Author Archives: Scalper1

Hedging Disney Ahead Of Earnings

If guests have the nerve to die, they wait, like unwanted calories, until they’ve crossed the line and can do so safely off the property. – The Project On Disney, via Snopes Disney: Estimize Versus Value Investor’s Edge With Disney (NYSE: DIS ) reporting earnings after the close, the nearly 1,200 Disney analysts reporting to Estimize collectively predict the company will beat Wall Street’s consensus earnings estimate, as the graph below shows. Click to enlarge The Estimize consensus earnings estimate shown above, $1.46, is 6 cents ahead of the Wall Street consensus of $1.40. Since its analysts include private investors as well as those from independent research shops, buy-side firms, and sell-side firms, Estimize says its estimates tend to be more accurate than those from Wall Street analysts alone. On the bearish side is Seeking Alpha premium author J Mintzmyer, who runs the Seeking Alpha Marketplace service Value Investor’s Edge . In a Pro Research column ( Time To Short Disney ), Mintzmyer argued the stock was “horribly expensive” (in the comments, Mintzmyer clarifies that, while he still finds the stock overvalued, he is no longer short Disney and feels there are better short opportunities available now). Limiting Downside Risk For Disney Longs For Disney longs boosted by the bullish Estimize earnings prediction, but looking to hedge their downside risk over the next several months, we’ll look at a couple of ways of doing so below the refresher on hedging terms. Refresher On Hedging Terms Recall that puts (short for put options) are contracts that give an investor the right to sell a security for a specified price (the strike price) before a specified date (the expiration date). And calls (short for call options) are contracts that give an investor the right to buy a security for a specified price before a specified date. Optimal puts are the ones that will give you the level of protection you want at the lowest cost. A collar is a type of hedge in which you buy a put option for protection, and at the same time, sell a call option, which gives another investor the right to buy the security from you at a higher strike price by the same expiration date. The proceeds from selling the call option can offset at least part of the cost of buying the put option. An optimal collar is a collar that will give you the level of protection you want at the lowest cost while not capping your possible upside by the expiration date of the hedge by more than you specify. In a nutshell, with a collar, you may be able to reduce the cost of hedging in return for giving up some possible upside. Hedging Disney With Optimal Puts We’re going to use Portfolio Armor’s iOS app to find an optimal put and an optimal collar to hedge Disney, but you don’t need the app to do this. You can find optimal puts and collars yourself by using the process we outlined in this article if you’re willing to take the time and do the work. Whether you run the calculations yourself using the process we outlined or use the app, an additional piece of information you’ll need to supply (along with the number of shares you’re looking to hedge) when scanning for an optimal put is your “threshold”, which refers to the maximum decline you are willing to risk. This will vary depending on your risk tolerance. For the purpose of the examples below, we’ve used a threshold of 15%. If you are more risk-averse, you could use a smaller threshold. And if you are less risk-averse, you could use a larger one. All else equal, though, the higher the threshold, the cheaper it will be to hedge. Here are the optimal puts as of Monday’s close to hedge 200 shares of DIS against a greater-than-15% drop by late October. As you can see at the bottom of the screen capture above, the cost of this protection was $424, or 2.01% of position value. A few points about this hedge: To be conservative, the cost was based on the ask price of the put. In practice, you can often buy puts for less (at some price between the bid and ask). The 15% threshold includes this cost, i.e., in the worst-case scenario, your DIS position would be down 12.99%, not including the hedging cost. The threshold is based on the intrinsic value of the puts, so they may provide more protection than promised if the investor exits after the underlying security declines in the near term, when the puts may still have significant time value . Hedging Disney With An Optimal Collar When searching for an optimal collar, you’ll need one more number in addition to your threshold, your “cap,” which refers to the maximum upside you are willing to limit yourself to if the underlying security appreciates significantly. A logical starting point for the cap is your estimate of how the security will perform over the time period of the hedge. For example, if you’re hedging over a five-month period, and you think a security won’t appreciate more than 6% over that time frame, then it might make sense to use 6% as a cap. You don’t think the security is going to do better than that anyway, so you’re willing to sell someone else the right to call it away if it does better than that. We checked Portfolio Armor’s website to get an estimate of Disney’s potential return over the time frame of the hedge. Every trading day, the site runs two screens to avoid riskier investments on every hedgeable security in the U.S., and then ranks the ones that pass by their potential return. Disney didn’t pass the two screens, do the site didn’t calculate a potential return for it. So we looked at Wall Street’s price targets for the stock via Yahoo Finance (pictured below). We usually work with the median target, but in this case, it’s pretty low relative to the price of the stock. The $110.50 12-month price target represents about a 2% potential return between now and late October. On the other hand, the high target of $130 implies a return of about 9.6% over that time frame. By using a cap of 9%, we were able to eliminate the cost of the hedge in this case, so we used that. As of Monday’s close, this was the optimal collar to hedge 200 shares of DIS against a greater-than-15% drop by late October while not capping an investor’s upside at less than 9% by the end of that time period. As you can see in the first part of the optimal collar above, the cost of the put leg was $328, or 1.56% of position value. But if you look at the second part of the collar below, you’ll see the income generated by selling the call leg was a bit higher: $364, or 1.73% of position value. So, the net cost was negative, meaning an investor opening this collar would have collected an amount equal to $36, or -0.17% of position value. Two notes on this hedge: Similar to the situation with the optimal puts, to be conservative, the cost of the optimal collar was calculated using the ask price of the puts and the bid price of the calls. In practice, an investor can often buy puts for less and sell calls for more (again, at some price between the bid and the ask), so in reality, an investor would likely have collected more than $36 when opening this collar. As with the optimal puts above, this hedge may provide more protection than promised if the investor exits after the underlying security declines in the near future, due to time value (for an example of this, see this recent article on hedging Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL ), Hedging Apple ). However, if the underlying security spikes in the near future, time value can have the opposite effect, making it costly to exit the position early (for an example of this, see this article on hedging Facebook (NASDAQ: FB ), Facebook Rewards Cautious Investors Less ). Disclosure: I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

Investing In A Stock Split ETF: 2 Is Better Than 1

How can you make money even in a market that’s gone sideways for most of the year, especially the last few months? One answer: invest in a cutting edge ETF that’s designed to stay “ahead” of the market, including one that’s been outperforming the market by a healthy margin this year. The USCF Stock Split Index Fund (NYSEARCA: TOFR ), pronounced “Two Fer”, is the very first ETF investing exclusively in stocks that split. On April 19, Barron’s and Lipper reported TOFR was up 5.62% year to date or more than five times higher than the rise of its category (1.06%) this year and 2.28 times more than the S&P 500’s 2.47% increase. And on May 6, investors who had invested in TOFR at the beginning of the year would have seen returns that were about four times better (4.03 times to be exact) than if they had invested the same money in the S&P 500; TOFR was up 4.31% vs.1.07% for the S&P 500, according to Barron’s and Lipper. It also was running almost five times better than its category, which was up just .88% this year. TOFR is currently in the #1 quintile rank YTD and in the top 2% in its category, according to Lipper . How does TOFR compare with other ETFs? While the fund has slightly lagged the Vanguard Dividend Appreciation ETF (NYSEARCA: VIG ), which was recently up 4.76% this year, it’s been beating the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSEARCA: SPY ) YTD by a healthy, four to one margin (4.31% vs roughly 1.00%). Since the fund’s inception in September 2014, its numbers do not look quite as impressive. TOFR had one really bad quarter (the fourth quarter of 2015), during which much of its previous performance was given back. TOFR’s 1.02% move higher trailed the S&P’s 7.04% gain by about 6 percentage points in that three month period. But since then, it’s bounced back well. In fact, if you take the cumulative return since TOFR’s inception, it’s up 10.89% vs. the S&P’s 7.66%. Like most investments, TOFR may underperform at times. However, over the long haul, the 20 year track record of the newsletter it’s based on is what makes TOFR compelling: it was recently up 719% vs. 185% for the Dow and 191% for the S&P 500 — a difference of nearly 4-1 over both the Dow and S&P 500 (3.89-1 to be exact for the Dow and 3.76-1 for the S&P 500). TOFR is part of USCF (United States Commodity Funds LLC) Investments, which manages nine EF funds with total recent assets of approximately $5 billion. (Its ETFs include the first commodity ETF based on crude oil launched in the U.S., which is the fourth commodity ETF of any kind launched in the U.S. USCF also manages the first natural gas based ETF, which is the most actively traded natural gas commodity ETF in the U.S.) TOFR’s concept is simple. It’s like someone asking: would you rather have one big scoop of ice cream or two smaller ones? Well, most people would feel that two scoops are better than one, especially if those two scoops somehow had the potential to grow even bigger and at a faster rate than the big one. It turns out that, according to TOFR principal and portfolio manager Andy Ngim, two shares are usually better than one. In fact, analysis shows that stocks usually tend to do well for 24-36 months after a company announces a split, so TOFR holds them for 30 months, which is smack dab in the middle of the 24-36 month period. An influential academic research study by David Ikenberry at Rice University, discussed in the April 22, 1996, issue of Forbes, reported that there is a measurable difference in a stock’s performance for up to three years after it splits 2 for 1 as opposed to those stocks that have not split. TOFR consists of 30 stocks that are equally weighted. “Each holding accounts for 3.33% of our portfolio,” says Ngim. The bottom line: no matter how big the stock is — Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL ) is included in TOFR and so is Nike (NYSE: NKE ), which split in December 2015 — the starting weighting is the same. “It’s a well-diversified group, covering small, mid-cap, and large-cap stocks,” adds Ngim. “There’s a value edge to the stocks comprising TOFR. A lot them pay dividends, so it builds in defensiveness.” A new stock is usually added every month to TOFR’s portfolio, which tracks newsletter publisher Neil MacNeale’s 2 For 1 Index. The popular newsletter has been published since August 1996. But what if there aren’t enough great two-for-one stock split candidates for MacNeale to consider? Since TOFR was launched, that’s only happened twice, including last month. I asked Ngim what happened during those times. “We follow Neil’s listings, so that’s what we did,” he explains. “During those two months, there were no changes to the portfolio, other than rebalancing all the holdings back to equal weight.” What about the future of stock splits? Does continued investing in them look rosey? “Like any investment, you’re going to get a surprise once in a while,” tells Ngim. “But many any of those surprises have been to the upside. And an upward trend has been continuing since 1996.” According to Ngim, the two-for-one remains the most common type of split, though some firms have been trying unconventional splits. “For example, Google recently did a nontraditional style split,” he says. “Newer companies seem to be more open in exploring nonconventional kinds of splits.” (In April 2014, when Google split its stock two for one, it also split into two companies, Google and its new parent, Alphabet. If Google had done a typical split, the would have doubled the voting power of their A shares (NASDAQ: GOOGL ) relative to their B shares, which would have diluted the founders’ voting power. The founders, such as Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and insiders, like executive chairman Eric Schmidt, who owned most of the Class B stock, didn’t want that, so they issued a new Class C (NASDAQ: GOOG ), whose shares do not have voting power.) Other firms have been waiting longer and longer to announce their splits. And some stocks never split, no matter how pricey they become. “For example, Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A ) hasn’t split,” says Ngim. The stock recently closed at a whopping $215,880 per share. Disclosure: I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it. I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

Smart Beta And The Portfolio Construction Puzzle

The portfolio puzzle The Rubik’s cube has become a popular metaphor for the marketing teams of ETF providers. With good reason. For each client there’s a portfolio construction puzzle to be solved with building blocks, representing geographies, sectors, asset classes, factors and styles. There has been rapid expansion from providers of ETFs tracking main-market indices, with the largest institutional providers capturing the lion’s share of flows, owing to their ability to deliver on four key ETF governance criteria — consistency, liquidity, transparency and, of course, price. This means that ETFs for main market cap-weighted indices are increasingly commoditized. After all, there doesn’t seem to be anything overly smart about replicating market beta, other than the smartness of saving on fees relative to ‘closet-tracker’ active funds. Traditional cap-weighted index investing is a preference: either out of philosophy or necessity. Innovation Means Smarter? Hence R&D of institutional investors, index providers and ETF manufacturers alike has focused more on “smart beta.” This has triggered a slew of innovation – both superficial and substantive. At a superficial end, age-old alternative weighting strategies (e.g. value indices that screen stocks for low book values, or dividend-weighted indices) have been re-branded as being “smart.” In these cases, for “smart” read “non-market-cap weighted.” In fairness, this rebranding is part of broadening of alternative weighting strategies that are factor-based. More substantively, research programs such as EDHEC-Risk Institute’s Scientific Beta have been instrumental in promoting fresh thinking in the field of both factor-based and risk-based smart beta strategies. Factor-Based Approach As a result, providers are focusing on making building blocks smarter. Instead of relying on the ‘traditional’ factor of market capitalization for index inclusion, smart beta indices (and related ETFs) look at alternative factors: book value, dividend yield, volatility, for example. In that respect, the FTSE Russell 1000 Value Index launched in 1987 is probably the oldest factor index on the block. More recent factor indices are stylistic: Both iShares (Oct-14) and Vanguard (Dec-15) have launched global equity factor ETFs focusing on liquidity, minimum volatility, momentum and value. The sophistication of factor-based index construction will continue to increase with the increase in data availability and computing power. Risk-Based Approach Portfolio strategists meanwhile can apply quantitative rules-based approaches to portfolio construction, creating static or dynamic asset allocation strategies from a growing universe of both cap-weighted and alternatively weighted index tracking funds. These strategies — such as maximum Sharpe, minimum variance, equal risk contribution and maximum deconcentration — offer an alternative to the standard but troubled single period mean variance optimization (MVO) approach. MVO’s limitations The single-period MVO approach remains the traditional bedrock of very long-run investing in normal market conditions where the sequence of returns does not matter. However it runs into difficulty in the short-run when markets are non-normal and sequence of returns matters a lot. So unless you are a large endowment with an infinite time horizon, or perhaps can afford to invest for yourself and your family without ever needing to withdraw any capital, relying entirely on the MVO approach for asset allocation gives false comfort. For cases where there are constraints that challenge the MVO model – due to multiple or limited time horizons, expected capital withdrawals, risk budgets, and unstable risk/return/correlation profiles of asset classes (collectively known as real life) — portfolio construction requires a smarter, more adaptive approach that observes, isolates and captures the reward from shifting risk premia over time. Risk-based portfolio strategies attempt to achieve this and are designed to offer a liquid alternative approach to investing that is uncorrelated with traditional single-period MVO strategies. What’s the Problem to Solve? Whether assessing factor-based ETFs or risk-based ETF strategies, at best these new developments all seem very smart. At worst it’s just a bit different. However, as ETFs get smarter and the strategies that combine them become more sophisticated, there’s a risk that the key question in all of this gets lost in an incomprehensible barrage of Greek. The key question for portfolio managers nonetheless remains the same. What client outcome am I targeting? What client need am I trying to solve? For portfolio strategy, whether using a discretionary manager that relies on judgment, or a systematic rules-based approach that relies on quantitative inputs, the key client considerations remain return objective, time horizon, capacity for loss and diversification across asset classes and/or risk premia. Broadening the Toolkit A portfolio strategy has little meaning without an objective that focuses on client outcomes. Factor-based ETFs and risk-based ETF portfolio strategies offer an alternative or additional set of tools to help deliver on those outcomes, in a way that is systematic, liquid and efficient. Disclosure: I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it. I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article. Additional disclosure: This article has been prepared for research purposes only.