This week's interesting finds

Business Applications – Timely Gauge of Real GDP

When Covid struck, new business applications collapsed. But then they soared to a record high by a wide margin. New business applications correlate with U.S. real GDP. This is another economic indicator suggesting significant upside, contrary to the pervasive Wall of Worry.

High-Propensity Business Applications are a subset of total business applications, which includes only applications that have a high likelihood of turning into businesses with payrolls. This avoids applications by laid-off gig workers/independent contractors, and is likely the best representation of “true” new business formations.

The surge in new business applications shows spirits remain optimistic, suggesting strengthening business and consumer sentiment.

There is a 73% correlation between high-propensity business applications, and real GDP growth. Why? New business formations are a function of confidence, both business and consumer. From 2007-2019, business applications led real GDP by 3 quarters.

No price too high

Jim Chanos, the founder of hedge fund Kynikos Associates Ltd., is critical of companies that, he says, are increasingly defining themselves not by revenue or earnings, but by the total addressable market they can win. The idea is “how big is what you’re chasing, forgetting for a second that everybody else is chasing those same markets”. An example is Netflix Inc., which has said their total market “is all the people on the planet”. Chanos said he would “go long any of the space companies that have gone public because we know that space is infinite. There’s no price too high to pay.” His remarks sent shares of Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc. up 7% before paring gains after Chanos said he was just joking.

Domestic China back to Normal?

China Hotel RevPAR grew 24% year-over-year last week. While this is exaggerated by the Golden Week, Morgan Stanley estimates that after adjusting for this holiday, year-over-year RevPAR was flat to pre-pandemic levels.

Note: RevPAR is a metric used in the hospitality industry to measure hotel performance. The measurement is calculated by multiplying a hotel's average daily room rate by its occupancy rate.

Rally powered by assets you can’t see or touch

Take all the physical assets owned by all the companies in the S&P 500, all the cars and office buildings and factories and merchandise, then sell them all at cost in one giant sale, and they would generate a net sum that doesn’t even come out to 20% of the index’s $28 trillion value. Much of what’s left comes from things you can’t see or count: algorithms and brands and lists.

Back in 1985, before Silicon Valley came to dominate the ranks of America’s biggest companies, tangible assets tended to be closer to half the market’s value.

The shift picked up after the financial crisis of 2008 and is taking off anew during the Covid-19 lockdown, with the value of intangible-heavy companies like Google and Facebook soaring while smokestack stocks languish. All of which is a source of deep concern for those who worry about things like employment and inequality.

As a result of those gains, S&P 500 members held more than $21 trillion in intangibles at the end of 2018, more than double 2005. That’s 84% of the S&P 500’s market value, the most ever.

Back in the 19th century, capitalism required large physical investments, such as canals, dams and railroads, which in turn created jobs. That’s true to a much smaller extent now.

Economic recoveries that focus more on intangible investments have increasingly been met with slower labor market bounce-backs. 

Difference between market cap weighted and equal weighted performance

Because the S&P 500 is weighted by a company’s market value, the biggest internet firms have overshadowed declines in several sectors this year. This year, the S&P is outpacing a version of the index that gives every stock an equal weighting by nearly 10%, a gap that would be the highest since the late 1990s.

ESG funds under scrutiny

Investors propelled ESG funds to new heights in 2020 and federal agencies are watching. Inflows into ESG funds peaked in 2020. Many of these funds have recently outperformed the markets, but regulators say they may not be all they claim to be. The tension around ESGs has to do with the way that they’re built. This video goes over various strategies for constructing ESG funds and highlights the lack of standardization and common concerns that investors should be aware of. 

This week's interesting finds

 Coming into Focus

In his latest memo, Howard Marks discusses the unusual characteristics of this year’s economy and the impact of COVID-19 related monetary and fiscal policy actions on today’s markets. Below is one excerpt where he discusses the changes in the composition of the stock market and how that compares to the Nifty Fifty.

Today’s leaders are often compared to the Nifty Fifty, but they’re much better companies: larger; faster growing with greater potential for prolonging that growth; capable of higher gross margins (since in many cases there’s no physical cost of production); more dominant in their respective markets (because of scale, greater technological superiority and “lock in,” or impediments to switching solutions); more able to grow without incremental investment (since they don’t require much in the way of factories or working capital to make their products); and possibly valued lower as a multiple of future profits. This argues for a bigger valuation gap and is perhaps the most provocative element in the pro-tech argument. 

Of course, many of the Nifty Fifty didn’t prove to be as powerful as had been thought. Xerox and IBM lost the lead in their markets and experienced financial difficulty; the markets for the products of Kodak and Polaroid disappeared, and they went bankrupt; AIG required a government bailout to avoid bankruptcy; and who’s heard from Simplicity Pattern lately? Today’s tech leaders appear much more powerful and unassailable.

But fifty years ago, the Nifty Fifty appeared impregnable too; people were simply wrong. If you invested in them in 1968, when I first arrived at First National City Bank for a summer job in the investment research department, and held them for five years, you lost almost all your money. The market fell in half in the early 1970s, and the Nifty Fifty declined much more. Why? Because investors hadn’t been sufficiently price-conscious. In fact, in the opinion of the banks (which did much of the institutional investing in those days) they were such good companies that there was “no price too high.” Those last four words are, in my opinion, the essential component in – and the hallmark of – all bubbles. To some extent, we might be seeing them in action today. Certainly no one’s valuing FAAMG on current income or intrinsic value, and perhaps not on an estimate of e.p.s. in any future year, but rather on their potential for growth and increased profitability in the far-off future.

How long does it take to double your money?
 

Source: @jsblokland  

Do Treasuries still offer diversification benefits?

The rise of retail trading.

China's Share in Global Exports

China’s exports rose 9.9% YoY. Leading the global economic recovery,

Photo contest: Winner!

For this quarter's EdgePoint photo contest, we wanted everyone to stay safe with our "socially distanced" theme. Our contributors put their zoom lenses to work by capturing some really far out shots, but we'd like to congratulate Craig Advice for his photo of canoeing on Lake Louise.

 

 

This week's interesting finds

2020 Q3 EdgePoint commentary

Equity commentary: The Certainty of Uncertainty

This quarter, portfolio manager Geoff MacDonald looks at the high price that investors are willing to pay in search of certainty and talks about why investors should crave uncertainty in investing.

Fixed-income commentary: Play your part – the role of fixed income in your portfolio

This quarter, portfolio manager Frank Mullen discusses the changing outlook for fixed income and how you can ensure it plays the right role for you in the future.

This chart shows the attribution of growth in earnings per share over time.

Year-on-year operating EPS growth declined 33% as of Q2 2020. The decline in profit margin accounted for 24% while revenue declined 9.3%.

And here is the attribution of global equity returns.

There are now more ETFs than stocks listed on the NYSE and Nasdaq

South Sea bubble

Hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles don’t create emissions, but producing it can.

Hydrogen announcements are coming thick and fast. This week alone, hydrogen-powered double-decker buses arrived in Aberdeen, Britain’s oil capital; Hyundai delivered seven fuel-cell hauling trucks to Switzerland; and Toyota partnered with Hino to develop its own hydrogen-powered big rigs for the U.S.

What’s the problem? Hydrogen is the most abundant molecule in the universe, but it isn’t present on Earth in its free form. We must first produce it. That can be done cleanly by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen using renewable electricity from solar and wind power. But the cheaper and more prevalent method is to extract it from natural gas or coal, which emits carbon dioxide and locks us into further exploitation of fossil fuels. Projects touting hydrogen’s green credentials often rely on sequestering waste CO2 from its production, a technology still untested on the scale required.

The availability of clean hydrogen fuel is very limited. There are currently plans for more than 60 gigawatts of green hydrogen production globally, but less than half will be available by 2035. Today, making the hydrogen gas generates more carbon emissions globally than the airline industry, according to Bank of America.

This week's interesting finds

History of market bubbles

Source: @jsblokland

The US outperformance vs. other markets appears to be stretched

Source: BofA Global Research, @barnejek

FAANGs Risk Ending Up Like the Nifty Fifty

FAANGs have done very well, along with the rest of the technology elite. The Nasdaq 100 is up 30.5% this year, versus roughly 4% for the broad market S&P 500.

Nevertheless, at some point they risk turning out like the Nifty Fifty did. These were a collection of blue-chip, large-cap names that investors of the day labeled “one-decision stocks.” In other words, they tended to go up like helium, so one should automatically buy them as a sure thing. Sound familiar?

Eventually, a bunch of the Fifty tanked, with 20% in big trouble. They foundered in the vicious 1973-74 bear market and staggered through the stagflation 1970s. A number of its top performers back in the day are desiccated versions of their former selves, such as Eastman Kodak, Xerox, and Sears Roebuck, or are defunct, like ITT and Burroughs. Some, of course, are still in a strong position, notably Walmart.

A similar fate for the FAANGs would cleanse the equity market. That monumental a failure “would do a lot to sterilize the successful ones.”

Number of stocks up at least 400% at some point in the first nine months of each year

At their individual peaks in 2020, more than 60 stocks in the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite had risen at least 400%. But the gap between the star performers and the losers is wide. Of the roughly 2,500 stocks in the index, more than 1,000 suffered declines of at least 50% for the year at their low points.

The S&P 500’s information-technology sector has the biggest weighting in the stock-market index than at any time since 2000. Meanwhile, financials and energy companies have steadily dwindled to the lowest levels since at least 1990.

Uneven Recovery of U.S. Small Businesses

In the U.S. as a whole, data suggests that nearly a quarter of all small businesses remain closed. Of course, the situation on the ground differs from place to place. Here’s how cities around the country are doing, sorted by percentage of small businesses closed as of September 2020:

This week's interesting finds

What Currency Devaluation Looks Like

This chart shows 10-year Treasury yields (blue line) vs the inflation-adjusted annualized return of 10-year Treasuries bought that year and held to maturity (orange bars):

Data Sources: Robert Shiller, Aswath Damodaran

During the 1940’s, the war period of massive fiscal spending, the Fed capped rates below the prevailing inflation rate. Inflation was transient, coming in spikes, and yet rates were capped at 2.5% or below:

Data Sources: Robert Shiller, Aswath Damodaran

As a result, here’s what happened to anyone who bought and held 10-year Treasuries to maturity from the early 1940’s. Those Treasuries were paid back nominally, but a full third of their purchasing power was lost due to inflation of both the money supply and consumer prices.

Data Sources: Robert Shiller, Aswath Damodaran

CalPERS assumed plan return U.S. 10-Year and 30-year Treasury Note Yield

CalPERS’ (California Public Employees' Retirement System) assumed plan returns going back 60 years compared to the U.S. 10-Year Treasury Note Yield. Back in 1960, the 10-Year was at 4%, and the planned return was 4%, so there's basically no risk premium. In 1981, the 10-Year was yielding about 14%, and the planned returns were 8%. So there was a -6% risk premium. You could have basically locked up a lot of your returns for some period of time. And then now the 10-Years is 70 basis points, roughly speaking, and the planned returns are 7%. Which doesn't seem crazy, but let's call it roughly almost a 6% point equity risk premium. So we've gone from -6% to 6% risk premium. Now you're the chief investment officer in one of these big pension funds, and you're like, "How am I going to get there?"

Sounding good or Doing good?

ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance), a measure of the environment and social impact of companies, has become one of the fastest growing movements in business and investing, and this time, the sales pitch is wider and deeper. Companies that improve their social goodness standing will not only become more profitable and valuable over time, we are told, but they will also advance society's best interests, thus resolving one of the fundamental conflicts of private enterprise, while also enriching investors.

Any attempts to measure environment and social goodness face two challenges.

• The first is that much of social impact is qualitative, and developing a numerical value for that impact is difficult to do.

• The second is even trickier, which is that there is little consensus on what social impacts to measure, and the weights to assign to them.

There are multiple services now that measure ESG at companies, but the lack of clarity and consensus results in the companies being ranked very differently by different services shows up in low correlations across the ESG services on ESG scores:

This low correlation often occurs even on high profile companies:

This week's interesting finds

Charts of the week

Leverage equity buying (net calls) at an all-time high

Household savings by year

In 60 years, the Momentum trade has never gotten this carried away (including the top of the market in 2000)

A nice dissection of the components of inflation

Cash generation is strong

The Big Growers’ share of market cap: we’re above 2000 top and are now in line with the Nifty Fifty

Bits and pieces:

• The Shiller cyclically adjusted PE ratio is the highest on record with the two worrying exceptions of 1999 and 1929. (Source: Morningstar)

• Small traders are dominating the options market and 75% of the volume is in contracts that expire in two weeks. (Source: Bianco Research)

• The urge to trade seems to be universal:  A legion of day traders is taking over Korea’s stock market accounting for 88% of the total value of Korean equity trading in the first 8 days of September (Source: Bloomberg)

• Millions of Indians have piled into the country’s stock market helping sustain a strong rebound from the depths of march. Average age of new customers in Zerodha – India’s discount brokerage house: 28. With the impetuosity of youth, the novices are choosing to bypass underperforming mutual funds and do their own stock picking, penny issues preferably. (Source: Financial Times)

Big investors are dying to know what amateur traders are doing

With the sway of stay-at-home traders growing and starting to eclipse other influences on equities, figuring out who is doing what among amateur stock dabblers has become a critical mission for big investors. They’re canvassing Reddit threads and picks at retail brokerages, plugging data into programs and trying to gain an edge.

The Fault, Dear Investor, is Not in Your Investments, But in You

Over the last twenty years, the average equity mutual fund posted a yearly return of 8%. Over the last twenty years, the average investor in an equity mutual fund posted a yearly return of 4%.

The reason is that majority of investors play the short-term game – trading in and out, in and out of equities – an asset class that has been known to build wealth over long periods of time.

The tendency – of short-termism – has become more common over the years. Investors, who are have become so used to chasing short term performance, are acting a lot more with the vastly available information on how funds perform not just year on year, but even on a quarterly and monthly basis.

This doesn’t mean that you must stick with your losing funds forever, as people do with their losing stocks to get their money back. But instead of switching in and out of funds, you must give time to the ones that have been managed well in the past but may just be going through a temporary period of underperformance vis-à-vis the new leaders. This also applies to your losing stocks. Stick with businesses that have been managed well in the past, and even now, even when their stocks are going through a temporary phase of a downturn owing to the overall market weakness.

“Investing is simple, but not easy,” says Charlie Munger. Knowing that following the herd or chasing market leaders is a way to hell is the ‘simple’ part. Avoiding it is the ‘not easy’ part.

Trying to time the market or finding winning stocks or fund managers and then siding with them till you find the next batch of winning stocks or fund managers is a waste of time that often backfires.

To do well over the long run, your best bet is to keep things simple. Stick with stocks, funds, and managers who are intrinsically good, even when they are going through temporary bad phases, do not deviate from your investment process, minimize your costs, and keep a long-term perspective.

This week's interesting finds

Amazon’s weight in S&P 500 Index is now bigger than the entire energy and materials sector combined.

S&P 500 Index EPS vs. U.S. Corporate Profits

This chart puts into perspective the wide divergence between S&P 500 Index EPS and U.S. corporate profits.

RHS – right hand side of the chat

NIPA – National Income and Product Accounts

Reed Hasting on Work from Home

WSJ: What elements of the Netflix culture are tougher to maintain now that so many employees are working from home?

Mr. Hastings: Debating ideas is harder now.

WSJ: Have you seen benefits from people working at home?

Mr. Hastings: No. I don’t see any positives. Not being able to get together in person, particularly internationally, is a pure negative. I’ve been super impressed at people’s sacrifices.

WSJ: It’s been anticipated that many companies will shift to a work-from-home approach for many employees even after the Covid-19 crisis. What do you think?

Mr. Hastings: If I had to guess, the five-day workweek will become four days in the office while one day is virtual from home. I’d bet that’s where a lot of companies end up.

WSJ: Do you have a date in mind for when your workforce returns to the office?

Mr. Hastings: Twelve hours after a vaccine is approved.

WSJ: I like that.

Mr. Hastings: It’s probably six months after a vaccine. Once we can get a majority of people vaccinated, then it’s probably back in the office.

Mental Models: The Best Way to Make Intelligent Decisions

This guide explores everything you need to know about mental models. By the time you’re done, you’ll think better, make fewer mistakes, and get better results.

In a famous speech in the 1990s, Charlie Munger summed up the approach to practical wisdom through understanding mental models by saying: “Well, the first rule is that you can’t really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and try and bang ’em back. If the facts don’t hang together on a latticework of theory, you don’t have them in a usable form. You’ve got to have models in your head. And you’ve got to array your experience both vicarious and direct on this latticework of models. You may have noticed students who just try to remember and pound back what is remembered. Well, they fail in school and in life. You’ve got to hang experience on a latticework of models in your head.”

SoftBank’s Big Options Bet Tests Investor Faith in Masayoshi Son

Just when investors thought Masayoshi Son was reining in risk at SoftBank Group Corp., the Japanese billionaire’s foray into highly leveraged derivatives is giving them fresh reason to worry. SoftBank shares tumbled 7.2% on Monday in Tokyo, erasing about $9 billion of market value. The drop came after the conglomerate made massive bets on high-flying technology stocks using equity derivatives. What has alarmed shareholders is that Son appears to be using options to amplify his exposure to a corner of the market where valuations have soared and mercurial individual investors are playing an ever-greater role.