Tag Archives: income

Should You Hedge Your Foreign Currency Exposure?

Click to enlarge By Remy Briand, Head of Research, MSCI The volatility of currency has increased in recent years as a combination of quantitative easing and currency wars fuel swings in the foreign-exchange market. CURRENCY RISK TO EQUITY PORTFOLIOS HAS TICKED UP SINCE THE 2008 FINANCIAL CRISIS The chart above shows that the risk to a U.S. dollar-based investor from currencies in international equity exposure has increased significantly since the global financial crisis, according to the latest Barra global equity model . By contrast, the exposure to foreign currencies reduced total risk for a portfolio of developed market equities at times prior to 2004. Many money managers disregard the volatility and leave their exposure to foreign currency unhedged. Or they apply full hedge strategies that can prove costly over time. A more dynamic hedging approach demands a framework to decide which currency to hedge, a mechanism to monitor the indicators and an ability to vary automatically the portion of each currency weight to hedge in a given period (a proportion referred to as a hedge ratio). Which indicators to consider when selecting a hedge ratio There is a long history of research by academics and practitioners who have studied currency hedging strategies. As part of MSCI’s research into risk factors, we have reviewed and modeled those indicators that have proved to be effective in the literature and over time. Our indicators come from four categories: value, momentum, carry, and volatility. The value indicator measures the relative purchasing power of each currency in a pair. Momentum examines currency returns for the previous six months. Carry measures the difference between two-year sovereign yields for both the foreign and home currency. Volatility compares average monthly volatility with the six-month historical average. The ability to hedge foreign exchange risk systematically for any pair of currencies by reference to the four indicators form the foundation of the approach to adaptive hedging that MSCI introduced recently. Though you can view each indicator individually, together they indicate whether or not to hedge and by how much. If the signal points to a possible depreciation of the foreign currency against the home currency, then a hedge may make sense. The chart below illustrates the calculation of the hedge ratio for the Japanese yen from the perspective of a U.S.-dollar based investor. The solid bands of color show periods when an investor should have hedged yen exposure for the respective indicators. INDICATOR SWITCHES AND THE ADAPTIVE HEDGE RATION SINCE MARCH 2012 FOR THE JAPANESE YEN (U.S. DOLLAR-BASED INVESTOR) Click to enlarge Taking the pain out of hedging decisions If you consider each currency represented in the MSCI ACWI Index, calculate the hedge ratios and average them in proportion to the weight of the currency in the index, you get the global average hedge ratio for home-based investors. According to the formula, a U.S.-based institutional investor would need to hedge its global equity allocation by 65% on average, as of March 31. Based on the adaptive hedging methodology, a U.S.-based institutional investor would hedge 75% of their Swiss franc exposure, 50% of their yen exposure, 75% of their euro exposure and 75% of their sterling exposure. Similarly, an investor based in the eurozone would hedge 75% of their Swiss franc exposure, 50% of their yen exposure, 75% of their sterling exposure, and 50% of their U.S.-dollar exposure. HEDGING RATIO FOR KEY CURRENCIES (AS OF MARCH 31) Because the targeted hedging ratios change through time, currency hedges require active monitoring and regular adjustment in portfolios. While long-term investors may decide to leave their allocations to global equities unhedged, investors more sensitive to short-term volatility may prefer a more rules-based form of currency hedging. The adaptive hedging methodology illustrates one approach based on four factors affecting currency behavior. Further reading: The MSCI Adaptive Hedge Indexes: Flexible hedging using a combination of currency indicators 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.

The V20 Portfolio: Week #29

The V20 portfolio is an actively managed portfolio that seeks to achieve an annualized return of 20% over the long term. If you are a long-term investor, then this portfolio may be for you. You can read more about how the portfolio works and the associated risks here . Always do your own research before making an investment. Read the last update here . Note: Current allocation and planned transactions are only available to premium subscribers . Over the past week, the V20 Portfolio climbed by 7.9% while the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (NYSEARCA: SPY ) rose slightly by 0.5%. Portfolio Update This week we saw significant volatility in our smallest holding, Dex Media (OTCMKT: OTCPK:DXMM ). Last week speculators drove up the price by more than 100% to a high of $0.28. After Wall Street Journal reported rumor of a planned bankruptcy, shares fell to where they traded prior to the run-up. Of course, the reason the V20 Portfolio holds the stock is not to trade these unpredictable swings. Ultimately the value of the equity will be dependent on the outcome of the negotiation. Prior to the management electing to miss an interest payment, the company still had enough liquidity to keep operations going. Intelsat (NYSE: I ) rallied as the high yield market recovered. Over the past month, shares climbed by almost 50%. As is the case with Dex Media, the company will be facing liquidity issues if it cannot refinance, which is why it is so dependent on the high yield market. The difference is that the company still has a good business that is growing. I believe that the discount arising from this issue will eventually disappear as the company deleverages. We also saw revised Q1 guidance from Spirit Airlines (NASDAQ: SAVE ) this week. Operating margin was increased from 19-20.5% to 21.5%. While it is still lower than what was achieved in Q1 2015, it is still a good sign given the intense competition in the market. Because Spirit Airlines mainly competes on price, I believe that exchanging a temporary dip in profitability for market share is a sound strategy. Our recent stake in an insurance company has not moved much since our purchase, though the company has most certainly continued to collect sizable premiums in the first quarter. I believe that one of the main reasons is the expectation that 2016’s hurricane season will be one of the worst in recent years . As the hurricane season approaches, the market may become increasingly nervous about Florida P&C insurers in general. It is important to remember that we were not betting on the occurrence (or rather absence) of a catastrophic hurricane when we purchased a stake in the company, we were buying its long-term profits. Our biggest position, Conn’s (NASDAQ: CONN ), continued to climb this week, rising 24%. While there were no company specific news, I believe that the stock may have benefited from the recent rally in the energy sector. Due to the company’s concentration in Texas, it is possible that the market perceives the commodity rally as a sign that the job market will improve, leading to more sales and lower delinquencies at Conn’s. Performance Since Inception Click to enlarge Disclosure: I am/we are long DXMM, CONN, I, SAVE. 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. Editor’s Note: This article covers one or more stocks trading at less than $1 per share and/or with less than a $100 million market cap. Please be aware of the risks associated with these stocks.

The Placebo Effect

I’ve had four or five true migraines in my life, mostly from getting whacked on the head with something like a baseball or a sharp elbow in basketball, and I honestly can’t imagine how horrible it must be to suffer from chronic migraines, defined by the FDA as 15 or more migraines per month with headaches lasting at least four hours. So I was happy to see a TV ad saying that the FDA had approved Botox as an effective treatment for chronic migraines, preventing up to 9 headache-days per month. That’s huge! But in the fast-talking coda for the ad, I heard something that made me do a double-take. Yes, Botox can knock out up to 9 headache-days per month. But a placebo injection is almost as good, preventing up to 7 headache-days per month. Now 9 is better than 7 … I get that … and that’s why the FDA approved the drug as efficacious. Still. Really? Most of the reports I’ve read say that the cost of a Botox migraine treatment is about $600. That’s just the cost of the drug itself. So what the FDA is telling us is that a saline solution injection (costing what? $2) is almost 80% as effective as the $600 drug, so long as it was presented to the patient as a “true” potential therapy . If I’m an Allergan (NYSE: AGN ) shareholder I’m thanking god every day for the placebo effect. And not for nothing, but I’d really like to learn more about why Botox was NOT approved for migraine sufferers with fewer than 15 headache-days per month. If I were a gambling man (and I am), I’d be prepared to wager a significant amount of money that Botox significantly reduces headache-days at pretty much any level of chronic-ness, from 1 day to 30 days per month, but that at lower migraine frequencies a placebo is just as efficacious as Botox. In other words, I’d bet that ALL migraine sufferers would benefit from a $600 Botox shot, but I’d also bet that ALL migraine sufferers would benefit from a cheap saline shot so long as the doctor told them it was a brilliant new drug, and they’d get as much or MORE benefit from the cheap saline shot than from Botox if they’re “just” enduring eight or nine migraine headaches. Per month. Geez. Of course, there’s no economic incentive to provide the cheap placebo injection nor the unapproved (and hence unreimbursed) Botox shot if you have fewer than 15 headache-days per month. Bottomline: I’d bet that millions of people who don’t meet the 15 day threshold are suffering from terrible pain that could absolutely be alleviated at a very reasonable cost if it weren’t criminally unethical and (worse) terribly unprofitable to lie about the “truth” of a placebo treatment. Of course, we have no such restrictions, ethical or otherwise, when it comes to monetary policy, and that’s the connection between investing and this little foray into the special hell that we call healthcare economics. The primary instruments of monetary policy in 2016 – words used to construct Common Knowledge and mold our behavior, words chosen for effect rather than truthfulness, words of “forward guidance” and ” communication policy ” – are placebos. Like a fake migraine therapy, the placebos of monetary policy are enormously effective because they act on the brain-regulated physiological phenomena of pain (placebos are essentially useless on non-brain-regulated phenomena like joint instability from a torn ligament or cellular chaos from cancer). Even in fundamentally-driven markets there’s a healthy balance between pain minimization and reward maximization. In a policy-driven market? The top three investing principles are pain avoidance, pain avoidance, and pain avoidance. We’re just looking to survive, not literally but in a brain-regulated emotional sense, and that leaves us wide open for the soothing power of placebos. I get lots of comments from readers who don’t understand how markets can continue to levitate higher with anemic-at-best global growth, stretched valuation multiples, and an earnings recession in vast swaths of corporate America. This week I’m reading lots of comments post the failed Doha OPEC meeting that oil prices are doomed to see a $20 handle now that there’s no supply limitation agreement forthcoming. Yep, that’s the real world. And there’s zero monetary or fiscal policy in the works that has any direct beneficial impact on any of this. But that’s not what matters. That’s not how the game is played. So long as the Fed and the ECB and the BOJ are playing nice with China by talking down the dollar regardless of what’s happening in the real world economy, then it’s an investable rally in all risk assets , and oil goes up more easily than it goes down, regardless of what happens with OPEC. The placebo effect of insanely accommodative forward guidance that has zero impact on the real economy is in full swing. Oil prices are driven by forward guidance and the dollar, not real world supply and demand . Every day that Yellen talks up global risks and talks down the dollar is another day of a pain-relieving injection, regardless of whether or not that talk is “real” therapy. Does this mean that we’re off to the races in the market? Nope. The notion that we have a self-sustaining recovery in the global economy is laughable, and that’s what it will take to stimulate a new greed phase of a rip-roaring bull market. But by the same token I have no idea what makes this market go down, so long as we have monetary policy convergence rather than divergence, and so long as we have a Fed that loses its nerve and freaks out if the stock market goes down by more than 5%. So long as the words of a monetary policy truce hold strong, this isn’t a world that ends in fire and it isn’t a world that ends in ice. It’s the long gray slog of an entropic ending . Anyone else intrigued by the potential of a covered call strategy in this environment? I sure am. But wait, Ben, isn’t a covered call strategy (where you’re selling call options on your long positions) the opposite of convexity? Haven’t you been saying that a portfolio should have more convexity – i.e. optionality, i.e. buying options rather than selling options – rather than less? Yes. Yes, I have. But optionality isn’t the same thing as owning options. In the same way that I want portfolio optionality that pays off in a fire scenario (a miracle happens and global growth + inflation surges forward) and portfolio optionality that pays off in an ice scenario (China drops a deflationary atom bomb by floating the yuan), so do I want portfolio optionality that pays off in a gray slog scenario. That’s where covered calls (and covered puts for short positions) come into play. It’s all part of applying the principles of minimax regret to portfolio construction , where we don’t try to assign probabilities and expected return projections to our holdings, but where we think in terms of risk tolerance and minimizing investment pain for any of the market scenarios that could develop in a politically fragmented world. It’s all part of having an intentional portfolio , where every exposure plays a defined role with maximum capital efficiency, as opposed to an accidental portfolio where we just slather on layer after layer of “quality” large cap stocks . The Silver Age of the Central Banker gives me a headache. I bet it does you, too. Let’s take our relief where we can find it, placebo or no, but let’s not mistake forward guidance for a cure and let’s not forget that sometimes pretty words just aren’t enough. The truth is that the global trade pie is still shrinking and domestic politics are still anti-growth in both the US and Europe . Neither math nor human nature gives me much confidence that the currency truce can hold indefinitely, and I still think that every policy China has undertaken is exactly what I would do to prepare for floating (i.e. massively devaluing) the yuan. It’s at moments like this, though, that I remember the short seller’s creed: if you’re wrong on timing, you’re just wrong. I don’t know the timing of the bigger headaches to come, the ones that words and placebos won’t fix. What I do know, though, is that an investable rally in risk assets today gives us some breathing space to prepare our portfolios for the even more policy-controlled markets of the future. Let’s not waste this opportunity.