Tag Archives: investing

10 Charts That Explained Markets In 2015… And Will Impact 2016

Summary 2015 will be remembered for weakness in commodity markets, which bled over into global equities and U.S. high yield debt. In 2016, the divergence between monetary policy in the United States and the rest of the developed world could shape global financial markets. Underpinning all global markets is the ongoing transition of the Chinese economy from one driven by fixed investment to one led by domestic consumption, an unrivaled economic experiment. Below are what I believe are ten of the most interesting charts of 2015. The topics depicted had outsized impacts on financial markets in 2015, and will continue to be important considerations as the calendar turns to the New Year. While oil stole many of the headlines in 2015, falling by nearly two-thirds over the past eighteen months, a broad commodity index moved to its lowest level since 1999. Industrial metals, precious metals, and agricultural commodities were all pressured by a slowdown in global growth. Global Commodities Trade at 16-Year Low (click to enlarge) Source: Bloomberg, (Data through mid-day 12/24/15) Stress in commodity markets was primarily blamed on moderating Chinese growth. While the Chinese growth rate has receded, the absolute change in the size of the Chinese economy was still roughly equivalent to its absolute growth in 2006 and 2007 when the economy was growing at double digit growth rates. In 2015, the Chinese economy grew in absolute terms by the size of the entire Swiss or Saudi Arabian economies. Said differently, the Chinese economy still grew in nominal terms by the size of all the goods and services produced in Switzerland in a year. The China effect on commodity prices has been less of a function of flagging growth rates, and more of a function of the party’s efforts at transitioning the economy from an investment-led to a more domestic consumption-driven economy. Chinese Economic Growth in Absolute Terms is Still Tremendous Source: Bloomberg, World Bank While China had an impact on commodity prices, the strengthening dollar also was a big story. When the value of a dollar rises, it takes fewer dollars to buy a given commodity. These global commodities traded in dollars also become more expensive in local terms, potentially reducing demand. As the graph below shows, the dollar is at its strongest points versus a basket of global peers in the last decade-plus. As the Fed normalizes monetary policy further, higher interest rates on dollar investments could also spur a rally in the greenback, which could further pressure commodity prices and U.S. exporters and multinationals with large foreign businesses. The U.S. Dollar Index Strengthens Against Global Peers (click to enlarge) Source: Bloomberg, (Data through mid-day 12/24/15) A key theme in 2016 could be the divergence of U.S. and European monetary policy. Lend money to the German government today for ten years, and they will pay you 0.64% per year. In April, that figure was an astonishing 0.075%. That figure is still negative for 10-yr Swiss government bonds at -0.09%, meaning investors pay for the privilege of the Swiss government to hold their money in Swiss francs. Higher interest rates in the United States could continue to rotate money from the low rates in the developed world (Europe and Japan) and more stressed emerging economies. Shifting capital flows will create volatility and opportunity. German 10-yr Highlights Ongoing European Economic Weakness Source: Bloomberg Speaking of volatility, U.S. investors may have been unnerved by an uptick in market volatility in 2015, but that volatility paled in comparison to the volatility on the shallower Shanghai exchange. Chinese Volatility Could be Part of New Normal (click to enlarge) Source: Bloomberg, Standard and Poor’s One of my key themes has been the long run risk-adjusted outperformance of lower volatility assets relative to their higher beta cohorts. I wrote an expansive series this summer on the L ow Volatility Anomaly , or why lower risk stocks have outperformed their higher risk brethren over time. That theme continued in 2015 as a low volatility component of the S&P 500 outperformed high beta stocks and the broader market gauge on an absolute basis. Low Volatility Outperforms (Again) (click to enlarge) Source: Bloomberg, Standard and Poor’s; (Data through 12/23/15) This preference for lower volatility assets also extended to the topical high yield bond market ( as described in this piece ). Driven by the underperformance of commodity-sensitive speculative grade bonds, the High Yield Index is under the most stress since early in the economic recovery in 2009. This stress can be seen by the sharp underperformance of lower rated riskier ratings cohorts versus the performance of the higher rated BB junk bonds. Chasing Yields Led to Bad Outcomes in High Yield Source: Barclays; Bloomberg While the last two graphs compared different quality classes within an asset class, the next graph depicts the volatility of the 30-yr Treasury versus the S&P 500. As one would expect upon the unwind of vol-suppressing extraordinary monetary accommodation, interest rate volatility increased in 2015 as shown by the variability of the performance of long duration Treasuries. For investors seeking shelter from equity volatility in fixed income, long duration securities with higher interest rate sensitivity may not be the haven for you. (This is a topic I have also covered in the past through an examination of the volatility of the bonds and equity of Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL )). Equity vs. Rate Volatility (click to enlarge) Source: Bloomberg; Standard and Poor’s; U.S. Treasury The Fed rate increase was in large part driven by a firming in the labor market that pushed the unemployment rate down towards its estimated natural rate of unemployment. A different perspective of the labor market shows that labor force participation is at its lowest level in nearly forty years. While we have seen a cyclical recovery in employment figures, the economy still faces secular headwinds from an aging population. Perhaps, there is more slack in the labor market than suggested by official employment statistics. If so, the failure of wage inflation to materialize could increase the risk of policy error by the Fed. How Healthy is the Labor Market? Labor Force Participation at Multi-Generational Lows (click to enlarge) Source: Bloomberg, Bureau of Labor & Statistics; (Data through 11/30/15) The weak economic recovery post-crisis has kept the U.S. economy from operating at its full potential. Limited investment by a necessarily more austere government after record cyclical deficits has pushed the average age of government fixed assets to its oldest age on record. Similarly, corporations have been more apt to invest in their own securities through record share buybacks than undertake capital investment in the real economy, extending the age of the private capital stock. Older fixed assets and infrastructure could be another structural headwind that pressures domestic economic growth. A Growth Drag from Aging Infrastructure? Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis 2015 was a fascinating year in financial markets. Plunging commodities, flagging Chinese growth, ultra-low rates in Europe, and the underperformance of higher risk investments in the United States all were symptomatic of tumultuous global markets. Domestically with equity multiples still above historical averages and yields on investment grade assets still historically low, forward returns are likely to fail to compensate investors for a continued heightened volatility. Disclaimer: My articles may contain statements and projections that are forward-looking in nature, and therefore inherently subject to numerous risks, uncertainties and assumptions. While my articles focus on generating long-term risk-adjusted returns, investment decisions necessarily involve the risk of loss of principal. Individual investor circumstances vary significantly, and information gleaned from my articles should be applied to your own unique investment situation, objectives, risk tolerance, and investment horizon.

The Time To Hedge Is Now! December 2015 Update

Summary Overview of strategy series and why I hedge. Short summary of how the strategy has worked so far. Some new positions I want to consider. Discussion of risk involved in this hedge strategy. Back to Do Not Rely On Gold Strategy Overview If you are new to this series, you will likely find it useful to refer back to the original articles, all of which are listed with links in this instablog . It may be more difficult to follow the logic without reading Parts I, II and IV. In Part I of this series, I provided an overview of a strategy to protect an equity portfolio from heavy losses in a market crash. In Part II, I provided more explanation of how the strategy works and gave the first two candidate companies to choose from as part of a diversified basket using put option contracts. I also provided an explanation of the candidate selection process and an example of how it can help grow both capital and income over the long term. Part III provided a basic tutorial on options. Part IV explained my process for selecting options and Part V explained why I prefer to not use ETFs for hedging. Parts VI through IX primarily provide additional candidates for use in the strategy. Part X explains my rules that guide my exit strategy. All of the articles in this series include varying views that I consider to be worthy of contemplation regarding possible triggers that could lead to another sizeable market correction. I want to make it very clear that I am NOT predicting a market crash. I merely like to take some of the pain out of the downside to make it easier to stick to my investing plan: select superior companies that have sustainable advantages, consistently rising dividends and excellent long-term growth prospects. Then I like to hold onto those investments unless the fundamental reasons for which I bought them in the first place changes. Investing long term works! If you are interested in a more detailed explanation of my investment philosophy, please consider reading ” How I Created My Own Portfolio Over a Lifetime .” Why I Hedge If the market (and your portfolio) drops by 50 percent, you will need to double your assets from the new lower level just to get back to even. I prefer to avoid such pain, both financial and emotional. If the market drops by 50 percent and I only lose 20 percent (but keep collecting my dividends all the while), I only need a gain of 25 percent to get back to even. That is much easier to accomplish than doubling a portfolio and takes less time. Trust me, I have done it both ways, and losing less puts me way ahead of the crowd when the dust settles. I view insurance, like hedging, as a necessary evil to avoid significant financial setbacks. From my point of view, those who do not hedge are trying to time the market, in my humble opinion. They intend to sell when the market turns but always buy the dips. While buying the dips is a sound strategy, it does not work well when the “dip” evolves into a full-blown bear market. At that point, the eternal bull finds himself catching the proverbial rain of falling knives as his/her portfolio tanks. Then panic sets in and the typical investor sells when they should be getting ready to buy. A short summary of how the strategy has worked so far I have been hedged since April 2014. In 2014, our only significant candidate win was Terex (NYSE: TEX ) which provided gains of over 600 percent to help offset some of my cost. I missed taking some profits in October of 2014 that could have put me in the black for the year, but by doing so, I would have left my portfolio too exposed, so I let most of those positions expire worthless. It is insurance, after all. The results for 2015 have been stellar! I like it when the market gives me a gain in early December because the likelihood of a year-end (Santa Claus) rally is very high and will usually give me an opportunity to redeploy the profits before the rest of my positions expire. I could have taken more gains but decided to leave some on the table in case the rally did not materialize to keep my portfolio mostly protected. I explained all my moves in the last article of the series linked at the top. My biggest winners in 2015 were Men’s Wearhouse (NYSE: MW ) with gains of over 2,700 percent, Micron Technologies (NASDAQ: MU ) with gains of up to 1,012 percent, Sotheby’s (NYSE: BID ) with gains of up to 1,500 percent, Seagate Technologies (NASDAQ: STX ) gaining over 570 percent, and Williams-Sonoma (NYSE: WSM ) with a gain of 527 percent. The gains realized on sold positions now puts me in a position of needing to add some hedges going into 2016, but with plenty of available cash. I will only deploy enough of those gains to protect my portfolio through the end of June 2016 and hold onto the rest to be deployed into new positions to provide a hedge through January 2017. Some new positions I want to consider Do not forget that I usually buy multiple positions in each candidate that I use and you should, too, unless you get in at a particularly good premium and strike. I add positions as I find I can do better than what I already own in order to improve my overall hedge. Sometimes I may buy only half or a third of the position I intend to own in the first purchase. As we get deeper into this bull market (if it still is a bull), I try to stay closer to fully hedged as much as possible. I will be hedging most of my portfolio again over the next month or so since most of my remaining positions are set to expire in mid-January of 2016. I cannot emphasize this enough: buy put options on strong rally days! Here is the list of what I would buy next and the premiums at which I would make the purchases. I may get in if the premium gets down close to my buy price and you will need to make such decisions for yourself. This is a different format from what I have used prior to this month. I will be placing good until cancelled orders at or just below my target premiums to get the positions I want when available without my having to watch daily. I list the candidates in the order of my preference. I will explain how many contracts per $100,000 of portfolio value will be needed and list the expiration months below the table. Symbol Current Price Target Price Strike Price Ask Prem Buy At Prem Poss. % Gain Tot. Est. $ Hedge % Cost of Portfolio RCL $99.92 $22 $75 $1.85 $1.80 2,844 $5,120 0.180% GT $32.79 $8 $28 $1.25 $1.25 1,500 $3,750 0.250% ADSK $61.85 $24 $50 $2.03 $1.80 1,344 $4,840 0.360% SIX $54.63 $20 $45 $1.30 $1.20 1,983 $4,760 0.240% LB $96.82 $30 $85 $2.65 $2.50 2,100 $5,250 0.250% LVLT $54.40 $20 $48 $2.20 $1.90 1,374 $2,610 0.190% TPX $71.64 $20 $60 $2.85 $2.50 1,500 $3,750 0.250% UAL $59.78 $18 $50 $2.29 $2.00 1,500 $3,000 0.200% MAS $28.44 $10 $25 $1.25 $0.85 1,665 $4,245 0.255% ETFC $29.71 $7 $27 $1.87 $1.25 1,500 $3,750 0.250% I will need only one June 2016 RCL put option contract to provide the coverage indicated in the above table. Remember that this is one of eight positions, each designed to hedge one-eighth of a $100,000 portfolio against a 30 percent drop in the S&P 500 Index. I will need eight positions from the table above to protect each $100,000 of equity portfolio value. To protect a $500,000 portfolio, I would need to multiply the number of contracts in each of my five positions by five to be fully protected. Below is a list of the expiration month (all expire in 2016) and number contracts needed for each position I use. Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. (NYSE: RCL ) June One Goodyear Tire (NASDAQ: GT ) July Two Autodesk (NASDAQ: ADSK ) July Two Six Flags (NYSE: SIX ) June Two L Brands (NYSE: LB ) May One Level 3 Communications (NYSE: LVLT ) June One Tempur Sealy (NYSE: TPX ) June One United Continental (NYSE: UAL ) June One Masco (NYSE: MAS ) July Three E – Trade Financial (NASDAQ: ETFC ) June Two If I use only the first eight positions listed above, I would protect each $100,000 of equity portfolio value against a drop of approximately $33,080 for a cost of $1,920 (plus commissions). What this means is that if the market falls by 30 percent, my hedge positions should more than offset the losses to my portfolio. This coverage only provides about six months of additional protection, but I have more than double that from my gains taken this year. Hopefully, there will more gains available to further offset future losses come summer and I will roll my positions again (and again, if necessary) until we finally have a recession. Both MAS and ETFC “Buy at Premiums” listed above are below the range of the current bid and ask premiums. That was the case with all of the premiums I used in the last article and most of those have been achieved already. Patience often pays off in lower costs. All of the other premiums listed are within the current range and should be available either immediately or with a small additional rally. I do not intend to chase these premiums and will try to get lower premiums when available. I expect that the current rally could extend into year-end giving me a better entry point on some of these candidates and possibly some others that just do not work at this level. I will provide another update if that opportunity occurs. But I am not ready to take that possibility to the bank, so I will place some orders Monday morning. I do not try to hedge the bond portion of my portfolio with equity options. For those who would like to hedge against a rout in high-yield bonds, I use options on JNK and may add HYG as a candidate for that purpose. If that seems interesting, please consider my recent article on the subject. Discussion of risk involved in this hedge strategy If an investor decides to employ this hedge strategy, each individual needs to do some additional due diligence to identify which candidates they wish to use and which contracts are best suited for their respective risk tolerance. I do not always choose the option contract with the highest possible gain or the lowest cost. I should also point out that in many cases I will own several different contracts with different strikes on one company. I do so because as the strike rises, the hedge kicks in sooner, but I buy a mix to keep the overall cost down. To accomplish this, I generally add new positions at the new strikes over time, especially when the stock is near its recent high. My goal is to commit approximately two percent (but up to three percent, if necessary) of my portfolio value to this hedge per year. If we need to roll positions before expiration there may be additional costs involved, so I try to hold down costs for each round that is necessary. My expectation is that this represents the last time we should need to roll positions before we see the benefit of this strategy work more fully. We have been fortunate enough this past year to have ample gains to cover our hedge costs for the next year. The previous year, we were able to reduce the cost to below one percent due to gains taken. Thus, over the full 20 months since I began writing this series, our total cost to hedge has turned out to be less than one percent. I want to discuss risk for a moment now. Obviously, if the market continues higher beyond January 2016, all of our old January expiration option contracts that we have open could expire worthless. I have never found insurance offered for free. We could lose all of our initial premiums paid plus commissions, except for those gains we have already collected. If I expected that to happen, I would not be using the strategy myself. But it is one of the potential outcomes and readers should be aware of it. I have already begun to initiate another round of put options for expiration beyond January 2016, using up to two percent of my portfolio (fully offset this year by realized gains) to hedge for another year. The longer the bulls maintain control of the market the more the insurance is likely to cost me. But I will not be worrying about the next crash. Peace of mind has a cost. I just like to keep it as low as possible. Because of the uncertainty in terms of how much longer this bull market can be sustained and the potential risk versus reward potential of hedging versus not hedging, it is my preference to risk a small percentage of my principal (perhaps as much as two percent per year) to insure against losing a much larger portion of my capital (30 to 50 percent). But this is a decision that each investor needs to make for themselves. I do not commit more than three percent of my portfolio value to an initial hedge strategy position and have never committed more than ten percent to such a strategy in total before a major market downturn has occurred. The ten percent rule may come into play when a bull market continues much longer than expected (like five years instead of 18 months). And when the bull continues for longer than is supported by the fundamentals, the bear that follows is usually deeper than it otherwise would have been. In other words, at this point, I would expect the next bear market to be more like the last two, especially if the market continues higher through all of 2016. Anything is possible but if I am right, protecting a portfolio becomes ever more important as the bull market continues. As always, I welcome comments and will try to address any concerns or questions either in the comments section or in a future article as soon as I can. The great thing about Seeking Alpha is that we can agree to disagree and, through respectful discussion, learn from each other’s experience and knowledge.

Our Investing Biases Are Particularly Dangerous Because They Are Time-Based Rather Than Phenomenon-Based

By Rob Bennett I read an article this week that explored the differences between how we have responded as a society to the pushes for limits on smoking and on guns. The push for limits on smoking has been highly successful. The push for limits on guns has not been terribly successful. Why? The article argued that the difference is that smoking is not an ideological or cultural issue; neither conservatives nor liberals see efforts to limit smoking as an attack on their world view. It’s different with guns. Most cities are heavily liberal and most rural areas are heavily conservative. As a result, there are strong ideological and cultural differences between those who own guns and those who do not. Those who have never been around guns have a hard time understanding why anyone would feel a need to own one. But those who have been around guns all their lives cannot understand why those favoring limits on ownership are so troubled by guns. So efforts to change the law in this area produce intense conflicts; the harder one side pushes for limits, the harder the other side opposes those limits and gridlock results. “Bias” is not one thing. There are many varieties of biases, some more problematic than others. In fact, an argument can be made that some biases are good. As a general rule, it is a bad thing to be biased because to possess a bias is to respond unthinkingly to a phenomenon. But acting on the basis of a bias speeds up one’s reaction time and that is not such a bad thing in some cases. I have a strong bias against disco. I have probably missed out on some disco songs from which I would have derived a pleasurable listening experience. But there aren’t many disco songs that fall into that category. And my bias helped me avoid a lot of painful listening experiences too. The biases that many of us hold about investing issues are extremely damaging, in my view. Most biases are phenomenon-based. We favor certain types of food over others. Or we favor certain ways of thinking about issues over others. Or we favor certain ways of doing things over others. These biases can hold us back. But the good thing about phenomenon-based biases is that we can limit the power of the bias by deliberately exposing ourselves to the opposite sort of phenomenon from time to time to check whether the bias is supported by the realities. Liberals are biased against conservative ideas and conservatives are biased against liberal ideas. Is that really such a bad thing? If we reconsidered our philosophical orientation each time a new issue was presented to us for our assessment, it would take much longer for us to figure out where we stand on issues. The reality is that once a person has thought about a few issues hard enough to know where his bias lies, he can save time when assessing new issues by jumping to a quick conclusion that his position will be ideologically consistent with his earlier positions. Being biased is a time-saver. But there are dangers, of course. There are always those few issues regarding which a liberal adopts the conservative take and those few issues regarding which a conservative adopts the liberal take. Those exceptions can achieve great significance over time. If you follow the story of how a liberal becomes a conservative over a number of years or of how a conservative becomes a liberal over a number of years, you will see that it is usually one important exception to a general bias that starts the ball rolling in a new direction. I often seek out views different than my own just to shake up my preconceptions a bit. It’s very very hard to do that in the investing realm. The most important investing biases are time-based rather than phenomenon-based. That means that for long periods of time certain ideas are forgotten by almost the entire population. To tap into the other side of the story, the investor would have to study historical data from a time period many years removed from the current time period. Who does that? Shiller showed that valuations affect long-term returns. What he really was doing when he did that was showing that the stock market is not efficient, that mis-pricing on either the high or low side is a significant reality rather than the illusion that Buy-and-Holders believe it to be. Even during the most out-of-control bull market, there are a small number of people questioning whether the insane prices achieved are real and lasting. But the percentage of the population holding that view can be very small indeed. The percentage of the population that is conservative rather than liberal doesn’t vary dramatically from time to time. The percentage of the population that believes that stocks are the perfect investment choice is dramatically higher when prices are high than it is when prices are low. For a good number of years following the great crash of 1929, investors didn’t expect to see any capital appreciation at all on their stocks. The conventional wisdom of the time was that stocks were worth buying only for their dividends; those that didn’t pay high dividends were not worth owning. In the late 1990s, dividends fell to tiny levels. The very thing that made stocks dangerous (their high price) changed the conventional wisdom on stock ownership to reflect a bias that stocks are always worth owning. Stocks for the Long Run was a popular book in the 1990s. It would not have sold many copies in the 1930s. The book reports on data, facts, objective stuff. The message of the data should not change from times like the 1930s to times like the 1990s. But the ways in which we arrange the data and interpret the data changes when we go from bull markets to bear markets. People will be looking at the same data that was employed in Stocks for the Long Run to sell stocks to make the case against stocks when we are on the other side of the next stock crash. Our stock biases hurt us. But they are hard to see through because just about everyone is on one side of the table for a long stretch of time and then just about everyone is on the other side of the table for the next long stretch of time. Bull markets turn us all into bulls and bear markets turn us all into bears. Investing biases come to be so widely shared for long stretches of time that it is hard for any of us to keep their other point of view even remotely in mind. Disclosure: None