Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
10 Market Myths
1 "This is a good time to invest in the stock market."
Really? Ask your broker when he warned clients that it was a bad time to invest. October 2007? February 2000? A broken watch tells the right time twice a day, but that's no reason to wear one. Or as someone once said, asking a broker if this is a good time to invest in the stock market is like asking a barber if you need a haircut. "Certainly, sir -- step this way!"
2 "Stocks on average make you about 10% a year."
Stop right there. This is based on some past history -- stretching back to the 1800s -- and it's full of holes.
About three of those percentage points were only from inflation. The other 7% may not be reliable either. The data from the 19th century are suspect; the global picture from the 20th century is complex. Experts suggest 5% may be more typical. And stocks only produce average returns if you buy them at average valuations. If you buy them when they're expensive, you do a lot worse.
3 "Our economists are forecasting..."
Hold it. Ask your broker if the firm's economist predicted the most recent recession -- and if so, when.
The record for economic forecasts is not impressive. Even into 2008 many economists were still denying that a recession was on the way. The usual shtick is to predict "a slowdown, but not a recession." That way they have an escape clause, no matter what happens. Warren Buffett once said forecasters made fortune tellers look good.
4 "Investing in the stock market lets you participate in the growth of the economy."
Tell that to the Japanese. Since 1989 their economy has grown by more than a quarter, but the stock market is down more than three quarters. Or tell that to anyone who invested in Wall Street a decade ago. And such instances aren't as rare as you've been told. In 1969, the U.S. gross domestic product was about $1 trillion, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was at about 1000. Thirteen years later, the U.S. economy had grown to $3.3 trillion. The Dow? About 1000.
5 "If you want to earn higher returns, you have to take more risk."
This must come as a surprise to Mr. Buffett, who prefers investing in boring companies and boring industries. Over the last quarter century, the FactSet Research utilities index has even outperformed the exciting, "risky" Nasdaq Composite index. The only way to earn higher returns is to buy stocks cheap in relation to their future cash flows. As for "risk," your broker probably thinks that's "volatility," which typically just means price ups and downs. But you and your Aunt Sally know that risk is really the possibility of losing principal.
6 "The market's really cheap right now. The P/E is only about 13."
The widely quoted price/earnings (PE) ratio, which compares share prices to annual after-tax earnings, can be misleading. That's because earnings are so volatile -- they're elevated in a boom, and depressed in a bust.
Ask your broker about other valuation metrics, like the dividend yield, which looks at the dividends you get for each dollar of investment; or the cyclically adjusted PE ratio, which compares share prices to earnings over the past 10 years; or "Tobin's q," which compares share prices to the actual replacement cost of company assets. No metric is perfect, but these three have good track records. Right now all three say the stock market's pretty expensive, not cheap.
7 "You can't time the market."
This hoary old chestnut keeps the clients fully invested. Certainly it's a fool's errand to try to catch the market's twists and turns. But that doesn't mean you have to suspend judgment about overall valuations.
If you invest in shares when they're cheap compared to cash flows and assets -- typically this happens when everyone else is gloomy -- you will usually do very well.
If you invest when shares are very expensive -- such as when everyone else is absurdly bullish -- you will probably do badly.
8 "We recommend a diversified portfolio of mutual funds."
If your broker means you should diversify across things like cash, bonds, stocks, alternative strategies, commodities and precious metals, then that's good advice.
But too many brokers mean mutual funds with different names and "styles" like large-cap value, small-cap growth, midcap blend, international small-cap value, and so on. These are marketing gimmicks. There is, for example, no such thing as "midcap blend." These funds are typically 100% invested all the time, and all in stocks. In this global economy even "international" offers less diversification than it did, because everything's getting tied together.
9 "This is a stock picker's market."
What? Every market seems to be defined as a "stock picker's market," yet for most people the lion's share of investment returns -- for good or ill -- has typically come from the asset classes (see No. 8, above) they've chosen rather than the individual investments. And even if this does turn out to be a stock picker's market, what makes you think your broker is the stock picker in question?
10 "Stocks outperform over the long term."
Define the long term? If you can be down for 10 or more years, exactly how much help is that? As John Maynard Keynes, the economist, once said: "In the long run we are all dead."
by Brett Arends
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Four Major Lines of Metrics
Ritholtz: There are four major lines of metrics that we’ll look at when we’re talking about the overall market. We’ll look at valuation, which is as much art as science because a lot of valuation is based on future earnings expectations. As an aside, this is why the so-called Fed model is worthless – its so idiotic – because you can’t say, “Based on these forward estimates, here’s what’s the value of the stock is.” Well, what if the estimates are wrong? And those estimates have been wildly wrong for the past year! So true valuation – not Wall Street’s worst guesses – is one thing we look at.
We look at sentiment measures, which for the most part, are most significant when they hit extremes. Sometimes they hit dramatic extremes and then they’re very, very significant – like we have seen recently.
Third, we look at technical measures – overbought and oversold, trend, institutional ownership, short interest – which is a combination of factors. I know that the fundamentalists’ their eyes glaze over when I discuss trend and relative action to trailing moving averages and a whole bunch of other things. But its objective data, not subjective, and therefore is more reliable to us.
Finally, everything is relative to monetary policy and interest rates. If the Fed is tight and rates are high, valuation almost doesn’t matter as much because there’s only going to be so much going on from the macro economic perspective.
10 Investing Rules - Flexibility
• Whether a premise is fundamentally true or false is irrelevant as to whether it is actionable. If enough fools believe something is so, it will impact the markets.
• Always be conscious of the cognizant biases and selective perceptions you bring to investing. Learn to recognize the same bias in the crowd, the media, and Wall Street. Avoid the herding effect.
• After a collapse (i.e., a 55% market sell off), most of the terrible structural news that existed before the collapse is reflected in prices. Let it go.
• You must acknowledge when the data gets stronger or weaker, regardless of your current market posture. Be skeptical, but not rigid.
• Market Pros simply cannot afford to sit out a major (i.e., 75%+) rally; Individuals that miss that sort of move should reconsider what their investment strategies are. If your approach has you long during selloffs and in cash during rallies, something is wrong.
• Everything cycles: Recessions turn into recoveries; bull markets give rise to bear markets. Every rally that there ever was or there ever will be eventually ends. Adapt to this truism or lose your money.
• One of the hardest things to do in investing is to reverse your thinking. It is even more difficult to do after a specific approach has been profitable for a long time. The longer the period of successful thinking, the more important the reversal will be.
• Cheap markets can get cheaper; Expensive markets can get dearer.
• The markets frequently diverge from the macro economic environment. This can be both long lasting and maddening; Your job is to be aware of how wide the gap between the two is.
• Variant perception is a rarity; Identifying the moment when the crowd figures out they are wrong is rarer still.
from Barry Ritholtz
Bob Farrell's 10 Market Rules
Bob Farrell was a legend at Merrill Lynch & Co. for several decades. Farrell had a front-row seat to the go-go markets of the late 1960s, mid-1980s and late 1990s, the brutal bear market of 1973-74, and October 1987's crash.
He retired as chief stock market analyst at the end of 1992, but continued to occasionally publish. Rumor has it for a humongous donation to Farrell's favorite charity, you can get on his very exclusive email list.
Marketwatch gathered some of Farrell's more famous observations, and republished them as "10 Market Rules to Remember."
1. Markets tend to return to the mean over time
When stocks go too far in one direction, they come back. Euphoria and pessimism can cloud people's heads. It's easy to get caught up in the heat of the moment and lose perspective.
2. Excesses in one direction will lead to an opposite excess in the other direction
Think of the market baseline as attached to a rubber string. Any action to far in one direction not only brings you back to the baseline, but leads to an overshoot in the opposite direction.
3. There are no new eras -- excesses are never permanent
Whatever the latest hot sector is, it eventually overheats, mean reverts, and then overshoots. Look at how far the emerging markets and BRIC nations ran over the past 6 years, only to get cut in half.
As the fever builds, a chorus of "this time it's different" will be heard, even if those exact words are never used. And of course, it -- Human Nature -- never is different.
4. Exponential rapidly rising or falling markets usually go further than you think, but they do not correct by going sideways
Regardless of how hot a sector is, don't expect a plateau to work off the excesses. Profits are locked in by selling, and that invariably leads to a significant correction -- eventually. comes.
5. The public buys the most at the top and the least at the bottom
That's why contrarian-minded investors can make good money if they follow the sentiment indicators and have good timing.
Watch Investors Intelligence (measuring the mood of more than 100 investment newsletter writers) and the American Association of Individual Investors survey.
6. Fear and greed are stronger than long-term resolve
Investors can be their own worst enemy, particularly when emotions take hold. Gains "make us exuberant; they enhance well-being and promote optimism," says Santa Clara University finance professor Meir Statman. His studies of investor behavior show that "Losses bring sadness, disgust, fear, regret. Fear increases the sense of risk and some react by shunning stocks."
7. Markets are strongest when they are broad and weakest when they narrow to a handful of blue-chip names
Hence, why breadth and volume are so important. Think of it as strength in numbers. Broad momentum is hard to stop, Farrell observes. Watch for when momentum channels into a small number of stocks ("Nifty 50" stocks).
8. Bear markets have three stages -- sharp down, reflexive rebound and a drawn-out fundamental downtrend
I would suggest that as of August 2008, we are on our third reflexive rebound -- the Januuary rate cuts, the Bear Stearns low in March, and now the Fannie/Freddie rescue lows of July.
Even with these sporadic rallies end, we have yet to see the long drawn out fundamental portion of the Bear Market.
9. When all the experts and forecasts agree -- something else is going to happen
As Stovall, the S&P investment strategist, puts it: "If everybody's optimistic, who is left to buy? If everybody's pessimistic, who's left to sell?"
Going against the herd as Farrell repeatedly suggests can be very profitable, especially for patient buyers who raise cash from frothy markets and reinvest it when sentiment is darkest.10. Bull markets are more fun than bear markets
Especially if you are long only or mandated to be full invested. Those with more flexible charters might squeek out a smile or two here and there.
Typical Secular Bear Market and its Aftermath
Courtesy of the Strategy desk of Morgan Stanley Europe. It shows what the average of the past 19 major Bear markets globally have looked like:
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Typical Secular Bear Market and Its Aftermath
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