

Law 2: The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.

Cipolla posits stupidity is a variable that remains constant across all populations. Every category one can imagine—gender, race, nationality, education level, income—possesses a fixed percentage of stupid people.

When it comes to investing, ALL investors, individual and professionals, are subject to making “stupid” decisions. As I discussed recently:

“A recent survey from Ally Invest showed much the same:

‘The bullish sentiment by investors, which doubled between Q1 and Q2 of this year, appears, in part, supported by the majority of respondents’ belief that interest rates will remain unchanged this year (67%) and the government will sign economic trade agreements that will help drive the markets higher (61%).

Other major market drivers cited by respondents include positive year-over-year earnings (26%), low unemployment rate (24%), lack of inflation (18%), and tax reform (15%).’

E*Trade also recently released survey data showing:

  • Bullish sentiment returns. Bullishness rose 12 percentage points since last quarter to once again represent the majority of investors at 58 percent.
  • Investors believe there’s more room for the bull market to run. Two-thirds of investors say they think the bull market has a year or more to go (66%), up seven percentage points from last quarter.
  • The majority gave the US economy a passing grade. Investors who gave the economy an “A” or “B” grade rose 9 percentage points this quarter, to 64%.
  • Volatility concerns remain. Investors who believe volatility will stay the same was up by 8 percentage points from Q1.

You get the idea. Just 8-weeks after panic selling lows in December of 2018, investors are once again “back in the pool.”

Though we are often unconscious of the action, humans tend to “go with the crowd.” Much of this behavior relates back to “confirmation” of our decisions but also the need for acceptance. The thought process is rooted in the belief that if “everyone else” is doing something, then if I want to be accepted, I need to do it too.

In life, “conforming” to the norm is socially accepted and in many ways expected. However, in the financial markets, the “herding” behavior is what drives market excesses during advances and declines.

As Howard Marks once stated:

“Resisting – and thereby achieving success as a contrarian – isn’t easy. Things combine to make it difficult; including natural herd tendencies and the pain imposed by being out of step, since momentum invariably makes pro-cyclical actions look correct for a while. (That’s why it’s essential to remember that ‘being too far ahead of your time is indistinguishable from being wrong.’

Given the uncertain nature of the future, and thus the difficulty of being confident your position is the right one – especially as price moves against you – it’s challenging to be a lonely contrarian.

Moving against the “herd” is where the most profits are generated by investors in the long term. The difficulty for most individuals, unfortunately, is knowing when to “bet” against those who are being “stupid.”

Law 3. A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.

Consistent stupidity is the only consistent thing about the stupid. This is what makes stupid people so dangerous. As Cipolla explains:

“Essentially stupid people are dangerous and damaging because reasonable people find it difficult to imagine and understand unreasonable behavior.

Throughout history, investors are constantly drawn into investment strategies, promoted by a wide variety of “industry professionals,” which ultimately leads to losses in the end. This point was clearly made in a recent article by Jason Zweig entitled: “Whatever You Do, Don’t Read This Column.”

“Investors believe the darnedest things.

In one survey, wealthy individuals said they expect their portfolios to earn a long-run average of 8.5% annually after inflation. With bonds yielding roughly 2.5%, a typical stock-and-bond portfolio would need stocks to grow at 12.5% annually in order to hit that overall 8.5% target. Net of fees and inflation, that would require approximately doubling the 7% annual gain stocks have produced over the long term.

Individuals aren’t the only investors who believe in the improbable. One in six institutional investors, in another survey, projected gains of more than 20% annually on their investments in venture capital — even though such funds, on average, have underperformed the stock market for much of the 2000s.

Although almost nothing is impossible in the financial markets, these expectations are so far-fetched they border on fantasy.”

Cipolla is absolutely right, and despite the historical realities of investing, both the individual and the professional will ultimately suffer losses. As shown in the chart below, there is no evidence which shows markets can compound high levels of growth rates from current valuation levels. (For more detail on forward returns read “Valuations Matter”)

There is a massive difference between AVERAGE and ACTUAL returns on invested capital. The impact of losses, in any given year, destroys the annualized “compounding” effect of money.

“Unless you have contracted ‘vampirism,’ then you do NOT have 90, 100, or more, years to invest to gain “average historical returns.” Given that most investors do not start seriously saving for retirement until the age of 35, or older, they have about 30-35 years to reach their goals. If that period happens to include a 12-15 year period in which returns are flat, as history tells us is probable, then the odds of achieving their goals are severely diminished.

What drives those 12-15 year periods of flat to little return? Valuations.

Just remember, a 20-year period of one-percent returns is indistinguishable from ZERO with respect to meeting savings goals.”

Individuals who experienced either one, or both, of the last two bear markets, now understand the importance of “time” relating to their investment goals. Individuals that were close to retirement in either 2000, or 2007, and failed to navigate the subsequent market draw downs have had to postpone their retirement plans, potentially indefinitely.

But yet despite the losses incurred by both professionals and individuals, just a decade after the largest financial crisis since the “Great Depression,” individuals are piling on excessive risk once again under the guise “this time is different.” 

Talk about stupid.

Despite the mainstream media’s consistent drivel investors should just “passively index” and forget about actually managing the risk of catastrophic capital loss, the reality is that investors “buy high and sell low” for a reason.

“Greed” and “Fear” are far more powerful in driving our investment decisions versus “Logic” and “Discipline.” 

As Jason states:

“The traditional explanations for believing in an investing tooth fairy who will leave money under your pillow are optimism and overconfidence: Hope springs eternal, and each of us thinks we’re better than the other investors out there.

There’s another reason so many investors believe in magic: We can’t handle the truth.”

All of which leads us to:

Law 4: Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake.

Lot’s of “non-stupid people” are currently suggesting the next correctionary event will be mild, most likely no more than 20%. The idea is based upon the belief the Federal Reserve, and Central Banks globally, will quickly come to the rescue of a failing market and investors will quickly react by once again jumping back into the market.

However, as we have seen repeatedly throughout history, “stupid” people tend to do exactly the opposite during a crisis than what “non-stupid” people expect.

Then there are the “perennial bulls” who keep telling investors to “hang on, keep putting money in, you’re a long-term investor, right?” These are the ones who never see the bear market destruction until well after the fact and then simply say “well, no one could have seen that coming.” 

Non-stupid people are conservative. They analyze the risk of loss and conserve capital during declines. Make sure you are surrounding yourself with those that understand the “math of loss.” 

As Howard Marks stated above, sometimes being a contrarian is lonely.

When we underestimate the stupid, we do so at our own peril.

This brings us to the fifth and final law:

Law 5: A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.

Following the “herd,” has always ended badly for investors. In every full-market cycle, there is an inevitable belief “this time is different” for one reason or another.

It isn’t. It has never been. And this time will not be different either.

However, what has always separated out the great investors from everyone else, is they have acted independently of the “herd.” They have a discipline, a strategy and a driving will to succeed.

They don’t “buy and hold.” They buy cheap and sell expensive. They avoid losses at all costs and they deeply understand the relationship of risk to reward.

They are the “non-stupid.”

These are the ones you want to follow.

Not the ones screaming at you on television telling you to “buy, buy, buy.”

Just remember that for every full-market cycle our job is to not only participate in the first-half of the cycle as prices rise, but to avoid the avoid the devastation during the second-half.

“Non-stupid” investors don’t spend a bulk of their time getting back to even.

“Getting back to even” is an investing strategy better left to the “herd.”

Technically Speaking: The 80/20 Rule Of Investing

Over the weekend, I discussed the market’s breakout to the upside and the increase in equity exposure in client’s portfolios. As I stated:

The short-term analysis of the market remains broadly positive with both the ongoing bullish trend and recent break above 2500 remaining intact through the close on Friday. 

As shown below, the market is pushing a short-term ‘buy’ signal. However, now at 2-standard deviations above the 75-dma, as seen previously, the market likely has limited upside from here.”

“The breakout, of course, was driven by continued hopes of tax cuts/reforms from the White House as details of the latest proposal from the House Ways and Means Committee were released this week.

More importantly, since the March 9th, 2009 lows, the bull market has surged more than 268% with no decline greater than 20% along the way. Importantly, the correction in early 2016, did not violate the trend line from the 2011 lows which keeps the current market defined to a singular bull market.”


Buying Because I Have To. You Don’t.

After discussing that we had increased exposure to portfolios last week due to the breakout, and added new money, I received several emails questioning the move. To wit:

“With the markets clearly overvalued, and as you say, excessively extended and bullish, why are you buying? As you have often stated, the risk of loss outweighs potential return.” 

That is absolutely correct.

However, there is a difference between views of long-term fundamentally driven potential outcomes and short-term emotionally driven realities.

Importantly, as a portfolio manager, I am buying the breakout because I have to. If I don’t, I suffer career risk, plain and simple.

However, you don’t have to. If you are truly a long-term investor, you have to question the risk being undertaken to achieve further returns in the market.

Think about it this way.

As noted in the chart above, the markets have returned more than 260% since the 2009 lows in the second-longest bull market on record. Yes, it is still just one bull market.

Assuming that you were astute enough to buy the “cherry picked” low, and didn’t spend the bulk of the bull market rally simply getting back to even, you would have accumulated years of excess returns towards meeting your retirement goals. 

If you went to cash now, the odds are EXTREMELY high that in the years ahead you will far outpace investors who remain invested. Sure, they may get an edge on you in the short-term, and chastise you for “missing out,”  but when the next “mean reverting event” occurs the decline will destroy most, if not all, of the returns accumulated over the last 9-years.

So, if you buy the “breakout,” do so carefully. Keep stop losses in place and be prepared to sell if things go wrong.

For now, things are certainly weighted towards the bullish camp, however, such will not always be the case.


How To Add Exposure

I have also received quite a few emails asking how to add exposure to the market, particularly if in a large cash position currently. The answer is more in line with the age-old question:

“How do you pick up a porcupine? Carefully.”

Here are some guidelines to follow:

  1. Move slowly. There is no rush in adding equity exposure to your portfolio. Use pullbacks to previous support levels to make adjustments.
  1. If you are heavily UNDER-weight equities, DO NOT try and fully adjust your portfolio to your target allocation in one move.This could be disastrous if the market reverses sharply in the short term. Again, move slowly.
  1. Begin by selling laggards and losers. These positions are dragging on performance as the market rises and tend to lead when markets fall. Like “weeds choking a garden,” pull them.
  1. Add to sectors, or positions, that are performing with, or outperforming, the broader market. (See last week’s analysis for suggestions.)
  1. Move “stop loss” levels up to current breakout levels for each position. Managing a portfolio without “stop loss” levels is like driving with your eyes closed.
  1. While the technical trends are intact, risk considerably outweighs the reward. If you are not comfortable with potentially having to sell at a LOSS what you just bought, then wait for a larger correction to add exposure more safely. There is no harm in waiting for the “fat pitch” as the current market setup is not one.
  1. If none of this makes any sense to you – please consider hiring someone to manage your portfolio for you. It will be worth the additional expense over the long term.

The “Rothschild 80/20” Rule

When discussing portfolio management, it is often suggested that you can’t “time the market.”

That statement is correct.

You can not effectively, and repetitively, get “in” and “out” of the market on a timely fashion. I have never suggested that an investor should try and do this. However, I HAVE discussed managing risk by adjusting market exposure at times when “risk” outweighs the potential for further “reward.”

While I am often tagged as ‘bearish’ due to my analysis of economic and fundamental data for ‘what it is’ rather than ‘what I hope it to be,’ I am actually neither bullish or bearish. I follow a very simple set of rules which are the core of my portfolio management philosophy which focuses on capital preservation and long-term ‘risk-adjusted’ return.”

Here is my point. As a long-term investor, I don’t need to worry about short-term rallies. I only need to worry about the direction of the overall market trends and focus on capturing the positive and avoiding the negative.

As Baron Nathan Rothschild once quipped:

“You can have the top 20% and the bottom 20%, I will take the 80% in the middle.”

This is the basis of the 80/20 investment philosophy and the driver behind the risk management process.

While you may not beat the market from one year to the next, you will never have to suffer the “time loss” required to “get back to even.” In the long run, you will win.

As shown in the table below, a $100,000 investment in the S&P 500 returns a far lower value than the “Rothschild 80/20 Rule” model. This is even if I include a ridiculous 2% management fee.

Here is a chart to illustrate the deviation more effectively. (Capital appreciation only.)

Yes, it’s only a bit more than a hundred thousand dollars worth of difference, but the reduced levels of volatility allowed investors to emotionally “stick” to their discipline over time. Furthermore, by minimizing the drawdowns, assets are allowed to truly “compound” over the long-term.

An easy way to apply this principle is to use a simple moving average crossover. In the chart below, you are long equities which the S&P 500 index is above the 12-month moving average, and you switch to bonds when the S&P 500 falls below the 12-month average.

No, it’s not perfect every time. But no measure of risk management is.

But having a discipline to manage risk is better than not having one at all. 

Get it. Got it. Good.


Cracks In The Bull Market Armor

While we did increase exposure to the market in portfolio last week, as the bullish trend does currently persist, there is growing evidence of “cracks” appearing.

With the Fed now on track to begin reducing support for the market, and a real possibility that “tax reform” will fail to materialize anytime soon, the possibility of a trap getting sprung on unwitting investors is rising.

The current rally is built on a substantially weaker fundamental and economic backdrop. Thereforeit is extremely important to remember that whatever increase in equity risk you take, could very well be reversed in short order due to the following reasons:

  1. We are moving into the latter stages of the bull market.
  2. Economic data continues to remain weak
  3. Earnings are beating continually reduced estimates
  4. Volume is weak
  5. Longer-term technical underpinnings are weakening and extremely stretched.
  6. Complacency is extremely high
  7. Share buybacks are slowing
  8. The yield curve is flattening

It is worth remembering that markets have a very nasty habit of sucking individuals into them when prices become detached from fundamentals. Such is the case currently and has generally not had a positive outcome.

What you decide to do with this information is entirely up to you. As I stated, I do think there is enough of a bullish case being built to warrant taking some equity risk on a very short-term basis. We will see what happens over the next couple of weeks. 

However, the longer-term dynamics are turning more bearish. When those negative price dynamics are combined with the fundamental and economic backdrop, the “risk” of having excessive exposure to the markets greatly outweighs the potential “reward. “

While it is certainly advisable to be more “bullish” currently, like picking up a “porcupine,” do so carefully.

Investing is not a competition.

It is a game of long-term survival. 

Dalbar 2017: Investors Suck At Investing & Tips For Advisors

Several years ago, I began writing an annual update discussing Dalbar’s Quantitative Analysis Of Investor Behavior study. The study showed just how poorly investors perform relative to market benchmarks over time and the reasons for that underperformance.

With the release of Dalbar’s 2017 study, I can update, and remind you, of the problems investors continue to face despite the ongoing media and mainstream rhetoric about “investing for the long-term” and other such nonsense like “dollar cost averaging” and “buy and hold” investing. 

Let’s jump right in.

You Can’t Beat An Index…Period

First of all, let’s dismiss the notion that it is possible for an investor to consistently “beat” an index over long periods of time.

You can’t.

Indexes do not account for the impact of taxes, trading costs, and fees, over time. There are also internal dynamics of an index that affect long-term performance which does not apply to an actual portfolio such as share buybacks, substitution, and market-cap valuation. 

(For more on the reasons why benchmarking is a bad strategy click here.)

However, even the issues shown above do not fully account for the underperformance of investors over time. The key findings of the study show that:

  • In 2016, the average equity mutual fund investor underperformed the S&P 500 by a margin of -4.70%. While the broader market made gains of 11.96%, the average equity investor earned only 7.26%.
  • In 2016, the average fixed income mutual fund investor underperformed the Bloomberg Barclays Aggregate Bond Index by a margin of -1.42%. The broader bond market realized a return of 2.65% while the average fixed income fund investor earned 1.23%.
  • Equity fund retention rates decreased materially in 2016 from 4.10 years to 3.80 years. (This is directly related to psychology and behavior.)
  • In 2016, the 20-year annualized S&P return was 7.68% while the 20-year annualized return for the Average Equity Fund Investor was only 4.79%, a gap of -2.89% annualized.

Here is a visual of the lag between expectations and reality.

The underperformance in 2017 directly relates to the psychological behaviors of individual investors. Despite ongoing rhetoric about “buy and hold” and “dollar cost averaging”, both of which are failed strategies as discussed at length here, the reality is that investor psychology is the biggest impediment to long-term success.

As noted by Dalbar:

“The retention rate data for equity, fixed income and asset allocation mutual funds strongly suggests that investors lack the patience and long-term vision to stay invested in any one fund for much more than four years. Jumping into and out of investments every few years is not a prudent strategy because investors are simply unable to correctly time when to make such moves.”

Of course, there are two main drivers behind both the long-term underperformance of investors and their movements in and out of investments.

Yes, You (Still) Suck At Investing

Accordingly to the Dalbar study, there are three primary causes for the chronic shortfall for both equity and fixed income investors is shown in the chart below.

Notice that while “fees” are important to overall returns, they are not a key issue to the majority of underperformance by individual investors. As shown above, the key issues come down to primarily a lack of capital to invest and psychology.

As stated, the issue of “costs” are an important consideration when choosing between two specific investment options; however, the emotional mistakes made by investors over time are much more important. 

While the inability to participate in the financial markets is certainly a major issue, the biggest reason for underperformance by investors who do participate in the financial markets over time is psychology. Behavioral biases that lead to poor investment decision-making is the single largest contributor to underperformance over time. Dalbar defined nine of the irrational investment behavior biases specifically:

  • Loss Aversion – The fear of loss leads to a withdrawal of capital at the worst possible time.  Also known as “panic selling.”
  • Narrow Framing – Making decisions about on part of the portfolio without considering the effects on the total.
  • Anchoring – The process of remaining focused on what happened previously and not adapting to a changing market.
  • Mental Accounting – Separating performance of investments mentally to justify success and failure.
  • Lack of Diversification – Believing a portfolio is diversified when in fact it is a highly correlated pool of assets.
  • Herding– Following what everyone else is doing. Leads to “buy high/sell low.”
  • Regret – Not performing a necessary action due to the regret of a previous failure.
  • Media Response – The media has a bias to optimism to sell products from advertisers and attract view/readership.
  • Optimism – Overly optimistic assumptions tend to lead to rather dramatic reversions when met with reality.

The biggest of these problems for individuals is the “herding effect” and “loss aversion.”

These two behaviors tend to function together compounding the issues of investor mistakes over time. As markets are rising, individuals are lead to believe that the current price trend will continue to last for an indefinite period. The longer the rising trend last, the more ingrained the belief becomes until the last of “holdouts” finally “buys in” as the financial markets evolve into a “euphoric state.”

As the markets decline, there is a slow realization that “this decline” is something more than a “buy the dip” opportunity.  As losses mount, the anxiety of loss begins to mount until individuals seek to “avert further loss” by selling.

As shown in the chart below, this behavioral trend runs counter-intuitive to the “buy low/sell high” investment rule.

In the end, we are just human. Despite the best of our intentions, it is nearly impossible for an individual to be devoid of the emotional biases that inevitably lead to poor investment decision-making over time. This is why all great investors have strict investment disciplines that they follow to reduce the impact of human emotions.

More importantly, while there are many articles chiding investors into “buy and hold,” and “passive indexing” strategies, the reality is that few will ever survive the downturns in order to see the benefits.

Tips For Advisors

Dalbar reveals the importance of event recognition and risk management. Knowing that advisory clients are emotional, and subject to emotional swings caused by market volatility, advisors must take on a role of both psychological counselor and portfolio manager. Here are some guidelines:

  • Expectations for future returns and withdrawal rates should be downwardly adjusted.
  • The potential for front-loaded returns going forward is unlikely.
  • The impact of taxation must be considered in the planned withdrawal rate.
  • Future inflation expectations must be carefully considered.
  • Drawdowns from portfolios during declining market environments accelerate the principal bleed. Plans should be made during rising market years to harbor capital for reduced portfolio withdrawals during adverse market conditions.
  • The yield chase over the last 8-years, and low interest rate environment, has created an extremely risky environment for retirement income planning. Caution is advised.
  • Expectations for compounded annual rates of returns should be dismissed in lieu of plans for variable rates of future returns.

Chasing an arbitrary index that is 100% invested in the equity market requires your clients to take on far more risk than they likely want or can endure. Two massive bear markets over the last decade have left many individuals further away from retirement than they ever imagined. Furthermore, all investors lost something far more valuable than money – the TIME that was needed to reach their retirement goals.

As an advisor, your job is not to beat some random arbitrary index. Your goal is to help your client focus on these important areas:

– Capital preservation

– A rate of return sufficient to keep pace with the rate of inflation.

– Expectations based on realistic objectives.  (The market does not compound at 8%)

– Higher rates of return require an exponential increase in the underlying risk profile.  This tends to not work out well.

– You can regain lost capital – but you can’t replace their lost time.  Time is a precious commodity they cannot afford to lose.

– Portfolios are time-frame specific.  If the client has 5-years to retirement but a portfolio with a 20-year time horizon (taking on more risk) the results will likely be disastrous.

The challenge, of course, is understanding the next major impact event, and market reversion, will NOT HAVE the identical characteristics of the previous events. This is why comparing today’s market to that of 1994 or 2000 is pointless. As I have stated many times previously:

“When the crash ultimately comes the reasons will be different than they were in the past – only the outcome will remain same.”

However, it is extremely critical that careful judgment is used when identifying a potential impact event which was best summed up by Howard Marks:

“Being early is the same as being wrong.”

Advisors Must Take Action Before The Event

Dalbar’s data shows that the “cycle of loss” starts when the investor abandons their investments which is followed by a period of remorse as the markets recover (sells low). Of course, the investor eventually re-enters the market when their confidence is restored (buys high). Preventing this cycle requires having a plan in place beforehand.

When markets decline, investors become fearful of total loss. Those fears are compounded by the barrage of media outlets that “fan the flames” of those fears. Advisors, need to remain cognizant of client’s emotional behaviors and substantially reduce portfolio risk during major impact events while repeatedly delivering counter-messaging to keep clients focused on long-term strategies.

Dalbar previously noted that during impact events messages delivered to clients should have three characteristics to be effective at calming emotional panic:

  • Messages must be delivered at the time the fear is present. As mentioned earlier, messages delivered before the investor actually experiences the event will not be effective. If the messages are too long after the fact, decisions will have been made, and actions taken that are very difficult to reverse.
  • Messages must relate directly to the event causing the fear. Providing generic messages such as the market has its ups and downs are of little use during a time of anxiety.
  • Messages must assure recovery. Qualified statements regarding recovery tend to fuel fear instead of calming it.

Messages must ALSO present evidence that forms the basis for forecasting recovery. Credible and quotable data, analysis and historical evidence can provide an answer to the investor when the pressure mounts to “just do something”. Providing “generic media commentary” with a litany of qualifiers to specific questions will most likely fail to calm their fears.

Understanding how individuals respond to impact events will allow advisors to get in front of their clients to discuss the planning, preparation, and response to an impact event and recovery.

One thing that all the negative behaviors have in common is that they can lead investors to deviate from a sound investment strategy that was narrowly tailored towards their goals, risk tolerance, and time horizon. The best way to ward off the aforementioned negative behaviors is to employ a strategy that focuses on one’s goals and is not reactive to short-term market conditions. The data shows that the average mutual fund investor has not stayed invested for a long enough period of time to reap the rewards that the market can offer more disciplined investors. The data also shows that when investors react, they generally make the wrong decision.

The reality is that the majority of advisors are ill-prepared for an impact event to occur. This is particularly the case in late-stage bull market cycles where complacency runs high.

This complacency can be seen in the shift from active portfolio management strategies to passive indexing which is a hallmark sign of a late-stage bull market. When the impact event occurs, the calls to 1-800-ROBOADVISOR for calming messages and a plan to avoid major losses of capital will go unanswered. Advisors who are prepared to handle those responses, provide clear messaging and an action plan for both conserving investment capital and eventual recovery will find success in obtaining new clients.

So, do yourself, and your clients, a favor and forget about what the benchmark index does from one day to the next. Focus instead on matching their portfolio to their personal goals, objectives, and time frames. In the long run, they may not beat the index, but they aren’t going to anyway. So, help them focus instead on achieving their own personal goals.

But, isn’t that why they hired you in the first place?

15-Risk Management Rules For Every Investor

Last week, I was discussing the rather “Pavlovian” response to Central Bank interventions which has led investors into a false sense of security with respect to the risk being undertaken within portfolios.

This got me to thinking about “risk” and reminded me of something Howard Marks once wrote:

“If I ask you what’s the risk in investing, you would answer the risk of losing money. But there actually are two risks in investing: One is to lose money, and the other is to miss an opportunity. You can eliminate either one, but you can’t eliminate both at the same time. So the question is how you’re going to position yourself versus these two risks: straight down the middle, more aggressive or more defensive.

I think of it like a comedy movie where a guy is considering some activity. On his right shoulder is sitting an angel in a white robe. He says: ‘No, don’t do it! It’s not prudent, it’s not a good idea, it’s not proper and you’ll get in trouble’.

On the other shoulder is the devil in a red robe with his pitchfork. He whispers: ‘Do it, you’ll get rich’. In the end, the devil usually wins.

Caution, maturity and doing the right thing are old-fashioned ideas. And when they do battle against the desire to get rich, other than in panic times the desire to get rich usually wins. That’s why bubbles are created and frauds like Bernie Madoff get money.

How do you avoid getting trapped by the devil?

I’ve been in this business for over forty-five years now, so I’ve had a lot of experience.  In addition, I am not a very emotional person. In fact, almost all the great investors I know are unemotional. If you’re emotional then you’ll buy at the top when everybody is euphoric and prices are high. Also, you’ll sell at the bottom when everybody is depressed and prices are low. You’ll be like everybody else and you will always do the wrong thing at the extremes.

Therefore, unemotionalism is one of the most important criteria for being a successful investor. And if you can’t be unemotional you should not invest your own money, period. Most great investors practice something called contrarianism. It consists of doing the right thing at the extremes which is the contrary of what everybody else is doing. So unemtionalism is one of the basic requirements for contrarianism.”

It is not surprising with markets hitting “all-time highs,” and the mainstream media trumpeting the news, that individuals are being swept up in the moment.

After all, it’s a “can’t lose proposition.” Right?

This is why being unemotional when it comes to your money is a very hard thing to do.

It is times, such as now, where logic states that we must participate in the current opportunity. However, emotions of “greed” and “fear” are kicking in either causing individual’s to take on too much exposure, or worrying that risk is too high and a crash could come at any time. Emotional based arguments are inherently wrong and lead individuals into making decisions that ultimately have a negative impact on their financial health.

As Howard Marks’ stated above, it is in times like these that individuals must remain unemotional and adhere to a strict investment discipline.

RIA Portfolio Management Rules

It is from Marks’ view on risk management that I thought I would share with you the portfolio rules that drive own own investment discipline at Real Investment Advice. While I am often tagged as “bearish” due to my analysis of economic and fundamental data for “what it is” rather than “what I hope it to be,” I am actually neither bullish or bearish. I follow a very simple set of rules which are the core of my portfolio management philosophy which focus on capital preservation and long-term “risk-adjusted” returns.

The fundamental, economic and price analysis forms the backdrop of overall risk exposure and asset allocation. However, the following rules are the “control boundaries” for all specific actions.

  1. Cut losers short and let winner’s run. (Be a scale-up buyer into strength.)
  2. Set goals and be actionable. (Without specific goals, trades become arbitrary and increase overall portfolio risk.)
  3. Emotionally driven decisions void the investment process.  (Buy high/sell low)
  4. Follow the trend. (80% of portfolio performance is determined by the long-term, monthly, trend. While a “rising tide lifts all boats,” the opposite is also true.)
  5. Never let a “trading opportunity” turn into a long-term investment. (Refer to rule #1. All initial purchases are “trades,” until your investment thesis is proved correct.)
  6. An investment discipline does not work if it is not followed.
  7. “Losing money” is part of the investment process. (If you are not prepared to take losses when they occur, you should not be investing.)
  8. The odds of success improve greatly when the fundamental analysis is confirmed by the technical price action. (This applies to both bull and bear markets)
  9. Never, under any circumstances, add to a losing position. (As Paul Tudor Jones once quipped: “Only losers add to losers.”)
  10. Market are either “bullish” or “bearish.” During a “bull market” be only long or neutral. During a “bear market”be only neutral or short. (Bull and Bear markets are determined by their long-term trend as shown in the chart below.)
  11. When markets are trading at, or near, extremes do the opposite of the “herd.”
  12. Do more of what works and less of what doesn’t. (Traditional rebalancing takes money from winners and adds it to losers. Rebalance by reducing losers and adding to winners.)
  13. “Buy” and “Sell” signals are only useful if they are implemented. (Managing a portfolio without a “buy/sell” discipline is designed to fail.)
  14. Strive to be a .700 “at bat” player. (No strategy works 100% of the time. However, being consistent, controlling errors, and capitalizing on opportunity is what wins games.)
  15. Manage risk and volatility. (Controlling the variables that lead to investment mistakes is what generates returns as a byproduct.)

Currently, the long-term bullish trend that began in 2009 remains intact. The correction that began in early 2016 was temporarily cut short by massive, and continuing, interventions of global Central Banks. There is a limit, of course, to the efficacy of those interventions.

A violation of the long-term bullish trend, and a failure to recover, will signal the beginning of the next “bear market” cycle. Such will then change portfolio allocations to be either “neutral or short.”  BUT, and most importantly, until that violation occurs, portfolios should be either long or neutral ONLY.  

The current market advance both looks, and feels, like the last leg of a market “melt up” as we previously witnessed at the end of 1999.  How long it can last is anyone’s guess. However, importantly, it should be remembered that all good things do come to an end. Sometimes, those endings can be very disastrous to long-term investing objectives. This is why focusing on “risk controls” in the short-term, and avoiding subsequent major draw-downs, the long-term returns tend to take care of themselves.

Everyone approaches money management differently.

This is just my approach and I am simply sharing my process.

I hope you find something useful in it.

Pure Rubbish? What The Buffett Indicator Is Really Predicting

Every so often an article is produced that is so misleading that it must be addressed. The latest is from Sol Palha via the Huffington Post entitled: “Buffett Indicator Is Predicting A Stock Market Crash: Pure Nonsense.”  Sol jumps right in with both feet stating:

“Insanity equates to doing the same thing over and over again and hoping for a new outcome. These predictions have been off the mark for almost 10 years. One would think that would be enough for the experts to re-examine the situation, but instead, they use the same lines they used 10 years ago. One day they will get it right, as even a broken clock is correct twice a day.”

Sol should be careful of throwing stones at glass houses. While we are indeed currently in a very bullish trend of the market, there are two halves of every market cycle. 

“In the end, it does not matter IF you are ‘bullish’ or ‘bearish.’ The reality is that both ‘bulls’ and ‘bears’ are owned by the ‘broken clock’ syndrome during the full-market cycle. However, what is grossly important in achieving long-term investment success is not necessarily being ‘right’ during the first half of the cycle, but by not being ‘wrong’ during the second half.”

Will valuations currently pushing the 3rd highest level in history, it is only a function of time before the second-half of the full-market cycle ensues.

That is not a prediction of a crash.

It is just a fact.

The Buffett Indicator

It is also the issue of valuation that leads Sol astray in his article which focuses on one of Warren Buffett’s favorite measures of valuation: Market Capitalization to Gross Domestic Product. 

Sol err’s in the following statement:

Some Experts point out that Warren Buffet is betting on a Stock Market Crash. This claim is based on the fact that Buffett is sitting on $86 billion in cash. They use this information to create the illusion that this Buffett Indicator is predicting a stock market crash.”

First, valuations DO NOT predict market crashes.

Valuations are predictive of future returns on investments from current levels.

Period.

I recently quoted Cliff Asness on this issue in particular:

“Ten-year forward average returns fall nearly monotonically as starting Shiller P/E’s increase. Also, as starting Shiller P/E’s go up, worst cases get worse and best cases get weaker.

If today’s Shiller P/E is 22.2, and your long-term plan calls for a 10% nominal (or with today’s inflation about 7-8% real) return on the stock market, you are basically rooting for the absolute best case in history to play out again, and rooting for something drastically above the average case from these valuations.”

We can prove that by looking at forward 10-year total returns versus various levels of PE ratios historically.

Asness continues:

“It [Shiller’s CAPE] has very limited use for market timing (certainly on its own) and there is still great variability around its predictions over even decades. But, if you don’t lower your expectations when Shiller P/E’s are high without a good reason — and in my view, the critics have not provided a good reason this time around — I think you are making a mistake.”

And since we are discussing Mr. Buffett, let me remind Sol of one of Warren’s more insightful quotes:

“Price is what you pay, value is what you get.” 

Importantly, however, let’s take a look specifically at the “Buffett Indicator.”

Not surprisingly, like every other measure of valuation, forward return expectations are substantially lower over the next 10-years as opposed to the past 10-years.

The $86 Billion Question

Of course, while Sol didn’t make the connection between Buffett’s $86-billion in cash and forward-return estimates, he did get Buffett’s reasoning correct.

“Just because Warren Buffett is sitting on billions of cash does not mean he is waiting for the market to crash. He is probably waiting for a good deal; that’s all.

Some might point out that it’s the biggest hoard of cash the company has ever built up and that this indicates Buffett is nervous. Being nervous does not equate to betting on a stock market crash. Buffett is a value player and he is looking for a deal, so correction not crash might be all he is waiting for.

Unfortunately, “good deals” based on valuation levels and market crashes have typically been highly correlated.

But more importantly, Sol also misses an important point made by Buffett in terms of value investing:

“Buffett Does not believe stocks are overpriced; hence he is not expecting a stock market crash.”

However, he goes on to quote Buffett suggesting the possibility.

“While Buffett agrees the market can go through period of turbulence, he stated that ‘no one can tell you when these traumas occur.'”

And then states these “traumas” could range from mild to “extreme.”

Sounds like a crash to me.

But then he makes the most interesting point.

In a recent article, Buffett stated that stocks were on the cheap side; one does not make a comment like this if one believes the stock market is going to crash.”

That point doesn’t quite square with Buffett holding his largest cash pile in the history of the firm.

Buffett is a businessman that runs an investment company. Yelling “fire in a crowded theater” would likely not be well accepted well by his investors and legions of avid followers.

In the business, this is called “talking your book.”

However, what a portfolio manager says (“stocks are cheap”) and what they do ($86 billion in cash) are two very different things.

As the old saying goes: “Follow the money.” 

Fundamentals Don’t Matter

I will agree with Sol on his point that fundamentals don’t matter at the moment.

In a market that where momentum is driving an ever smaller group of participants, fundamentals are displaced by emotional biases. Such is the nature of market cycles and one of the primary ingredients necessary to create the proper environment for an eventual crash.

Notice, I said eventually.

I do agree with Sol that markets are indeed currently bullish and therefore, as an investment manager, portfolios should remain tilted towards equities currently.

But such will not always be the case.

As David Einhorn once stated:

The bulls explain that traditional valuation metrics no longer apply to certain stocks. The longs are confident that everyone else who holds these stocks understands the dynamic and won’t sell either. With holders reluctant to sell, the stocks can only go up – seemingly to infinity and beyond. We have seen this before.

There was no catalyst that we know of that burst the dot-com bubble in March 2000, and we don’t have a particular catalyst in mind here. That said, the top will be the top, and it’s hard to predict when it will happen.”

Is this time different?

Probably not.

James Montier summed it up perfectly in “Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast,” 

Current arguments as to why this time is different are cloaked in the economics of secular stagnation and standard finance workhorses like the equity risk premium model. Whilst these may lend a veneer of respectability to those dangerous words, taking arguments at face value without considering the evidence seems to me, at least, to be a common link with previous bubbles.

While investors insist the markets are currently NOT in a bubble, it would be wise to remember the same belief was held in 1999 and 2007. Throughout history, financial bubbles have only been recognized in hindsight when their existence becomes “apparently obvious” to everyone. Of course, by that point, it was far too late to be of any use to investors and the subsequent destruction of invested capital.

This time will not be different. Only the catalyst, magnitude, and duration will be.

Investors would do well to remember the words of the then-chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission Arthur Levitt in a 1998 speech entitled “The Numbers Game:”

“While the temptations are great, and the pressures strong, illusions in numbers are only that—ephemeral, and ultimately self-destructive.”

Technically Speaking: Valuation Measures & Forward Returns

On the “Real Investment Hour” on Tuesday night, I addressed the issue of price versus fundamentals. In the short-term, a period of one-year or less, political, fundamental, and economic data has very little influence over the market. This is especially the case in a late-stage bull market advance, such as we are currently experiencing, where the momentum chase has exceeded the grasp of the risk being undertaken by unwitting investors.

As shown in the chart below, the longer-term price trend of the market remains clearly bullish. However, despite commentary on valuations, sentiment, economics, or politics, the PRICE of the market suggests a weakening trend in investor confidence at current levels. That weakness has also instigated a short-term “sell signal” which suggests prices may struggle more in the days ahead. One thing we need to pay attention to is a potential break of the bullish trend line running along the 50-day moving average. Such a break would likely coincide with a correction back to 2330 in the short term.

Alternatively, if the market can reverse the current course of weakness and rally above recent highs, it will confirm the bull market is alive and well, and we will continue to look for a push to our next target of 2500.

With portfolios currently fully allocated, we are simply monitoring risk and looking for opportunities to invest “new capital” into markets with a measured risk/reward ratio.

However, this is a very short-term outlook which is why “price is the only thing that matters.” 

Price measures the current “psychology” of the “herd” and is the clearest representation of the behavioral dynamics of the living organism we call “the market.”

But in the long-term, fundamentals are the only thing that matters. I have shown you the following chart many times before. Which is simply a comparison of 20-year forward total real returns from every previous P/E ratio.

I know, I know.

“P/E’s don’t matter anymore because of Central Bank interventions, accounting gimmicks, share buybacks, etc.”

Okay, let’s play.

In the following series of charts, I am using forward 10-year returns just for consistency as some of the data sets utilized don’t yet have enough history to show 20-years of forward returns.

The purpose here is simple. Based on a variety of measures, is the valuation/return ratio still valid, OR, is this time really different?

Let’s see.

Tobin’s Q-ratio measures the market value of a company’s assets divided by its replacement costs. The higher the ratio, the higher the cost resulting in lower returns going forward.

Just as a comparison, I have added Shiller’s CAPE-10. Not surprisingly the two measures not only have an extremely high correlation, but the return outcome remains the same.

One of the arguments has been that higher valuations are okay because interest rates are so low. Okay, let’s take the smoothed P/E ratio (CAPE-10 above) and compare it to the 10-year average of interest rates going back to 1900.

The analysis that low rates justify higher valuations clearly does not withstand the test of history.

But earnings can be manipulated, so let’s look at “sales” or “revenue” which occurs at the top-line of the income statement. Not surprisingly, the higher the level of price-to-sales, the lower the forward returns have been. You may also want to notice the current price-to-sales is pushing the highest level in history as well.

Corporate return on equity (ROE) sends the same message.

Even Warren Buffett’s favorite indicator, market cap to GDP, clearly suggests that investments made today, will have a rather lackluster return over the next decade.

If we invert the P/E ratio, and look at earnings/price, or more commonly known as the “earnings yield,” the message remains the same.

No matter, how many valuation measures I use, the message remains the same. From current valuation levels, the expected rate of return for investors over the next decade will be low.

There is a large community of individuals which suggest differently as they make a case as to why this “bull market” can continue for years longer. Unfortunately, any measure of valuation simply does not support that claim.

But let me be clear, I am not suggesting the next “financial crisis” is upon us either. I am simply suggesting that based on a variety of measures, forward returns will be relatively low as compared to what has been witnessed over the last eight years. This is particularly the case as the Fed, and Central Banks globally, begin to extract themselves from the cycle of interventions. 

This does not mean that markets will just produce single-digit rates of return each year for the next decade. The reality is there will be some great years to be invested over that period, unfortunately, like in the past, the bulk of those years will be spent making up the losses from the coming recession and market correction.

That is the nature of investing in the markets. There will be fantastic bull market runs as we have witnessed over the last 8-years, but in order for you to experience the up, you will have to deal with the eventual down. It is just part of the full-market cycles that make up every economic and business cycle.

Despite the hopes of many, the cycles of the market, and the economy, have not been repealed. They can surely be delayed and extended by artificial interventions, but they can not be stalled indefinitely.

No. “This time is not different,” and in the end, many investors will once again be reminded of this simple fact:

 “The price you pay today for any investment determines the value you will receive tomorrow.” 

Unfortunately, those reminders tend to come in the most brutal of manners.  

5-Universal Laws Of Human (Investment) Stupidity

In 1976, a professor of economic history at the University of California, Berkeley published an essay outlining the fundamental laws of a force he perceived as humanity’s greatest existential threat: Stupidity.

Stupid people, Carlo M. Cipolla explained, share several identifying traits:

  • they are abundant,
  • they are irrational, and;
  • they cause problems for others without apparent benefit to themselves

The result is that “stupidity” lowers society’s total well-being and there are no defenses against stupidity. According to Cipolla:

“The only way a society can avoid being crushed by the burden of its idiots is if the non-stupid work even harder to offset the losses of their stupid brethren.”

Let’s take a look at Cipolla’s five basic laws of human stupidity as they apply to investing and the markets today.

Law 1: Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.

“No matter how many idiots you suspect yourself surrounded by you are invariably low-balling the total.”

In investing, the problem of investor “stupidity” is compounded by a variety of biased assumptions that are made.  Individuals assume that when the media publishes something, the superficial factors like the commentator’s job, education level, or other traits suggest they can’t possibly be stupid. We, therefore, attach credibility to their opinion as long as it confirms our own.

This is called “confirmation bias.”

If we believe the stock market is going to rise, then we tend to only seek out news and information that supports our view. This confirmation bias is a primary driver of the psychological investing cycle of individuals as shown below. I discussed this previously in why “Media Headlines Will Lead You To Ruin.”

As individuals, we want “affirmation” our current thought processes are correct. As human beings, we hate being told we are wrong, so we tend to seek out sources that tell us we are “right.”

This is why it is always important to consider both sides of every debate equally and analyze the data accordingly. Being right and making money are not mutually exclusive.

Law 2: The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.

Cipolla posits stupidity is a variable that remains constant across all populations. Every category one can imagine—gender, race, nationality, education level, income—possesses a fixed percentage of stupid people.

When it comes to investing, ALL investors, individual and professionals, are subject to making “stupid” decisions. As I discussed recently:

“At each major market peak throughout history, there has always been something that became “the” subject of speculative investment. Rather it was railroads, real estate, emerging markets, technology stocks or tulip bulbs, the end result was always the same as the rush to get into those markets also led to the rush to get out. Today, the rush to buy “ETF’s” has clearly taken that mantle, as I discussed last week, and as shown in the chart below.”

It isn’t the surge into equity ETF’s which should give rise to concern about future outcomes, but the components of “psychology” behind it.

Though we are often unconscious of the action, humans tend to “go with the crowd.” Much of this behavior relates back to “confirmation” of our decisions but also the need for acceptance. The thought process is rooted in the belief that if “everyone else” is doing something, then if I want to be accepted, I need to do it too.

In life, “conforming” to the norm is socially accepted and in many ways expected. However, in the financial markets, the “herding” behavior is what drives market excesses during advances and declines.

As Howard Marks once stated:

“Resisting – and thereby achieving success as a contrarian – isn’t easy. Things combine to make it difficult; including natural herd tendencies and the pain imposed by being out of step, since momentum invariably makes pro-cyclical actions look correct for a while. (That’s why it’s essential to remember that ‘being too far ahead of your time is indistinguishable from being wrong.’

Given the uncertain nature of the future, and thus the difficulty of being confident your position is the right one – especially as price moves against you – it’s challenging to be a lonely contrarian.

Moving against the “herd” is where the most profits are generated by investors in the long term. The difficulty for most individuals, unfortunately, is knowing when to “bet” against those who are being “stupid.”

Law 3. A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.

Consistent stupidity is the only consistent thing about the stupid. This is what makes stupid people so dangerous. As Cipolla explains:

“Essentially stupid people are dangerous and damaging because reasonable people find it difficult to imagine and understand unreasonable behavior.

Throughout history, investors are constantly drawn into investment strategies promoted by a wide variety of “industry professionals” which ultimately leads to losses in the end. This point was clearly made in a recent article by Jason Zweig entitled: “Whatever You Do, Don’t Read This Column.”

“Investors believe the darnedest things.

In one recent survey, wealthy individuals said they expect their portfolios to earn a long-run average of 8.5% annually after inflation. With bonds yielding roughly 2.5%, a typical stock-and-bond portfolio would need stocks to grow at 12.5% annually in order to hit that overall 8.5% target. Net of fees and inflation, that would require approximately doubling the 7% annual gain stocks have produced over the long term.

Individuals aren’t the only investors who believe in the improbable. One in six institutional investors, in another survey, projected gains of more than 20% annually on their investments in venture capital — even though such funds, on average, have underperformed the stock market for much of the 2000s.

Although almost nothing is impossible in the financial markets, these expectations are so far-fetched they border on fantasy.”

He is absolutely right, and despite the historical realities of investing, both the individual and the professional will ultimately suffer losses. As shown in the chart below, there is no evidence which shows markets can compound high levels of growth rates from current valuation levels. (For more detail on forward returns read “Valuations Matter”)

There is a massive difference between AVERAGE and ACTUAL returns on invested capital. The impact of losses, in any given year, destroys the annualized “compounding” effect of money.

Individuals who experienced either one, or both, of the last two bear markets, now understand the importance of “time” relating to their investment goals. Individuals that were close to retirement in either 2000, or 2007, and failed to navigate the subsequent market draw downs have had to postpone their retirement plans, potentially indefinitely.

But yet despite the losses incurred by both professionals and individuals, just eight short years after the largest financial crisis since the “Great Depression,” individuals are piling on excessive risk once again under the guise “this time is different.” 

Talk about stupid.

Despite the mainstream media’s consistent drivel investors should just “passively index” and forget about actually managing the risk of catastrophic capital loss, the reality is that investors “buy high and sell low” for a reason.

“Greed” and “Fear” are far more powerful in driving our investment decisions versus “Logic” and “Discipline.” 

As Jason states:

“The traditional explanations for believing in an investing tooth fairy who will leave money under your pillow are optimism and overconfidence: Hope springs eternal, and each of us thinks we’re better than the other investors out there.

There’s another reason so many investors believe in magic: We can’t handle the truth.”

All of which leads us to:

Law 4: Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake.

Lot’s of “non-stupid people” are currently suggesting the next correctionary event will be mild, most likely no more than 20%. The idea is based upon the belief the Federal Reserve, and Central Banks globally, will quickly come to the rescue of a failing market and investors will quickly react by once again jumping back into the market.

However, as we have seen repeatedly throughout history, “stupid” people tend to do exactly the opposite during a crisis than what “non-stupid” people expect.

Then there are the “perennial bulls” who keep telling investors to “hang on, keep putting money in, you’re a long-term investor, right?” These are the ones who never see the bear market destruction until well after the fact and then simply say “well, no one could have seen that coming.” 

Non-stupid people are conservative. They analyze the risk of loss and conserve capital during declines. Make sure you are surrounding yourself with those that understand the “math of loss.”

As Howard Marks stated above, sometimes being a contrarian is lonely.

When we underestimate the stupid, we do so at our own peril.

This brings us to the fifth and final law:

Law 5: A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.

Following the “herd,” has always ended badly for investors. In every full-market cycle, there is an inevitable belief “this time is different” for one reason or another.

It isn’t. It has never been. And this time will not be different either.

However, what has always separated out the great investors from everyone else, is they have acted independently of the “herd.” They have a discipline, a strategy and a driving will to succeed.

They don’t “buy and hold.” They buy cheap and sell expensive. They avoid losses at all costs and they deeply understand the relationship of risk to reward.

They are the “non-stupid.”

These are the ones you want to follow.

Not the ones screaming at you on television telling you to “buy, buy, buy.”

Just remember that for every full-market cycle our job is to not only participate in the first-half of the cycle as prices rise, but to avoid the avoid the devastation during the second-half.

“Non-stupid” investors don’t spend a bulk of their time getting back to even.

That is an investing strategy better left to the “herd.”

The CAEY Ratio & Forward Returns

Over the last couple of week’s, I have been discussing the value of Shiller’s CAPE ratio. The Cyclically Adjusted P/E ratio, or CAPE, is often maligned by the media as “useless” and “outdated” because despite the fact the ratio is currently registering the second highest level of valuation is history, the markets haven’t crashed yet.  Of course, the key word is…YET.

In the second article, I shortened the length of the CAPE ratio to make it more sensitive to price movements which sparked a good discussion on Twitter about forward return analysis using a shortened smoothing period. Leave it to my friend John Hussman to do the heavy lifting:

Of course, the obvious question is what are his favorite metrics? Here you go.

Within all of this is a simple point. No matter how you cut it, slice it, dice it, twist it, abuse it, or torture it – valuations matter in the long run.

But therein lies the problem, valuations are NOT, and never have been, a market timing tool. It is about the value you pay for something today and the return you will receive in the future, and a point that Research Affiliates recently took a very interesting approach to in a recent report:

“Academics have suggested various reasons for sustained higher equity valuations, from the microstructure benefits of improved participation and lower transaction costs to the macroeconomic benefits of larger profit shares. We examine the explanation put forward by Lettau, Ludvigson, and Wachter (2008) that rising valuations are propelled by the large reduction of macroeconomic risk in the US economy. Their intuition is simple—investors require lower returns from equity markets when the aggregate volatility of the economy is lower. It should come as no surprise that investors are glad to pay a higher price and accept a lower return for investing in a stock market that delivers less uncertainty.

Today’s economy is drastically different from just a few decades ago, and radically different from a century ago. Judging from the volatility of two major macroeconomic variables—real output growth and inflation—it has changed for the better. From the days before the US Federal Reserve Bank until today, the annual volatility of the economy has tumbled about 80%.

When we plot the measure of macro volatility with the inverse of a very popular valuation metric, Robert Shiller’s cyclically adjusted price/earnings ratio (CAPE), we find an intriguing and significant positive correlation between expected real equity returns and the aggregate volatility of the economy. Under the restrictive assumption that prices are fair and an appropriate return on retained profits, we assert that earnings yields are an appropriate proxy for an equity market’s future real return. For clarity, we name the inverse of the CAPE, an earnings yield, the cyclically adjusted earnings yield (CAEY). 

Research Affiliates makes some very interesting points and the entire paper is worth reading. However, I was most interested in the concept of the Cyclically Adjusted Earnings Yield (CAEY) ratio and its relationship to forward real returns in the market.

While the statement that lower valuations, inflation, and lower volatility are supportive of higher valuations is true, there have also been other issues as well as I addressed last week:

  • Beginning in 2009, FASB Rule 157 was “temporarily” repealed in order to allow banks to “value” illiquid assets, such as real estate or mortgage-backed securities, at levels they felt were more appropriate rather than on the last actual “sale price” of a similar asset. This was done to keep banks solvent at the time as they were being forced to write down billions of dollars of assets on their books. This boosted banks profitability and made earnings appear higher than they may have been otherwise. The ‘repeal” of Rule 157 is still in effect today, and the subsequent “mark-to-myth” accounting rule is still inflating earnings.
  • The heavy use of off-balance sheet vehicles to suppress corporate debt and leverage levels and boost earnings is also a relatively new distortion.
  • Extensive cost-cutting, productivity enhancements, off-shoring of labor, etc. are all being heavily employed to boost earnings in a relatively weak revenue growth environment. I addressed this issue specifically in this past weekend’s newsletter.
  • And, of course, the massive global Central Bank interventions which have provided the financial “put” for markets over the last eight years. 

Furthermore, the point suggesting investors are willing to accept lower returns in exchange for lower volatility is intriguing. 

While academically speaking I certainly understand the point, I am not so sure the average market participant does who is still being told to bank on 6-8% annualized rates of return for retirement planning purposes. 

However, this brings us to the inverse of the P/E ratio or Earnings Yield. The earnings yield has often been used by Wall Street analysts to justify higher valuations in low interest rate environment since the “yield on stocks” is higher than the “yield on risk free-assets,” namely U.S. Treasury bonds.

This is a very faulty analysis for the following reason. When you own a U.S. Treasury you receive two things – the interest payment stream and the return of the principal investment at maturity. Conversely, with a stock you DO NOT receive an “earnings yield” and there is no promise of repayment in the future. Stocks are all risk and U.S. Treasuries are considered a “risk-free” investment.

The chart below, which uses Shiller’s data set, shows the 10-year Cyclically Adjusted Earnings Yield. I have INVERTED the earnings yield to more clearly show periods of over and under-valuations.

With the CAEY currently at the 3rd lowest level in the history of the financial markets, it should not be surprising to expect lower returns in the future. Of course, lower returns is exactly what Research Affiliates suggests you will accept in exchange for lower volatility.

Right?

The chart below shows the CAEY as compared to 10-year forward real returns (capital appreciation only).

Not surprisingly, when the CAEY ratio has reached such low levels previously, forward returns were not only low, but negative. Currently, with the earnings yield nearing 3%, forward 10-year returns are going to start approaching zero and potentially go negative in the years ahead.

Of course, such declines in returns will, as they always have, coincided with a recession and fairly nasty mean-reverting event which has historically consisted of declines in asset prices of 30% on average.

But hey, you are okay with that, right?

I mean, after all, you did agree to lower returns when you bought into overvalued equity markets in exchange for lower volatility.

For investors, planning for future wealth and security relies on reasonable assumptions about future expected returns. No matter how you do the math, returns over the next decade, which can be forecasted with a fairly high level of predictability, will be low.

Long-term trend of mean reversion implies lower-than-average earnings per share in the future due to a decline in productivity. So, we estimate that EPS growth over the next decade is likely to be at about 1%. In reality, the return for the S&P 500 over the next 10 years could be somewhere between zero to low single digits. – Chris Brightman, Research Affiliates

Remember, while valuations are not a market timing tool in the short-run. Using fundamental measures to predict returns 12-months out is a fruitless endeavor. However, over the long-term, the math is always the same:

The price you pay today is extremely indicative of the return you will receive in the future. 

Just something to consider.

3 Things: What If The 1980-Secular Bull Is Still Running?

Valuations & Full Market Cycles

In this past weekend’s missive, “Visualizing 10-Reasons For Caution,” I presented a chart heavy analysis of why the current market is likely due for at least a short-term correction.

There is little doubt currently “exuberance” is running high following the election of Donald Trump. The hopes for stimulus, tax reform, and repatriation has “hope” springing that job and economic growth will follow. The problem, as I have discussed previously, is this optimism comes at a point in history diametrically opposed to when President Reagan instituted many of the same conservative policies.

It is this exuberance that reminded me of the following “investor psychology” chart.

 

This chart is not new, and there are many variations similar to it, but the importance should not be lost on individuals as it is repeated throughout history. At each delusional peak, it was always uttered, in some shape, form or variation, “this time is different.” 

Of course, to the detriment of those who fell prey to that belief, it was not.

As I was studying the chart, something struck me.

During my history of blogging and writing newsletters, I have often discussed the importance of full-market cycles.

“Long-term investment success depends more on the WHEN you start investing. This is clearly shown in the chart below of long-term secular full-market cycles.”

“Here is the critical point. The MAJORITY of the returns from investing came in just 4 of the 8 major market cycles since 1871. Every other period yielded a return that actually lost out to inflation during that time frame.”

By looking at each full-cycle period as two parts, bull and bear, I missed the importance of the “psychology” driven by the entirety of the cycle.

In other words, what if instead of there being 8-cycles, we look at them as only three? 

This would, of course, suggest that based on the “psychological” cycle of the market, the bull market that began in 1980 is not yet complete. 

Notice in the chart above the CAPE (cyclically adjusted P/E ratio) reverted well below the long-term in both prior full-market cycles. While valuations did, very briefly, dip below the long-term trend in 2008-2009, they have not reverted to levels either low or long enough to form the fundamental and psychological underpinnings seen at the beginning of the last two full-market cycles.   

What If The 80’s Secular Bull Is Still Running?

It is from that basis, and historical time frames, that I have created the following thought experiment of examining the psychological cycle overlaid on each of the three full-cycle periods in the market.

The first full-market cycle lasted 63-years from 1871 through 1934. This period ended with the crash of 1929 and the beginning of the “Great Depression.” 

The second full-market cycle lasted 45-years from 1935-1980. This cycle ended with the demise of the “Nifty-Fifty” stocks and the “Black Bear Market” of 1974. While not as economically devastating to the overall economy as the 1929-crash, it did greatly impair the investment psychology of those in the market.

The current full-market cycle is only 37-years in the making. Given the 2nd highest valuation levels in history, corporate, consumer and margin debt near historical highs, and average economic growth rates running at historical lows, it is worth questioning whether the current full-market cycle has been completed or not.

The idea the “bull market” which begin in 1980 is still intact is not a new one. As shown below a chart of the market from 1980 to present, suggests the same.

The long-term bullish trend line remains and the cycle-oscillator is only half-way through a long-term cycle. Furthermore, on a Fibonacci-retracement basis, a 61.8% retracement would current intersect with the long-term bullish trend-line around 1000 suggesting the next downturn could indeed be a nasty one. But again, this is only based on the assumption the long-term full market cycle has not been completed as of yet.

I am NOT suggesting this is the case. This is just a thought-experiment about the potential outcome from the collision of weak economics, high levels of debt, and valuations and “irrational exuberance.”

Yes, this time could entirely be different.

It just never has been before.

Indexing Realities

Daniel Drew had a very interesting post this past week discussing the realities of indexing. To wit:

“Warren Buffett released his annual letter over the weekend, in which he praised Jack Bogle as his ‘hero’ for promoting index investing. The irony is that investors would have been better off buying Berkshire shares. Over the last 10 years, Berkshire stock is up 139% while the S&P 500 is up 71%.

Buffett is doing something every skilled salesman does: managing expectations. Buffett’s own performance is compared against the S&P 500, and what better way to win that game than by putting a floor under the Berkshire price with the promise of share buybacks and then putting a ceiling on the stock by promoting index investing? The real secret is Buffett is talking his book by not talking it: Rather than tell investors to buy Berkshire at any price, he tells people to invest passively through an index, which leads to the very market inefficiencies that he profits from.

The great appeal of index investing is its low fees, but like buying a cheap pair of shoes that falls apart after 6 months, investors will find that index investing is the most expensive thing they ever did.

Vanguard promotes its rock-bottom expense ratios, but what is not published is market impact costs that are incurred when the fund rebalances. Since these rebalances are often announced ahead of time, they are extremely vulnerable to front running. Christophe Bernard, Ph.D. Senior Scientist at Winton Capital Management, estimates that front running costs index investors 0.20% per year. That’s 4 times the official expense ratio of Vanguard’s S&P 500 ETF.

In his latest research, finance professor Hendrik Bessembinder discovered that 58% of stocks don’t even outperform a Treasury bill. This study was based on 26,000 stocks from 1926 to 2015. Just 4% of stocks accounted for all of the $31.8 trillion in gains during this period. That means 96% of stocks were complete garbage. Even worse, shares of unprofitable companies outperform their profitable counterparts, which is why you have a marketplace that is dominated by Twitters and Teslas.

Index investing means buying a box of garbage stocks sprinkled with a few hope and glamor stocks whose price gains are solely a result of underperforming fund managers grasping for quarterly bonuses and retail investors juicing up their portfolios in a doomed attempt to catch up on their retirement targets.

While mom and pop buy a Vanguard index with their $500,000 and get front run all day by proprietary traders, the capitalist televangelist Warren Buffett will continue to actively trade billions while preaching the miracle of buy and hold investing.”

Just something to think about.

You Can’t Time The Market?

Since the markets were closed on Monday, there really isn’t much to update from this past weekend’s newsletter. The markets remain clearly and undeniably overbought and the risk of a short-term correction outweighs the potential for reward.

My blogs and newsletters regularly generate responses from those whom, most likely, have never witnessed the damage caused by a “mean reverting event” in the markets. Like this one:

“I just bought more equities and am now 100% invested. I don’t really care about corrections, because I am invested primarily in high yield investments. Sure, the market might correct a little, buy since you can’t time the market, over the long-term I will be fine.”

In the end, they will care about corrections and the “chase for yield” will end as badly as every other bubble throughout history. But I have written plenty about that in the past.

It is the “you can’t time the market” part of the email that I want to address today.

The Market Timing Myth

Back in 2010, Brett Arends wrote: “The Market Timing Myth” which primarily focused on several points that I have been making for years.  Brett really hits home with the following statement:

For years, the investment industry has tried to scare clients into staying fully invested in the stock market at all times, no matter how high stocks go or what’s going on in the economy. ‘You can’t time the market,’ they warn. ‘Studies show that market timing doesn’t work.’

He goes on:

“They’ll cite studies showing that over the long-term investors made most of their money from just a handful of big one-day gains. In other words, if you miss those days, you’ll earn bupkis. And as no one can predict when those few, big jumps are going to occur, it’s best to stay fully invested at all times. So just give them your money… lie back, and think of the efficient market hypothesis. You’ll hear this in broker’s offices everywhere. And it sounds very compelling.

There’s just one problem. It’s hooey.

They’re leaving out more than half the story.

And what they’re not telling you makes a real difference to whether you should invest, when and how.”

The best long-term study relating to this topic was conducted a few years ago by Javier Estrada, a finance professor at the IESE Business School at the University of Navarra in Spain. To find out how important those few “big days” are, he looked at nearly a century’s worth of day-to-day moves on Wall Street and 14 other stock markets around the world, from England to Japan to Australia.

Yes, he found that if you missed the 10 best days you missed out on a lot of the gains. But he also found that if you managed to be out of the market on the 10 worst days, your profits went through the roof.

Clearly, avoiding major drawdowns in the market is key to long-term investment success. If I am not spending the bulk of my time making up previous losses in my portfolio, I spend more time compounding my invested dollars towards my long term goals. As Brett points out:

“Over an investing period of about 40 years, he calculated, missing the 10 best days would have cost you about half your capital gains. But successfully avoiding the 10 worst days would have had an even bigger positive impact on your portfolio. Someone who avoided the 10 biggest slumps would have ended up with two and a half times the capital gains of someone who simply stayed in all the time.

In other words, it’s something of a wash. The cost of being in the market just before a crash are at least as great as being out of the market just before a big jump and may be greater. Funny how the finance industry doesn’t bother to tell you that.”

The reason that the finance industry doesn’t tell you the other half of the story is because it is NOT PROFITABLE for them. The finance industry makes money when you are invested – not when you are in cash.  Therefore, it is of no benefit to Wall Street to advise you to move to cash.

A Simple Method

Now, let me clear.  I do not strictly endorse “market timing” which is specifically being “all in” or “all out” of the market at any given time. The problem with market timing is consistency.

You cannot, over the long term, effectively time the market.  Being all in, or out, of the market will eventually put you on the wrong side of the ‘trade’ which will lead to a host of other problems.

There are no great investors of our time that “buy and hold” investments. Even the great Warren Buffett occasionally sells investments. (He just recently sold almost his entire stake in Walmart.) True investors buy when they see value, and sell when value no longer exists.

While there are many sophisticated methods of handling risk within a portfolio, even using a basic method of price analysis, such as a moving average crossover, can be a valuable tool over the long term holding periods. Will such a method ALWAYS be right? Absolutely not. However, will such a method keep you from losing large amounts of capital? Absolutely.

The chart below shows a simple moving average crossover study. The actual moving averages used are not important, but what is clear is that using a basic form of price movement analysis can provide a useful identification of periods when portfolio risk should be REDUCED. Importantly, I did not say risk should be eliminated; just reduced.

Again, I am not implying, suggesting or stating that such signals mean going 100% to cash. What I am suggesting is that when “sell signals” are given that is the time when individuals should perform some basic portfolio risk management such as:

  • Trim back winning positions to original portfolio weights: Investment Rule: Let Winners Run
  • Sell positions that simply are not working (if the position was not working in a rising market, it likely won’t in a declining market.) Investment Rule: Cut Losers Short
  • Hold the cash raised from these activities until the next buying opportunity occurs. Investment Rule: Buy Low

By using some measures, fundamental or technical, to reduce portfolio risk by taking profits as prices/valuations rise, or vice versa, the long-term results of avoiding periods of severe capital loss will outweigh missed short term gains. Small adjustments can have a significant impact over the long run.

As Brett continues:

“First, let’s be clear what it doesn’t mean. It still doesn’t mean you should try to ‘time’ the market day to day. Mr. Estrada’s conclusion is that a small number of big days, in both directions, account for most of the stock market’s price performance. Trying to catch the 10 biggest jumps, or avoid the 10 big tumbles, is almost certainly a fool’s errand. Hardly anyone can do this sort of thing successfully. Even most professionals can’t.

But, second, it does mean you that you shouldn’t let scare stories dominate your approach to investing. Don’t let yourself be bullied. Least of all by someone who isn’t telling you the full story.”

There is little point trying to catch twist and turn of the market. But that also doesn’t mean you simply have to be passive and let it wash all over you.  It may not be possible to “time” the market, but it is possible to reach intelligent conclusions about whether the market offers good value for investors.

There is a clear advantage to providing risk management to portfolios over time. The problem, as I have discussed many times previously, is that most individuals cannot manage their own money because of “short-termism.”

Despite their inherent belief that they are long-term investors, they are consistently swept up in the short-term movements of the market. Of course, with the media and Wall Street pushing the “you are missing it” mantra as the market rises – who can really blame the average investor “panic” buying market tops and selling out at market bottoms.

Yet, despite two major bear market declines, it never ceases to amaze me that investors still believe that somehow they can invest in a portfolio that will capture all of the upside of the market but will protect them from the losses. Despite being a totally unrealistic objective this “fantasy” leads to excessive risk taking in portfolios which ultimately leads to catastrophic losses. Aligning expectations with reality is the key to building a successful portfolio. Implementing a strong investment discipline, and applying risk management, is what leads to the achievement of those expectations.

As Brett concludes:

“Can’t time the market? It was clear as a bell that investors should have gotten out of stocks in 1929, in the mid-1960s, and 10 years ago. Anyone who followed the numbers would have avoided the disaster of the 1929 crash, the 1970s or the past lost decade on Wall Street. Why didn’t more people do so? Doubtless, they all had their reasons. But I wonder how many stayed fully invested because their brokers told them ‘You can’t time the market.”‘

Something to think about.