Fear and loathing in asset management, cont’d

Yesterday I addressed the topic of whether index investing is truly the road to serfdom. This is one of the sillier marketing ploys the financial services industry has trotted out lately, so it’s something I find worth harping on.

David Merkel from The Aleph Blog highlights another issue with this posturing:

There’s been a lot of words thrown around lately saying that indexing has been leading to overvaluation of the US stock market. I’m here to tell you that is wrong. I have two reasons for that:

1) Active managers have been pseudo-indexing for a long time. The moment they get benchmarked to an index they do one of two things:

a) accept it, gain funds for mandates that are like the index, and then they constrain their investing so that they are never too different from the index, and hopefully not in the fourth quartile of performance, so they don’t lose assets. This is the action of the majority.

b) Ignore it, get less fund flows, and don’t let the index affect your investment decisions. The assets should be stickier over time if you explain to clients what you are doing, and why. Only a minority do this.

This has been my opinion since my days of writing for RealMoney. All of the active managers out there add up to something close to a passive benchmark, less fees. It can’t be otherwise.

The one exception of any size would be stocks excluded from indexes because they don’t have enough free float available for non-insiders to own/trade. Even that is not very big — it might be 5% of the total stock market, though this is just a wild guess.

2) If you want to talk about valuation issues, you really want to talk about the trade-off between stocks and bonds, or stocks and cash. Stock valuations are never absolute — it is always a question of the other assets you are measuring the stocks against, and how you desirable those other assets will be in the future, and how sustainable the profitability of stocks will be over time.

There is a straightforward reason that pseudo-indexing (also known as “closet indexing”) is good for business. That reason is that most clients do not really want extraordinary returns.

That is to say, clients think they want extraordinary returns, but are not actually psychologically prepared to do what it takes to earn extraordinary returns. I use the word “earn” very deliberately here. Generating extraordinary returns is hard work, and it usually requires swimming upstream against consensus. Whenever you find a client who understands this (for they do exist) you should treasure that client.

Regardless of what they say, all clients really want is to achieve their financial goals. Inasmuch as portfolio returns are concerned, they are generally loss averse. That is, they dislike losses more than they value gains. This leads to an asymmetrical payoff for the investment manager. As an advisor or portfolio manager, you typically stand to lose much more by losing money when the market is up or flat than you stand to gain from outperforming the market when it is up.

So from a business perspective it is safer to put up middle of the road numbers than look too different from the indices or your competitors. The bottom quartile thing David mentions is a big deal. I have sat in the meetings where these issues are debated. Woe betide you if you find yourself in the bottom quartile of your peer group a couple of years in a row. Fire your sales team and wait for the numbers to turn.

Anyway, here is how you build a portfolio as a closet indexer. You pick something like 75 to 150 stocks, which keeps your largest positions to maybe 3% or 4% of the portfolio (if that). So even if one of those stocks goes to zero (unlikely) you are facing at maximum 3% to 4% of performance detraction from an individual name. This will be offset by some stuff you own that goes up, and it all kind of averages out in the end. Indeed, that is whole point. I cannot help but remark that this looks a hell of a lot like what the index investor is trying to achieve. (Mutual Fund Complex Marketing Person: “Ours goes to 11!”)

Likewise, you keep your sector weights within a couple percent of the benchmark weights, and the same with the individual stock holdings. You won’t own every security in the index. That’s okay. A lot of the securities in the index are crap — too much debt, negative cash flow and earnings, whatever. And anyway omitting some stuff will make you look better on certain measures that institutional research groups use, like active share.

If you are good you will maybe generate 1-3% of annualized outperformance over time, net of fees. If you are really good you might do even better. Unfortunately most closet indexers are not that good. There is plenty of data to support this (see below).

The two main statistics we use to measure the differentiation of an investment manager’s portfolio from a benchmark index (like the S&P 500) are active share and tracking error. Active share specifically looks at the overlap in holdings, while tracking error measures the volatility of the return differential over time (for quanty nerds this is the standard deviation of excess returns).

If you are a stock picker running a concentrated portfolio of your best ideas, you will score high on both measures. If you are a closest indexer, you will score low on both measures. There was a robust, if somewhat dated, exploration of this topic by Antti Petajisto in the Financial Analysts Journal in 2013. If you are interested in this subject you should definitely read the whole paper.

In the meantime, here are the relevant results from his cross-sectional analysis of US equity mutual funds:

Source: *Financial Analysts Journal, Vol. 69, No. 4*

*Financial Analysts Journal, Vol. 69, No. 4*

According to Petajisto’s data and criteria, about 64% of US equity mutual funds were either moderately active or closet indexers. However, the average assets under management for closet indexers was $2 billion, versus $1 billion for the entire data set.

So like I said, mediocrity sells. So much for efficient capital allocation.

Fear and loathing in asset management

Today I listened to a presentation that was one part screed against passive investing and one part shameless plug for sexy, paradigm-changing growth stocks. I will not mention the name of the presenting firm because it is irrelevant for the purposes of this blog. I am more concerned with the substance of the presenter’s arguments.

Assertion #1: Index investing distorts capital markets by inefficiently allocating capital

Rebuttal: This one is easy. Index funds buy shares on the secondary market. Companies raise capital in the primary market, in which index funds do not participate. While trading activity by index funds certainly impacts share prices, the contention that index funds distort activity in the primary market doesn’t hold much water. Index funds may influence financing decisions at the margins (should we raise debt or equity to finance a new factory?), however the impact of index funds on this decision pales in comparison to prevailing interest rates and tax policy. If capital allocation is going to keep investors up at night, they should be far more concerned with distortions and malinvestment driven by central bank policy actions, such as negative interest rates in Europe and Japan.

This is not the first time this argument has been trotted out and it certainly will not be the last. In August 2016 Bernstein published a research note titled: “The Silent Road to Serfdom: Why Passive Investing is Worse Than Marxism” (you couldn’t make this stuff up). It featured the below paragraph, which reads like something issued from the deepest bowels of The Ministry of Asset Management Propaganda:

We show later in this report that active investing, by seeking to understand ex ante what the ‘fair value’ price of an asset, or an equilibrium price level for an industry is, and allocating capital accordingly, helps the process of price discovery to occur much faster than would otherwise be the case. This has clear social and economic benefits compared with a passive regime where capital flows at best do not help, and indeed can hinder, the price discovery process. We would argue that, by virtue of being forward looking, a process of planning of capital allocation in a Marxist society could by similar logic be superior to a largely passive regime where the capital allocation is done by a marginal participant based on past performance and without any regard to industry dynamics or deviations from fair value. Whether or not any planning process can ‘beat’ fully functioning capital markets with a meaningful share of AUM run actively, we can envisage such a process being more effective than largely passive capital markets at allocating capital- and so a Marxist regime being superior to a capitalist system with little or no active management.

This is possibly the most extraordinary straw man I have seen in my career.

Assertion #2: Index investors are buying a backward-looking view of markets. Therefore index investors will miss out on the impending technologically induced disruption of our entire society

Rebuttal: This argument resonates more with me, although I take issue with the “backward-looking” characterization of index investing. The index investor seeks to piggyback on the work of active traders at low cost. The theoretical underpinning of index investing is that markets are efficient and thus price assets perfectly. Market prices therefore should reflect all available information about a stock, including expectations for future growth and profitability. If markets did not attempt to price future growth, you would not see certain stocks trade on triple digit earnings multiples.

There are certainly conditions under which indexing might impede price discovery and market liquidity, but it’s not like we are seeing some huge blowout in bid-offer spreads for S&P 500 stocks. And even if we are facing a less efficient market as a result of the trend toward passive investing, that should be a thrilling development for skilled investment managers. It should create more opportunities for stock picking.

Inasmuch as the new market paradigm is concerned, you would think from the tone of the presentation that the firm assembled a portfolio of niche ideas you couldn’t possibly own in passive form. And yet, what are The Companies Of The Future? Amazon, Activision Blizzard, Nvidia. The list goes on.

Can you guess the overlap with those names and the Russell 1000 Growth Index? Hint: it is high. Can you guess the level of sell-side research coverage for those stocks? Hint: it is not low.

On the basis of this presentation you would also think this was the first time in history markets had been on the cusp of transformative change, and that index funds were totally untested in periods of market and industry dislocation. You would never suspect that VFINX has been around since 1976. You would certainly be surprised to learn that index funds had weathered multiple financial crises, boom-bust cycles in commodities and credit, the rise of the internet – need I go on?

Reading this you might think I am some passive investing fanatic. I am not. I do not believe markets are perfectly efficient. Valuations matter. In my view the ETF world has clearly gone overboard with faddy, thematic products – not to mention solutions in desperate search of a problem. What individual or institutional portfolio needs 3x levered exposure to gold miners? Or 2x levered exposure to China A Shares? That’s just gambling packaged in a “passive” wrapper.

Yet despite all this, investment managers do themselves no favors trotting out tired, straw man arguments to combat what is clearly an existential threat to their business models. It reeks of desperation, and you can pick up the stench from a distance.

Morningstar columnist John Rekenthaler attacked this issue from a bit of a different angle in a recent article, concluding:

There will always be arguments against indexing. If passive funds never existed, traditional fund managers would be collecting an additional $40 billion in annual fees (roughly speaking, $5 trillion held by index mutual funds and exchange-traded funds times 0.80% for actively managed funds’ expense ratios). When $40 billion are put into play, people fight.

***

This post was written for entertainment purposes only and does not represent a recommendation to buy or sell securities, or to pursue any particular investment strategy. Prior to buying or selling securities, readers should consult with a financial advisor who can advise them based on their unique individual circumstances.

Predatory Finance & Community Development

I believe in capitalism because it offers an incredibly powerful incentive system that is essentially self-perpetuating. Broadly speaking, the most significant issue with socialism as an economic system is that it requires either central planning or a high degree of willing cooperation among market participants to allocate resources. The latter is not compatible with human nature. The former does not have an especially strong record — Venezuela is just the most recent example of a centrally planned economy imploding in spectacular fashion.

However, capitalism requires a robust and healthy financial system to flourish. Poor communities in the United States do not have ready access to healthy financial systems. In fact, they are targeted by predatory financial businesses.

Retail Banking

Retail banking products are not designed for the poor. Since the poor by definition spend most of what they earn, what they really need from a retail bank is a simple account they can use to cash paychecks and maybe accumulate some cash savings.

The problem for the banks, and therefore the banks’ low income customers, is that these types of banking relationships are not profitable (if they are profitable at all). The average “free” checking account costs a bank anywhere from $200 to $500. Now this is not so bad if you can offset those costs with interest income from loans and credit cards. In more affluent areas these accounts are simply loss leaders that give the banks a shot at the customers’ mortgages, credit cards and auto loans.

However, for obvious reasons the poor do not make for very good credits (more on that below). So there is not much incentive for retail banks to serve these markets. Even companies that have launched products specifically designed for this demographic have struggled to execute. Finally, since the poor spend most of what they earn they do not contribute much to deposit growth that can fuel asset growth elsewhere.

In the absence of traditional retail banks, poor communities are often forced to rely on check cashing services. These are sometimes offered through other retail stores and other times through financial service companies such as payday loan stores. Check cashing services are extraordinarily expensive. Transaction fees can run 10% or more. That is a significant economic drag on individuals, families and entire communities.

Lending

Much of the predatory financial activity that takes place in poor communities is related to lending. Payday loans, car title loans, subprime mortgage and auto loans, property rental (a.k.a rent-to-own) businesses. The specific mechanics of these businesses are different but the underlying principles are the same. It is more or less legalized usury. Effective interest rates can exceed 100% annually.

Subprime lending is a brutal, rip-your-face-off business. The customers are poor credits. That is not a moral judgement but simply reality. Thus the only way to sustain a subprime lending operation is to charge exorbitant interest rates and aggressively repossess collateral (to the extent loans are collateralized at all). This is death spiral financing for individuals.

Early in my career I worked in retail banking. I met many individuals trapped in the subprime debt cycle. They typically came to me hoping they could refinance their 10% car loan or mortgage at a lower interest rate. I was able to help a grand total of zero of these individuals. Most of them were doomed to personal bankruptcy. However, I would try to help educate them if there was an opportunity to do so. This itself was difficult because the level of financial sophistication in the subprime demographic is very low (the financial sophistication of the general public being mediocre at best).

One man had taken out a subprime mortgage. He came to me believing he had been cheated by the lender because he had paid vastly more interest than his loan note estimated. In reality what had happened was that he had taken the company up on a “skip-a-payment” offer on several occasions. These offers are common. They allow the customer to literally skip a payment on his loan, with no adverse effect on his credit score. These offers are often released around the holidays under the guise of giving customers a break during a difficult time of year. However, the loan continues to accrue interest in the meantime. This is disclosed in the fine print but financially unsophisticated customers tend not to read the fine print.

You see why the subprime lenders love these deals. The interest compounds on interest over time. In the above case the lender did not appear to have done anything overtly illegal. However, the customer was almost certainly a victim of mis-selling. He was ignorant of the most basic mechanics of loan finance.

Conclusion

Subprime finance is a dangerous business.

One of the main reasons it is dangerous that does not seem to get much air time is that victimizing large swaths of communities erodes collective trust in the financial system and indeed even capitalism itself over time. In this way predatory financial businesses impede the development of healthier, more productive financial infrastructure in poor communities.

Why Do The Chinese Love BitCoin?

This is a quick follow-on from my longer valuing BitCoin post.

The volume of BitCoin transactions originating in China is simply enormous. A New York Times article referenced in my prior post contains the following infographic (this is a little dated):

Source: *New York Times* via Chainalysis

Note the vast difference in volumes between China, the US and Europe. Why do the Chinese love BitCoin so much?

I want to link this to an older macroeconomic analysis from John Hempton. In a post from several years ago, Hempton asserted that China is a kleptocracy made possible by state-owned enterprises’ ability to fund themselves at negative real interest rates. In a follow-on post Hempton theorized that this means there should also be significant retail investor demand for gold in China.

He wrote:

In my kleptocracy post I described how the range of investments available to the median Chinese family is limited. They can’t take their money offshore (unless they are rich enough to afford casino junkets). The local stock market is rigged. There is no worthwhile mutual fund market. They can own see-through apartments. But their main saving mechanism is bank accounts and life insurance contracts (life insurance being a bank account proxy).

Rates are regulated – low. Inflation is high and ex-ante the return to Chinese savers is negative.

Despite negative real returns Chinese save in huge quantity. This may be because of the “four grandparent policy” as described in the kleptocracy post or because of gender imbalance (as described in the follow up post).

Whatever: in China we have huge quantities of savings at ex-ante negative real returns in some sense compelled by local social and political structures.

This pool of savings (part of what Ben Bernanke once described as the “excess of global savings”) has global implications – and these will be explored in a forthcoming posts.

But here I state the obvious.

If you were forced to save huge amounts of money at negative real rates of return wouldn’t gold look attractive?

And, I would add, wouldn’t BitCoins now look even more attractive than gold? If you are an average Chinese household hoarding gold, that strikes me as a tremendous undertaking. You would have to find a way to store the gold, secure the gold — on top of that it is not particularly easy to transact in gold.

BitCoin presents a convenient solution to these issues. Who cares if the Chinese government officially bans cryptocurrency exchanges? For BitCoin at least the whole point is to own an asset that is independent of conventional monetary policy (and, one might add, conventional capital controls). The storage costs strike me as much, much lower. In Cuba people circulated banned American media on flash drives. In China, hoarding BitCoins would be similarly straightforward.

Recall that when Jamie Dimon let loose with his tirade against BitCoin, he also said the following:

The only good argument I’ve ever heard … is that if you were in Venezuela or Ecuador or North Korea.. or if you were a drug dealer, a murderer, stuff like that, you are better off dealing in bitcoin than in US dollars, you are better off bypassing the system of your country even if what I just said is true. There may be a market for that but it’s a limited market.

My question: should China also be on that list?

Zen & The Art of Investment Research

I suspect that most people find research intensely boring. I further suspect most people find research boring because it is often done backwards. Frequently in business upper management has decided on the plan and an analyst’s job is to support the boss’s plan with data. If you work for a policy think tank, for instance, you know all your conclusions in advance.

The main problem with research in The Real World is that someone has to pay for it to be produced, and this almost invariably creates conflicts of interest that diminish the objectivity and thus quality of the research product.

On Planet Finance, for example, we refer to “sell side” and “buy side” research. Both the sell side and the buy side produce investment research. To the layperson the research products are indistinguishable. To the practitioner they can be worlds apart.

Buy side research is produced by individuals responsible for managing client money. For example, a financial advisor may research a stock for a client portfolio. The advisor is incentivized to do thorough research (note: this is not the same as saying the advisor actually conducts thorough research). If the advisor buys the stock for her client and it goes to $0 the client will likely fire her.

Things are more complicated for the sell side. The sell side makes money “selling” investment research to people like financial advisors. However, a tremendous volume of sell side research is produced by research groups at large banks. These banks generate significant fee revenue via their investment banking activities (e.g. helping companies issue stock on the public markets). You see the conflict. If Company A has a significant investment banking relationship with Bank B, how likely is Company A to maintain that relationship if Bank B Research slaps it with a Sell rating?

Not very likely.

Don’t take my word for it. Look at some raw data. A 2015 analysis by Bespoke Investment Group found that of 12,122 ratings on US companies, only 6.67% were rated “Sell.” 48.4% were rated “Buy” and 44.9% were rated “Hold.” On Wall Street, “Hold” is often regarded as analyst code for “Sell.”

Some people will argue there are compliance procedures like departmental firewalls to prevent conflicts of interest from influencing analysts’ recommendations. To which I would respond with The Golden Rule: He Who Hath The Gold, Maketh The Rules.

You may quote me chapter and verse from a compliance manual. I do not care what is written in someone’s compliance manual. In practice, if ever there is a dispute between a profit center like an investment banking group and a much smaller profit center (or, god forbid, a cost center) like a research group the profit center will win out every time.

Examining applications of The Golden Rule throughout history and contemporary events is part of what this blog will be about. This blog will also be about exploring the way the world works, through the lens of The Golden Rule, without needing to worry about where we end up and whether our conclusions might cost us our jobs.

One of the things that drew me to investment research is that in its purest form, it provides clears incentives, both positive and negative, for intellectual honesty, regardless of whether something makes you uncomfortable ideologically. Hedge fund manager and prolific blogger John Hempton puts it thusly:

“Money management can be one of the most interesting careers in the world. At best it gives you lots of unstructured time to think about how the world really operates – and to make bets based on your hypotheses. You get to conduct uncontrolled but real time experiments in the social sciences. But never forget this is a social science – not physics – and a little dogmatism about your rules or positions can result in getting it spectacularly wrong.”