The nice thing about big selloffs is that the lower the market goes today, the higher your future returns go for tomorrow. We have 4Q19 Fed Z.1 data now, which means I can try to roundabout ballpark S&P 500 returns for the next 10 years. As of 12/31/19 this estimate was 2.43%. After making some (very) rough adjustments for recent market moves, it has increased to 7.66% today.

With interest rates as low as they are, and the possibility of negative rates looming on the horizon, I think a 700+ bps equity risk premium probably merits some buying, somewhere. DON’T GO ALL-IN. It is very possible things get worse before they get better. My own strategy has been to focus on the shares of companies that seem inordinately dislocated based on poor liquidity conditions. This is particularly evident in small cap stocks. In the US, these stocks had drawn down approximately 50% prior to the last couple days’ bounce.

Pulling the trigger on these things is not a trivial thing to do. It is uncomfortable knowing that you could be catching falling knives. I am not arguing that people are stupid for being cautious here.

I am, however, arguing that if you have liquidity (also far from trivial), and are willing to be a provider of liquidity in a dislocated market, there are spots where you can be compensated quite well for doing so. In small cap land, there are stocks trading at double-digit discounts to announced, all-cash takeout offers. This makes very little economic sense. Is Google going to bail on its FitBit acquisition because of the coronavirus? Probably not.

Admittedly, my truest investing self is “bottom-feeding contrarian.”

Right now, I think it makes sense more than ever to put money to work in a concentrated, “lottery ticket” portfolio alongside a more conservative core.

I have updated the (corrected) S&P 500 expected return model for the recent 3Q19 Z.1 data release. The good news: it shows a modest increase in the forward 10-year return estimate, to 4.18%. The bad news: this is almost certainly lower today given how US equities have rallied over the last quarter. (12/19/19 EDIT: I hacked together an estimate as of today and it’s about 3.03%)

Now, I don’t think this model is at all useful as a market timing tool. But it is definitely arguing for lower forward-looking return expectations. This is partly why I’ve implemented the leveraged permanent portfolio with a significant portion of my net personal net worth. Make no mistake: there will come a day to be all-in on equities again. You’ll know it because people will be screaming bloody murder and trumpeting the death of buy-and-hold like they did from 2009 to 2012. (Remember this when your friends and/or financial advisor are pitching you on expensive liquid alternatives some day)

I’ve mentioned before that one of the weaknesses of this model is that it isn’t macro-aware. It doesn’t “know” anything about credit or interest rates. The underlying intuition is simply that as an increasing proportion of assets are “financed” by equity, expected equity returns decrease. In a world of very low or even negative interest rates, it’s possible we’ll see a structural shift in investor preferences for equities. In a regime where interest rates stay very low for a very long time, it makes sense for equity valuations to remain elevated. One should not underestimate the persuasive power of No Good Alternatives (I have been guilty of this, personally). Recall that we tried the whole “normalize interest rates” thing in 2018. We didn’t even get to 3% on Fed funds before the Fed backed off.

There are, of course, many possible futures. The three I think most about:

The Great Jihad. This is a situation where the transition back to a multi-polar world order, combined with domestic political divisions, results in wars and violent revolutions. Scary, but not worth thinking about all that much from an investment POV. In this future just focus on staying alive. Don’t sweat the markets. In fact, you might as well go all-in, because you’ll be scooping up assets at steep discounts.

Muddle Through. Here everything just kind of works out. Rates and returns stay low, but policymakers effect a “soft landing” and everything works out. In a world where economies can be run with mechanical precision, this can probably be engineered just fine. That’s not the world we live in, however. We live in a world where economic reality must be made politically palatable. Politically, we seem to be headed to a world that is more hostile toward trade, and where there is strong pushback against policymaking elites. I therefore assign a relatively low probability to muddling through.

Stagflation. This is a situation where we have lower economic growth but higher inflation. This is quite frightening from a financial perspective as you have to invest very differently from what is now conventional wisdom to come through stagflation okay. Avoid bonds and cash, as well as equities without pricing power. Real assets are pretty much the only game in town here. Maybe some alts. Personally, I believe we are close to stagflation today. I am one of those loony Inflation Truthers who believes “real” inflation (as experienced by real people in their daily lives) is higher than the CPI numbers trumpeted in the news, because CPI is restrained by things like hedonic adjustments for the improving quality of goods. But I’ll leave the details for macro wonks to fight over.

You will note that I have omitted an inflationary boom from the list. The reason for this is that developed world demographics do not appear to support much of an inflationary boom. What could change this? Well, obviously population growth could suddenly increase. Or, we could start encouraging lots of immigration (not going to happen in the current political climate–and this can’t work for every country in the world simultaneously, anyway). I don’t think either of those things is particularly likely. But, there is always technology. Historically, it has not been great positioning to be short human ingenuity. Maybe Elon gets us to Mars or somewhere else in the solar system and we start colonizing other planets. Who knows.

So anyway, what’s an investor to do?

Adapt.

I am more and more convinced that the average person or institution’s asset allocation should be managed with a trend following and/or volatility targeting overlay (note that this stuff can also work as a risk management tool in more idiosyncratic portfolios). The point here is not to market time (that is impossible to do profitably as far as I’m concerned). The point is to detect regime changes, and to make sure you end up more or less on the right side of them.

Do not be the guy who is short equities for 10 years into a bull market.

Do not be the gal who goes all-in on equities at the top.

Do not be a permabear, or a permabull.

Be biased toward being long, and biased toward bullishness, but with some sense of proportionality and a framework for risk management. As a saver, or an institution that is more or less a saver, you don’t have to catch every market move to make money. You just have to be roundabout, directionally correct about the relationships between economic growth, inflation and valuations.

Identify the regime you’re in. Then make sure you own the right stuff.

Don’t overthink it.

Over the last couple days I’ve had the pleasure of corresponding with David Merkel of The Aleph Blog over differences in our S&P 500 expected returns modes. (Mine was much higher than his). Upon comparing models, I discovered I’d made a huge mistake. I’d essentially included only corporate debt in my calculation, excluding a huge swath of government liabilities from the total figure.

After adjusting my numbers to correct for this, and updating the model, I get a 3.74% expected return for the next 10 years. This is consistent with David’s 3.61% estimate. The small difference that remains is likely down to some minor differences in the time periods we used to estimate our models, as well as the type of S&P 500 return we use in the calculation (I believe David uses the price return and then adjusts for dividends, whereas I simply regress the S&P 500 total return against the “allocation” data).

Previously I’d been referring to my results as “A World of Meh.” I think I’m now comfortable revising that down to “A World of Bleh.” (“Meh” is kind of like an indifferent shrug, while with a “bleh” you are maybe throwing up in your mouth a bit)

I’ll give David the last word here, since I think his take on all this is a nice summary of the quandary investors face these days:

Not knowing what inflation or deflation will be like, it would be difficult to tell whether the bond or stock would be riskier, even if I expected 3.39% from each on average. Given the large debts of our world, I lean to deflation, favoring the bond in this case.

Still, it’s a tough call because with forecast returns being so low, many entities will perversely go for the stocks because it gives them some chance of hitting their overly high return targets. If this is the case, there could be some more room to run for now, but with nasty falls after that. The stock market is a weighing machine ultimately, and it is impossible to change the total returns of the economy. Even if an entity takes more risk, the economy as a whole’s risk profile doesn’t change in the long run.

In the short run it can be different if strongly capitalized entities are taking less risk and and weakly capitalized entities are taking more risk — that’s usually bearish. Vice-versa is usually bullish.

Anyway, give this some thought. Maybe things have to be crazier to put in the top. At least in this situation, bonds and stocks are telling the same story, unlike 1987 or 2000, where bonds were more attractive. Now, alternatives are few.

Today marks the second rebalance of my leveraged permanent portfolio with its volatility (12% target) and trend following overlays. I thought it might be fun to do brief posts on the monthly rebalances going forward, partly to keep myself honest and partly to record for posterity what it “feels like” to be invested this way.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the portfolio is now below its risk target, with a trailing volatility of only 5.16%. So the cash position created at the last rebalance will now go back to work in ex-US equity (most segments of ex-US equity appear to have poked back above their 200-day moving averages). In fact, I need to be fully invested now and will STILL be below my risk target.

The new target portfolio looks like this:

When the leverage employed within NTSX is taken into account, you end up with:

28% S&P 500

19% Laddered Treasuries

32% Gold

4% EM Large Cap

4% EAFE Small Cap

14% EM Small Cap

15% EAFE Large Cap

~116% notional exposure, just shy of 1.2x leverage

Note that the weights of the portfolio as implemented will differ modestly from this “ideal” due to transactional frictions and such. For example, in an ideal world I would reallocate the two small Vanguard positions across the whole portfolio rather than overweight ex-US equity. However, I recently rolled this account over to a new platform and am trying to be mindful of transaction costs. And anyway, if you’ve read this blog for any length of time you’re no doubt familiar with my view that, in the grand scheme of things, these little overweights and underweights don’t materially impact portfolio performance.

Here is updated performance versus the S&P 500 for context as of pixel time:

Despite being so short, it’s an interesting period to look at live performance for the strategy (net of fees and transaction costs) as it exhibits precisely the type of behavior you would expect from backtests of both leveraged and unleveraged permanent portfolios. The portfolio protects well during periods of broad market stress but lags during sharp rallies. Additionally, it’s worth noting that gold has had an exceptional run during this brief period, which is a complete coincidence.