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Sector Investing: Why It Matters

This was originally published on December 29, 2015 Within the S&P 500, there are 10 sectors that comprise the key benchmark, and it remains my preferred way of dissecting the market for clients, and giving clients an orderly structure or framework to think about the giant morass that is the capital markets. The primary tool for analyzing sectors for clients remains the excellent sector earnings work done by Thomson Reuters and FactSet, as well as Howard Silverblatt of Standard & Poor’s, and Estimize (although Estimize has a narrower focus than the other firms) which is shared every week on this blog for readers. (Sam Stovall of Standard & Poor’s wrote a book on sector investing that was published in 1996. I just found the book on Amazon and bought it for some holiday reading this weekend.) Why worry about sectors? Well, give this a little thought: The bull market in the S&P 500 that ran from August 1982 to March of 2000 was dominated by two sectors: Technology and Financials. A lot of the old market pundits and the so-called gurus from the 1990s used to say that “The Financials are the market generals” and there was real truth to this. The Financials were the S&P 500’s primary market leader in the 1980s and 1990s. The S&P 500’s decade-long bear market from 2000 through 2009, the decade with the lowest average return for the S&P 500 since the 1930s, was a result of brutal bear markets in two sectors (guess which sectors): yes, Financials and Technology. Technology came first, with the Nasdaq correcting 80% from March 2000 through October 2002, and then the mother-of-all sector corrections with Financial stocks correcting (looking at the Financial Select Sector SPDR ETF (NYSEARCA: XLF )) from $38 to the $6 area from mid-2007, though late 2008, early 2009. Technology as a percentage of the S&P 500’s total market cap hit a peak of 33% in the first quarter of 2000 (really unbelievable when you think about it) and Financials hit their peak in mid-2007. I thought that Financials had gotten close to 30% as a percentage of the S&P 500’s market cap, but from looking at historical data, maybe Financials’ peak total of the S&P 500 was closer to 25% rather than 30%. The reason the Energy bear market hasn’t really impacted the S&P 500 like the Technology and the Financials’ collapse is that when crude oil started to fall from $110 to today’s $35-$37 per barrel, Energy as a percentage of the market cap of the S&P 500 was just 10%. It is now roughly 6.5% today. As the above implies, “Size (in terms of market cap) Matters”. Three bear markets: Technology, Financial and Energy – all sector-driven. Here is our latest spreadsheet where we updated sector weightings ( FC – marketcapvsearningswt ). As readers can see from this spreadsheet, Technology and Financials remain the two largest sectors within the S&P 500 at 37% of the S&P 500, and since they had their absolutely crushing bear markets in the last decade, what are the odds (in your opinion) that Technology repeats 2000-2002 or Financials’ 2007-2009? 20% corrections can happen at any time for a variety of reasons, but would a reader think that Financials and Technology could correct 30% or 40%? Here are the sector weightings for the S&P 500 as of late December 2015 (courtesy of Bespoke, rounded to the nearest 1%): Technology: 21% Financials: 16% Health Care: 15% Consumer Discretionary: 13% Industrials: 10% Consumer Staples: 10% Energy: 6%-7% Utilities, Materials, Telecom: 3% each The top 5 sectors of the S&P 500 are 75% of the market cap of the S&P 500. The top sectors which we’ve discussed at length are 37%. Consumer Discretionary’s 10% return year to date is heavily influenced by Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN ) since the stock is a member of the Consumer Discretionary sector. Bespoke has noted that without Amazon’s 140% return year to date, Consumer Discretionary would be up just 2%-3% in 2015. Conclusions about 2016: Given the above, and the Technology and Financials’ weights, I just don’t think there is a sustained bear market in our future. Technology and Financials remain the largest sector overweights for clients coming into 2016. I’m leery of Health Care in a Presidential election year. I do like Industrials in 2016 IF the dollar can remain right where it is, or weaken a little. The biggest change to client accounts in the last 4 months has been adding the Energy Select Sector SPDR ETF (NYSEARCA: XLE ), and the iShares U.S. Energy ETF (NYSEARCA: IYE ) to client accounts with the market correction in August-September. We haven’t had any Energy exposure for years. There is more owned now than at any time in the last 5 years. Also bought in September, early October were the Vanguard FTSE Emerging Markets ETF (NYSEARCA: VWO ), and the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (NYSEARCA: EEM ), or the Emerging Markets ETFs. The underperformance of emerging markets relative to the S&P 500 the last 7-8 years has been remarkable. We have never owned Emerging Markets for clients before these positions. Finally, I took a shot at some Brazil (NYSEARCA: EWZ ), the last month. Brazil is the confluence of Energy risk, commodity risk, socialism, and inept incompetence, in one ETF. There is an approximate weighting of 5% in Energy, Emerging markets and Brazil in client accounts, depending on a number of other factors.

Can Flight To Safety Save These Treasury Bond ETFs?

The bond market behaved in a peculiar manner when it started recording decline in yields across the yield-curve spectrum from December 17, just a day after the Fed hiked key interest rate after almost a decade. Agreed, the Fed move was largely expected and much of the meeting’s outcome was priced in before. Still, this time around, the bonds market did not act wild at all – especially the long-term bonds – as it did in taper-trodden 2013. On December 16 – the day the Fed announced the hike, the two-year benchmark Treasury yield jumped 4 bps to 1.02% – a five-and-a-half year high. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose just 2 bps to 2.30% and yield on the long-term 30-year bonds saw a 2-bps nudge to 3.02%. But yields on the benchmark 10-year Treasury bond fell 11 bps to 2.19% in the next two days accompanied by a 12-bps slump in 30-year Treasury bond, 5-bps dip in the two-year benchmark Treasury yield and a 7-bps decline in the ultra-short three-month benchmark Treasury yield. Why the Dip in Bond Yields? Investors must be looking for reasons why the bond market went against the rulebook, which says when interest rates rise, bond yields jump and bond prices fall. Several investors thought that the bull era of bonds will come to an end with the Fed tightening its policies. However, the Fed’s repeated assurance to go ‘gradual’ with the rate hike policies might have soothed bond investors’ nerves. Plus, while a healing job market strengthened the prospect of the next hike again in March 2016, a still-subdued inflationary backdrop led investors to mull over a near-term deflation possibility amid a rising rate environment. Added to this, global growth worries, the possibility of a scarier plunge in greenback-linked oil prices (as the U.S. dollar soars post Fed hike), weakening overall commodity market and possibility of lower U.S. corporate profits in the upcoming quarters might have propelled a flight to safety. Investors should also take note of the Fed funds rate projection. The estimated median funds rate was maintained at 0.4% for 2015 and 1.4% for 2016, while the same for 2017 and 2018 were lowered from 2.6% to 2.4% and 3.4% to 3.3%. The projected range for 2015, 2016 and 2017 was changed from negative 0.1-positive 0.9% to 0.1-0.4%, from negative 0.1-positive 2.9% to 0.9-2.1% and from 1.0-3.9% to 1.9-3.4%, respectively. All these show no material threat to long-term bonds and the related ETFs after the first Fed hike. 25+ Year Zero Coupon U.S. Treasury Index Fund (NYSEARCA: ZROZ ) This ETF follows the BofA Merrill Lynch Long US Treasury Principal STRIPS Index, which focuses on Treasury principal STRIPS that have 25 years or more remaining to final maturity. The product holds 20 securities in its basket. Both the effective maturity and effective duration of the fund is 27.22 years. This fund is often overlooked by investors as evident from an AUM of $158.5 million. The product charges 15 bps in annual fees and returned 2.1% on December 17, 2015. The fund is down 4.2% so far this year. The fund yields 2.70% annually and has a Zacks ETF Rank #2. Vanguard Extended Duration Treasury ETF (NYSEARCA: EDV ) For a long-term play on the bond market, investors have EDV, a fund that seeks to match the performance of the Barclays U.S. Treasury STRIPS 20-30 Year Equal Par Bond Index. This means that this benchmark zeroes in on fixed income securities that are sold at a discount to face value, and then the investor is paid the face value upon maturity. This particular 74 bond basket has an average maturity of 25.1 years. The effective duration of the ETF stands at 24.7 years, suggesting high interest rate risks. The fund has amassed about $371.1 million in assets. Investors should also note that this is a cheap product, as it charges just 12 basis points a year, so it will be a very low cost way to get into long duration bonds. The fund has lost about 5.4% in the year-to-date time frame on rising rate worries but gained 1.8% on December 17. This Zacks Rank #2 ETF yields 2.86% annually. iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond (NYSEARCA: TLT ) This iShares product provides exposure to long-term Treasury bonds by tracking the Barclays Capital U.S. 20+ Year Treasury Bond Index. It is one of the most popular and liquid ETFs in the bond space having amassed over $5.7 billion in its asset base and more than 8.4 million shares in average daily volume. Its expense ratio stands at 0.15%. The fund holds 31 securities in its basket. The average maturity comes in at 26.65 years and the effective duration is 17.37 years. The fund gained over 1.1% on December 17. TLT has a Zacks ETF Rank #2 with a High risk outlook. Original Post

Preferred Shares From Flaherty & Crumrine: 1 To Buy And 1 To Sell

Summary Flaherty & Crumrine is a preferred stock specialist offering five leveraged and hedged closed-end funds. There has been a strong trend of investment money moving into preferred stock CEFs as the high-yield credit market has faltered. FFC now holds a premium over 8%. Flaherty & Crumrine’s Preferred Stock CEFs There are categories of closed-end funds where I consider that a single sponsor offers a range of funds that make it the best in its class. For taxable fixed-income CEFs, my vote goes to PIMCO. Other fund sponsors offer some excellent competitors, but PIMCO’s full lineup is demonstrably the best in its category. For unleveraged equity-income CEFs, it’s hard to beat Eaton Vance’s array of option income funds. It would be hard to make a case that any other fund sponsor has the across-the-board strength in this category that Eaton Vance’s funds have. I’ve written about each of these recently ( How Safe Are The Distributions For PIMCO CEFs…? and Comparing The Option-Income CEFs From Eaton Vance ) where I give some rationale for those choices. I also have a comparable pick for preferred shares; it’s Flaherty & Crumrine. F&C offers five closed-end funds for the investor in preferred securities: Flaherty & Crumrine Dynamic Preferred & Income Fund Inc (NYSE: DFP ) Flaherty & Crumrine Preferred Securities Income Fund Inc (NYSE: FFC ) Flaherty & Crumrine Total Return Fund Inc (NYSE: FLC ) Flaherty & Crumrine Preferred Income Fund Inc (NYSE: PFD ) Flaherty & Crumrine Preferred Income Opportunity Fund Inc (NYSE: PFO ) We’ll have a look at them individually shortly, but first a few words on the category and asset class. Why Preferreds and Why CEFS? Preferred shares should be a core component of any income investor’s portfolio. They offer stable income with much less price volatility than common stock. They are, of course, interest-rate sensitive as are all income investments, but I am more concerned about volatility in common stocks than I am about volatility from interest-rate moves at this time. I fully expect the Fed will be true to its stated goal of gradual interest rate increases, and I further expect that experienced management can prosper under those circumstances. On the other hand, I am anticipating a difficult year for common stock, and those who have followed my thinking are aware that I am not usually found at the bears’ end of the spectrum. With that in mind, I continue to seek out more defensive positions in my portfolios. Thus, I consider a portfolio shift that reduces exposure to dividend-paying common shares and increases exposure to preferred stocks to be a prudent move. Note that I say “reduces,” a very different thing from “eliminates.” I will still carry a strong position in common shares, but I will also be increasing my allocation to preferreds. One can hold preferred shares in individual equities or ETFs, but it is my preference to look for exposure to this asset class in closed-end funds. It is one of the three areas where I feel CEFs offer the greatest opportunities for income-investors. Let’s explore why. Presently, the median distribution yield for the 17 CEFs that aggregator sites list for the category is 8.32%. Compare that with the two largest preferred stock ETFs, the iShares U.S. Preferred Stock ETF (NYSEARCA: PFF ) and the PowerShares Preferred ETF (NYSEARCA: PGX ); these both have a distribution yield of 5.92%. Furthermore, I suspect investors holding a portfolio of individual preferreds will be averaging something fairly close to that yield percentage as well. So if 6% is the prevailing bar for preferred stock yields, where do the CEFs find those extra two and a third points? First, they use leverage. Median leverage for the 17 CEFs is 33.58%. Notice that if we apply that 1.33x leverage factor to the ETFs’ 5.92% yields, it works out to 7.91%. While this is still under the CEFs’ median yield to their investors, it is nearly identical to the CEFs’ median yield on NAV which is 7.86%. So, it seems that the CEFs along with the ETFs and individual share holdings are all generating close to the same level of yield. The CEFs get an added kick that pushes them to even higher yields from their discounts. The median discount stands at -7.11%. This generates an additional 41bps to the market yield over the NAV yield and illustrates the importance of buying CEFs at a discount. It is the combination of leverage and discount that drives the enhanced yields for CEFs over the EFTs. Of course, leverage adds risk, primarily as a multiplier of volatility. Leverage also adds to interest-rate risk as rising rates will make leverage more costly. Why Flaherty & Crumrine? Flaherty & Crumrine has been focused on the preferred shares market for over 30 years. The firm formed in 1983 as a manager of portfolios of preferred securities for institutional investors. It introduced its first leveraged and hedged preferred securities funds in 1991. Through its experience in the preferred securities markets, Flaherty & Crumrine has developed expertise to implement portfolio- and interest-rate management strategies to obtain consistently high levels of sustainable income. This expertise is key to functioning effectively in what the firm describes as a ” wonderfully inefficient market .” When appropriate, the F&C funds employ hedging strategies designed to moderate interest-rate risk. These are designed to increase in value when long-term interest rates rise significantly, from either a rise in yields of Treasury securities or interest-rate swap yields. In general these are used when interest rates are expected to rise. From the current literature I reviewed, it is unclear the extent to which these hedging strategies are currently employed. The Funds Each of the five funds is leveraged near 33%, which is consistent with the category. Each is invested in at least 93% preferred stocks. All but DFP are wholly domestic; DFP is 77.2% domestic with the remainder of the portfolio holding positions from U.K., Bermuda, Western Europe and Australia. F&C’s funds tend to be more tax efficient than many other preferred shares CEFs. For the 2014 tax year qualified dividend income ranged from about 62 to 70% of total distributions. (click to enlarge) I have not reviewed the category for this metric, which is significant in a taxable account, but previous analyses showed other sponsors’ funds with levels of QDI generally under 50% reflecting, in part, greater exposures to REIT preferreds. Portfolios Portfolio compositions are quite similar among them. Each is most heavily invested in financials (ex. REITs) which comprise greater than three-quarters of their portfolios in a roughly 2:1 ratio for banks:insurance. (click to enlarge) PFD and PFO do not list energy or REITs separately; instead they are lumped into “other” sectors. A cursory perusal of the published portfolios indicates a significant fraction of “other” does include energy, but I have not attempted to sort out actual percentages. DFP has the largest energy holdings of the other three funds. Utilities comprise about a ninth of the portfolios of FFC, FLC, PFD and PFO, but only 2.76% of DFP’s holdings. Performance Total return for one year is shown in the next chart. (click to enlarge) And, for the past 3 months: (click to enlarge) As we can see here, there has been a strong flow into the preferred shares funds over the past quarter driving price up relative to NAV. As a consequence, discounts have shrunk and in the case of FFC, valuation has grown to a premium. (click to enlarge) The rising prices relative to NAV for the funds is shown in the 3, 6 and 12 month Z-scores which are positive except for PFD and PFO 12 month values. (click to enlarge) The discounts and Z-scores show that bargain hunters will find little to take advantage of at this time. This has been a trend across the preferred shares category which has median Z-Scores of 0.89, 1.31 and 0.14 for 3, 6 and 12 months, respectively. The shrinking discounts mean that distribution yields are somewhat lower than when I last looked at preferred CEFs in early autumn. Distributions range from 8.06 to 8.5%, in line with the category median of 8.32%. (click to enlarge) Conclusions FFC has been a favorite of mine in the recent past and it is a fund I have held for some time, adding to my position as recently as last September. But at this time its 8% premium makes it an unattractive purchase. Indeed, anyone holding the fund may want to consider trading out of it to capture that premium which I suspect is near a peak value. This is what I have done. FLC is, in my view, the most attractive of the remaining funds. It has a distribution yield better than the category median. Its -4.0% discount is less favorable than the category median of -7.1% but is the deepest discount of the fully domestic F&C funds. Total return on NAV for the past year is stronger than FFC, even as FFC’s growing premium has driving its return on market price appreciably higher. And the exposure to energy preferreds is the lowest of the three funds where that is explicitly listed. DFP, with the same yield and a deeper discount is less appealing to me. The relatively high level of energy-sector preferreds is potentially problematic for one thing. In addition, there has been a stronger trend to discount reduction relative to FLC. If one is attracted to international exposure in preferred stock CEFs, it might be worthwhile to look more closely at the First Trust Intermediate Duration Preferred & Income Fund (NYSE: FPF ) rather than DFP. Preferred shares look increasingly to present a timely alternative to the troubled high-yield credit market for income investors. Flaherty & Crumrine offers the preferred shares investor nearly three decades of experience and five funds with strong long-term records. The firm uses hedging strategies to moderate interest-rate risk, potentially an important approach in the coming year. Money flow has been moving out of high-yield bond funds; it seems that some of that flow has been moving into preferred share funds. This has meant discount reductions for the category and, in some case, such as for FFC, premiums to NAV. One might want to take advantage of the rising valuations and trade out of fund like FFC which is unlikely to sustain its premium valuation, while retaining a position in F&C’s hedged and leveraged preferred share funds by opening a position in FLC instead. While I do, as stated, like F&C in the preferred shares CEF arena, there are other funds that should be competitive. I shall be looking at a few of those shortly.