Monday, July 21, 2008

The Sociology of Markets (Mauboussin on Strategy)

The sociology of markets is an important yet largely unexamined issue for financial market participants. By sociology, we mean the role of financial institutions in asset price setting. Traditional finance theory posits that investors directly buy assets in the market, with the relationship between risk and return guiding their decisions. A sociological examination moves beyond this narrow focus and asks whether the rise and fall of financial institutions, and their associated incentives, has an impact on asset prices.

This report has three parts. First, we ask whether financial institutions matter. The theoretical answer is no but the practical answer is yes. Second, we explore three case studies that show how institutions matter. Finally, we consider where we might go from here—that is, where the money flows are, what the incentives look like, and what those two drivers may mean for asset prices.

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Friday, July 18, 2008

Inflation Not The Problem

In the cacophony that is global investment strategy research, Albert Edwards and James Montier stand out as clearly distinctive voices. And not merely because of their British accents or because they’ve tended to the decidedly bearish side of the scale over the last decade or so. Despite long tenure in the rarified top echelons of the investment banking world, for many years with Dresdner Kleinwort and more recently at Societe Generale (where they are co-heads of global cross asset strategy) both have managed to retain a natural plain-spoken bluntness. Also large dollops of common sense and strong streaks of reflexive independence, which they employ in conveying their often invaluable insights on investment strategy. In Albert’s case, those spring mostly from his long experience in the dismal science of economics and in James’, from his explorations of the equally mysterious realms of behavioral neuroscience. They are, in a word, skeptics, and at this juncture most deeply skeptical of any and all notions that “the worst is over.” The recession, which has barely begun, is more likely to be deep than shallow, market valuations are hideously expensive and the -flation policymakers should be worried about starts with de-, not in-. For their reasons, keep reading, if you dare.

Yet I hear people all the time comparing valuations to the tech bubble and declaring stocks, “Cheap.” Isn’t there a neuroscience explanation for that behavior?

James: Absolutely. It’s classic anchoring. This whole habit of hanging onto irrelevant benchmarks. That’s exactly what you’re seeing. People say things like, “Well, 24-25 times Ford’s
earnings is perfectly reasonable.” That was the peak they reached in the bubble. Today, at 13
times, even if I believed the Ford earnings forecasts, which clearly we don’t, you’d have to
question whether those numbers are actually cheap. Relative to the peak in the bubble, yes.
Relative to a decent long-run history, clearly, no. That’s the problem. People have very, very
short-term memories here. We’ve got a serious myopia problem within the markets. The analysts are just in cloud cuckoo land. They keep telling us that things are going up. I do a chart
of actual earnings and forecasts, which shows that the analysts very clearly lack reality. They
only ever change their minds when there is irrefutable proof they are wrong, and then they
only change it slowly. It’s a classic pattern of anchoring and slow adjustment that we see.

Not to mention, demolish decoupling.


James: I actually have come up with a wee bit of data that shows, even if you somehow still believe in decoupling, that the emerging markets still have a huge problem: There’s an inverse relationship, historically, between economic growth and stock returns in emerging
markets. The slowest-growing emerging markets have generally generated the best stock
market returns for investors, while returns from the fastest-growth emerging markets have
lagged, because people overpaid for growth. Yet the whole reason, today, for buying into the
emerging markets and commodities seems to hinge on rapid growth in China, India, Brazil and
Russia — which I think is utter madness.


One thing I hear constantly, so you must, too, is that there’s still so much liquidity
looking for a home that the markets have to be sitting pretty.


James: We definitely hear a lot about liquidity and a lot about sovereign wealth funds. But along time ago I wrote that liquidity is the name that investors give to their ignorance, and I continue
to stand by that. When you can’t find anything else to explain what’s happening, you say it’s liquidity. You might as well say there are more buyers than sellers because it is at least as true, scientifically. A lot of what we see here is just excuses being made. A lot of it isn’t genuine monetary creation like Albert was talking about earlier is in the emerging markets context. A lot
of what you’re referring to is really the fallacy of liquidity, this idea that there’s a lot of money
sloshing around and it’s got to find a home. As our mutual friend John Hussman always points out, all you’ve got is really Paul selling to Peter. It doesn’t alter a damn thing if I buy a stock and
someone else sells it. The net amount of money entering or leaving the market is essentially zero.


Albert: What the “liquidity” everyone talks about really is, is leverage. If there’s price momentum, you want to borrow and play that price momentum — often in cyclical risk assets.
But as soon as that momentum turns, like the Roadrunner, liquidity may continue running off
the cliff for awhile, but eventually gravity takes hold. Prices re-couple with the cycle. And as
we’ve seen with CDOs, liquidity just evaporates overnight. That’s the problem with relying on
liquidity as an investment tool. It’s just basically a leveraged momentum trade, which can
explode in your face. Now, some of these private equity people are still able to raise money —
that’s what’s so amazing. But liquidity essentially can evaporate overnight, as we’ve seen with the CDO market.

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Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Should You Invest in the Long Tail?

It was a compelling idea: In the digitized world, there’s more money to be made in niche offerings than in blockbusters. The data tell a different story.


About the Long Tail -- Article

Psychology's ambassador to economics

The father of behavioural economics Daniel Kahneman talks to VIKRAM KHANNA about cognitive illusions, investor irrationality and measures of well-being.

A bat and a ball together cost $1.10. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?
Did you say 10 cents?

More than half of a Princeton University economics class gave the same answer (as did most of my friends), and it is wrong.

'If I offer you a deal: I toss a coin and if it's heads, you will win $200, but if it's tails you will lose $100. Will you take the bet?

'The majority of people say no. They don't consider it attractive. They weigh pleasure against pain, and for most people, the pain of losing $100 outweighs the pleasure of winning $200. Losses are given a weight of more than 2:1 compared with gains. This is loss aversion.

Distressed-debt opportunities appear on investment horizon

Distressed debt is about to have its day, according to some prominent investment managers.


"A lot of money has been raised in anticipation" of a bull market in distressed debt, said Martin Fridson, chief executive of Fridson Investment Advisors LLC and former head of high-yield strategy at Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. Both firms are based in New York.


That money is sitting on the sidelines, but it won't be sitting there much longer, Mr. Fridson said.
"The time is not yet; we're just waiting," said Bruce Berkowitz, founder of Fairholme Capital Management LLC of Miami, adviser to the $8.4 billion Fairholme Fund.


But it is almost here, said Mr. Berkowitz, whose investing acumen is so well respected that he is mentioned by some industry experts as a possible successor to Warren E. Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway Inc. of Omaha, Neb.


According to James Keenan, co-manager of the $1.7 billion BlackRock High Yield Fund, offered by BlackRock Inc. of New York, opportunities in distressed debt are already starting to pop up.

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Low-Tech Warren Buffett "Probably" Getting Amazon's High-Tech E-Book Reader

Julia: Does this mean you're going to be getting a Kindle?

Buffett: I probably will, after hearing about it today. And I ran into a number of people that have Kindles and who are just in love with them. In fact, a woman that is the wife of another attendee here, came in on the plane with us, and she was using a Kindle and was wildly enthusiastic about it.

Julia: What's your sense in terms of the economy?

Buffett: Well, I can tell you that from a certain amount of real-time information that I get from our businesses and elsewhere, things have, the decline has accelerated in the last, I would say, six weeks. So things are getting worse at a more rapid rate than they were two or three months ago.

Ken Heebner casts an optimistic eye on economy

There's a lot of pessimism about the economy. What's your take?
My view of the world is quite different. I think people are very concerned about our economy, they're starting to realize there could be higher inflation to come. The consensus is that we'll bring the rest of the world into our recession. But my view is we've probably seen the weakest period of economic activity. The economy may not be robust in the next year, but it's seen its low point and at some point will move higher.

That's reassuring, but how can this be?
I understand how serious the housing problem is. But it's not as broad a problem as widely perceived. It's reduced everyone's sense of financial well-being, but a third of homeowners don't have a mortgage, and the vast majority of people made down payments and have fixed-rate mortgages, so there's no financial strain. For them, the only impact is the psychological impact of declining housing prices. So therefore I don't think this is as big a deal as everyone else does. We've passed the point of maximum distress.

What evidence is there for that?
First, on manufacturing, the Institute for Supply Management's index seems to have reached a low of 49, and when this gets to 45, that's a recession. Additionally, the Fed started aggressive ly easing interest rates, and the impact of those eases will start to be felt. But I think the driver of the global economy is the developing countries, with a population of 3 billion. China, Russia, India, Brazil, and a lot of smaller countries. If you add up Japan, Europe, and the US, you're talking about a little less than 1 billion people, and you have 3 billion people going strong.

Thursday, July 3, 2008

I Am CNBC Wilbur Ross Transcript

CNBC: Why did you decide to specialize in bankruptcy?

WILBUR ROSS: It was happenstance. After Harvard Business School and the army, I went to the street. The firm I was with, Wood, Struthers, and Winthrop is a very conservative firm, so they fired the guy who was running the venture fund. I was the newest kid and they gave it to me to liquidate.

CNBC: So, it was just luck that you got involved bankruptcy?

WILBUR ROSS: Yes, back then a lot of those companies weren't so good so I started doing that. Then later on I went to work for the Rothschild family. The first thing they gave me to do was; Federal Express was about to go bankrupt. It was one of their big investments. I had to convince Citibank not to do it and a year later it went public, so it was serendipitous.

CNBC: That was quite a turnaround, Federal Express.

WILBUR ROSS: Yes, it became a wonderful company. Then I just started doing it more and more.

Pricing Terrorism: Insurers Gauge Risks, Costs

In the Aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks, Congress passed a law requiring commercial and casualty insurance companies to offer terrorism coverage. That was reassuring to jittery business owners but a major hassle for insurers, who, after all, are in the business of predicting risk. They might not know when something like a hurricane or earthquake will hit, but decades of data tell them where and how hard such an event is likely to be. But terrorists try to do the unexpected, and the range of what they might attempt is vast. A recent study published by the American Academy of Actuaries estimated that a truck bomb going off in Des Moines, Iowa, could cost insurers $3 billion; a major anthrax attack on New York City could cost $778 billion.


How do you predict a threat that's unpredictable by design? By marshaling trainloads of data on every part of the equation that is knowable. Then you make highly educated guesses about the rest.

Can the Risk of Terrorism Be Calculated By Insurers? Game Theory Might Do It
Since last fall, Gordon Woo has spent his days poring over al Qaeda training manuals and surfing terrorism Web sites, hoping to uncover patterns that will help him predict the nature and frequency of future terrorist attacks.

But Dr. Woo doesn't work at the Defense Department. He consults for insurance companies, and is currently putting his mind to work on the problem of how to price insurance policies covering terrorist acts. Among his tools: game theory, the statistical approach made famous in the recent movie "A Beautiful Mind" about the life of mathematician John Forbes Nash Jr.

In a paper on the subject, Dr. Woo predicted that the frequency and severity of future attacks would be influenced by the structure of terrorist networks, which he compares to insect swarms and German U-boat fleets. This perspective helps "get under the skin of these groups and figure out what their strategies will be," he explains. Gathering enough information on terrorists' swarmlike behavior, the nature of past attacks and the goals of al Qaeda will provide parameters for models to price insurance, he adds, though such modeling is in its early stages and remains a formidable task.

The Art of Management (Li Ka Shing)

It’s been 55 years since I founded my company. It has grown from a small enterprise with a few staff in 1950 to a multinational conglomerate with 200,000 employees and operations in 52 countries. I did not have the benefit of a formal education, and would not dare compare myself to management gurus. All my life, I’ve worked hard to learn on my own. What exactly is the “art of management”? I can only share with you my thoughts and experiences.

Art is defined as the creation, production, principle, method or expression of a human endeavor, generally considered beautiful, and is capable of transcendence and has a unifying effect. It is also a branch of learning that can be gained through learning, imitation, practice and observation. On the basis of this definition, art and management appear to share many common aspects.
Are you a boss or a leader?

I often ask myself: Would I rather be the boss or the leader of an organization? Generally speaking, being the boss is much simpler. Your authority is derived from your position of power, which may be granted to you through destiny or hard work and professional knowledge. Being a leader is more complicated. Your authority is derived from your expert power and charismatic power. To be a successful manager, attitude and ability are equally important ingredients. A leader inspires others to greatness. A boss dominates his subordinates and makes them feel small.

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Bill Miller finds opportunities in battered financials

What is your assessment of valuations of US shares at the moment?

Equity valuations in general are not demanding, interest rates are low, and corporate balance sheets, especially in the US, are in excellent shape. That sets the stage for what should be an improving environment for investors in stocks and in spread credit products. Our valuation work indicates that the S&P500 Index is currently worth about 17 times earnings versus a current market P/E of about 14.5 times on 2008 consensus estimates, suggesting that the upside return to fair value for US equities is in the high-teens.

What is the appropriate strategy to take when investing in US stocks now, with a long-term investment horizon in mind?

We believe the new market leadership will come from the same place it usually does: the old laggards. The new leadership will be what no one wants to own today, especially large and mega-cap stocks which have lagged the market most of the last five years. We believe that the greatest gains over the next five years will be made in those securities people are panicked about today. We believe the US market offers attractive investment opportunities for long-term investors whose strategy is valuation-driven, patient and contrarian in nature.

What is the greatest challenge you are facing in investing in the US?

The greatest challenge for investing in the US is coming from the global commodity markets. Oil has supplanted credit as the driver for the markets. Through oil’s impact on US consumer spending and corporate input costs, the recent run-up in oil prices is causing credit spreads to widen, destruction in demand and changes in consumer behaviour. Since oil went above $120 in early May, credit spreads have reversed their improving trend. If commodities break, or even just stop rising, equity markets should do well.

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