Classic: The Fundamentals of Market Tops

All of my articles from RealMoney have been irreparably lost because of a change in file systems.? Anything written prior to 2008 is gone.? That may not matter for most writers at RealMoney, but I tended to write things of more permanent validity.

So it is with gratitude to Barry Ritholtz that I republish a popular piece of mine that ran on January 13th, 2004.? Barry Ritholtz republished it in 2006, and captured most of it, except for one thing — at the end I said that the rally would go on, which it did.

Anyway, here is Barry’s copy of my piece, without adjustment:

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David Merkel wrote this a year ago; it?s a brilliant set of observations of what market tops look like.

David starts by noting he is “basically a fundamentalist in my investing methods, but I do see value in trying to gauge when markets are likely to make a top or bottom out.”? He adds that his methods “are somewhat vague, but I always have believed that investment is a game that you win by being approximately right. Precision is of secondary importance.”

Item 1: The Investor Base Becomes Momentum-Driven

Valuation is rarely a sufficient reason to be long or short the market. Absurdity is like infinity. Twice infinity is still infinity. Twice absurd is still absurd. Absurd valuations, whether high or low, can become even more absurd if the expectations of market participants become momentum-based. Momentum investors do not care about valuation; they buy what is going up, and sell what is going down.

You?ll know a market top is probably coming when:

a) The shorts already have been killed. You don?t hear about them anymore. There is general embarrassment over investments in short-only funds.

b) Long-only managers are getting butchered for conservatism. In early 2000, we saw many eminent value investors give up around the same time. Julian Robertson, George Vanderheiden, Robert Sanborn, Gary Brinson and Stanley Druckenmiller all stepped down shortly before the market top.

c) Valuation-sensitive investors who aren?t total-return driven because of a need to justify fees to outside investors accumulate cash. Warren Buffett is an example of this. When Buffett said that he “didn?t get tech,” he did not mean that he didn?t understand technology; he just couldn?t understand how technology companies would earn returns on equity justifying the capital employed on a sustainable basis.

d) The recent past performance of growth managers tends to beat that of value managers. In short, the future prospects of firms become the dominant means of setting market prices.

e) Momentum strategies are self-reinforcing due to an abundance of momentum investors. Once momentum strategies become dominant in a market, the market behaves differently. Actual price volatility increases. Trends tend to maintain themselves over longer periods. Selloffs tend to be short and sharp.

f) Markets driven by momentum favor inexperienced investors. My favorite way that this plays out is on CNBC. I gauge the age, experience and reasoning of the pundits. Near market tops, the pundits tend to be younger, newer and less rigorous. Experienced investors tend to have a greater regard for risk control, and believe in mean-reversion to a degree. Inexperienced investors tend to follow trends. They like to buy stocks that look like they are succeeding and sell those that look like they are failing.

g) Defined benefit pension plans tend to be net sellers of stock. This happens as they rebalance their funds to their target weights.

Item 2: Corporate Behavior

Corporations respond to signals that market participants give. Near market tops, capital is inexpensive, so companies take the opportunity to raise capital.

Here are ways that corporate behaviors change near a market top:

a)? The quality of IPOs declines, and the dollar amount increases. By quality, I mean companies that have a sustainable competitive advantage, and that can generate ROE in excess of cost of capital within a reasonable period.

b) Venture capitalists can do no wrong, so lots of money is attracted to venture capital.

c)? Meeting the earnings number becomes paramount. What is ignored is balance sheet quality, cash flow from operations, etc.

d)? There is a high degree of visible and/or hidden leverage. Unusual securitization and financing techniques proliferate. Off balance sheet liabilities become very common.

e) Cash flow proves insufficient to finance some speculative enterprises and some financial speculators. This occurs late in the game. When some speculative enterprises begin to run out of cash and can?t find anyone to finance them, they become insolvent. This leads to greater scrutiny and a sea change in attitudes for financing of speculative companies.

f) Elements of accounting seem compromised. Large amounts of earnings stem from accruals rather than cash flow from operations.

g) Dividends become less common. Fewer companies pay dividends, and dividends make up a smaller fraction of earnings or free cash flow.

In short, cash is the lifeblood of business. During speculative times, watch it like a hawk. No array of accrual entries can ever provide quite the same certainty as cash and other highly liquid assets in a crisis.

These two factors are more macro than the investor base or corporate behavior but are just as important.? Near a top, the following tends to happen:

1. Implied volatility is low and actual volatility is high. When there are many momentum investors in a market, prices get more volatile. At the same time, there can be less demand for hedging via put options, because the market has an aura of inevitability.

2. The Federal Reserve withdraws liquidity from the system. The rate of expansion of the Fed?s balance sheet slows. This causes short interest rates to rise, making financing more expensive. As this slows down the economy, speculative ventures get hit hardest. Remember that monetary policy works with a six- to 18-month lag; also, this indicator works in reverse when the Fed adds liquidity to the system.

11 thoughts on “Classic: The Fundamentals of Market Tops

  1. Hi David!

    1) I really like “absurdity is like infinity”– a great description of bubble pricing, especially individual equities as opposed to a whole market.

    2) This begs the question of course, where do you think we are now? There are certainly elements of a top at work, ESPECIALLY in my area of expertise, very small and small US equities.

    Thanks as always for writing the best blog on investing there is!

  2. Would love your views on the US market is today, maybe a scale of 1 to 10 for each indicator.

    It is a very different market from 1999. The bubble in tech has been brewing in the private market for the past year or two. It has spilled over to stocks recently, but there is nowhere near the level of garbage that existed in 1999. Also small caps across the board are expensive today, unlike 1999 when they were really cheap.

  3. I was under the impression that you were able to save some of those old articles when you reached out to your readers ~7 months back. That is really too bad about losing most of the writing. Are you able to repost directly on your own site any articles that you do manage to get archived copies of, or does that result in legal trouble?

    1. I have maybe six more classic articles that readers sent me. I may search some computers of mine for articles, but I doubt that I have them.

      RealMoney appreciated me, and I doubt they would sue me. As an aside, anything they republished at theStreet.com is still available.

  4. David, are all of your observations based on the late 90s tech bubble/market top?seems you’re making some really bold conclusions based on a population of 1 if that’s the case. If it’s not the case, what other market tops are you referring to? the 2007 top didn’t have any of the characteristics you describe. you have definitely been around longer than I..I’m 43 , but you’re not old enough to have traded many other major tops.

    1. Try the 60s and the 20s, also 1973-4, 1979-81, and 1989-92. I read a lot. Also 2007 did have many of the symptoms — the credit markets were tight as a drum, and there was an infallibility of the equity market, much as we see today.

      1. ok other than tight credit markets, what about your other observations regarding market pundits, momentum investors, leverage ratios, making your numbers…they are all recent characteristics and i doubt you read anything about the average age of market pundits in the 1920s.

        everyone alive right now that is trading has traded exactly ONE major bull market top in 2000….2007 wasn’t a bull market top as the average stock went down from 2000 to 2007 hence it was a bear market. don’t mean to split hairs, but 89-92 wasn’t a major top either…pull up a chart of the spx. 1990 didn’t even take out the prior year lows. to make conclusions on how the late 90’s technology bubble manifested itself and trying to relate those conclusions to a fed induced liquidity bubble is a waste of time. why should we trade like the late 90s?

        1. I really suggest you read; the 20s, 60s and mid-70s were plagued by much of what I wrote about. There are a lot of good economic history books on these periods, and yes, they were characterized by overleverage, low credit spreads, and momentum players in greater number. Not every symptom every time, but if you begin to get a gang of them together, it begins to ring bells.

          89-92 was a major event in the credit cycle, subverted by Greenspan bringing rates too low. Equities may not have been hit so badly then, but the level of stress was significant, such that many financial institutions failed, or got near it.

          Finally, I don’t use your definition of a bull market top. Mine is based off the size of declines, and credit market stress. We don’t have to hit a new high, we simply have to have a significant decline or increase in credit stress.

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