This is a book that gives a feeling for being in hedge fund management, rather than a dry description of what needs to be done if you are in the rare position of being asked to manage a hedge fund.

The author was an ambitious guy.  Growing up in Canada, he wanted to play professional hockey.  He played ably in youth leagues, the minors, and college.  Making the pros was not to be.

So, what does a competitive guy do when he can’t pursue his dream?  He pursues another dream, managing money. He works hard, and gets one break after another, and eventually manages his own firm, which he sells out to a larger one.  He gets a plum job at a firm that proves less than patient with his current performance, and he gets let go.  Even that is a triumph for the author.  He starts his own firm, which is what he is still doing today.

Think of an analogy to sports — every player makes mistakes, but the best players recover from mistakes well and learn from them.  The author definitely got his share of breaks, both good and bad, but he responded to the bad breaks well, and came out the better for it.

Though this book is about hedge funds and other areas of investing, really, this book is about the author.  It tells his story, and as the story gets told, you pick up incidental points along the way:

• What is it like to be an intern at a trading firm?
• How do you learn as you go?
• What was it like inside CSFB during the dot-com bubble?
• How to interview management teams to get an edge.
• How to sense if someone is lying.
• In general, the Fund of hedge funds operators are not desirable clients.
• Get a sense of the strength of consumers
• Get a sense of the three time horizons — days/weeks, months, and years.  (He uses other terms than this, but I appreciated his logic here, because it seemed a lot like what I did as a corporate bond manager.  Have a sense of short-term momentum, medium-term trend and long-term mean-reversion.)
• Very good to good means sell
• Very bad to bad means buy
• The value of keeping a trading journal, and reviewing performance.
• Be careful who you do business with, because eventually they may show you the door for less than good reasons.
• Surviving the credit bubble’s bust.  Buying back in when people are panicking.

The book runs 204 pages, but roughly 30 don’t have much on them.   The book is breezy, and though I mentioned a lot of things that I got out of the book, readers less familiar with the subject matter might miss some of the points.  He does not spend a lot of time on the details. On the other hand, a reader less familiar will get a feel for what it is like to be a part of a fast-paced area in investments.

Who would benefit from the book:  Those that would like to read the tale of an interesting guy who had a tiger-by-the-tail initial career in investments.

If you want to but the book, you can get it here: Diary of a Hedge Fund Manager: From the Top, to the Bottom, and Back Again.

Full disclosure: The publisher sent me this book. They send me a lot of books, and I review as many as I can. I don’t like every book that I receive, but typically I review the ones that seem the best, and let the rest pile up. Anyone entering Amazon through my site, and buying anything, I get a small commission, but your price does not go up. Such a deal.

PS — the blog for the author’s firm is here.

I think earnings quality is one of the great neglected concepts of investing.  Why do many growth investors blow up on seemingly promising companies?  The answer is often that the investors did not review earnings quality.  Why do value investors fall into value traps?  The answer is often that the investors did not review earnings quality.

I have reviewed a number of books, and written many articles about earnings quality  Because so much of the investment world is blind here, the idea still has punch.

Thornton O’Glove hits at the subject in a traditional way — accrual accounting entries are always more suspect than cash entries.  He focuses on:

• Being skeptical — don’t trust management, analysts, auditors.
• Look for inconsistencies in disclosure.  Who tells a happy story broadly, bet is serious in regulatory filings?
• Who plays games with one-time events?  What companies push the limits in determining what is a one-time event?
• How do companies play with their accruals in order to report income?
• Is taxable income significantly out of whack with GAAP income?

The book was written in the Mid-1980s, before it was easy to review SEC filings.  That has changed, but few really review filings today, even though it is easy to do so.

This is a good book, and you can learn a lot from it, but many of the references are dated, as in the classic version of “The Intelligent Investor.”  I mean, I recognize most of the examples, but many readers will say, “Huh, I’ve never heard of that company!”

Do you want to improve your investing?  Look to earnings quality.

Who could benefit from the book?  Any investor could benefit from the book, particularly those that analyze fundamentals.

If you want to buy the book, you can buy it here: Quality of Earnings

Full disclosure:  I bought this book.  I review books old and new.  This old book still has value, and I recommend it.  It will require more effort than most investors are willing to put forth, but I believe it will yield value to those who work with it.  This is simple stuff, but it is work, and there is always a barrier to entry around work.

Also, anyone entering Amazon through my site and buying anything — I get a small commission, but you don’t pay anything more.  I love it when both my readers and I win.

Insurance is probably the most complex industry as far as accounting goes.  Why?  When you sell the policy, you have a vague  idea of what the costs will be, and when those cash flows will occur.

That leaves room for a wide variety of games as far as the accounting goes.  Because hitting operating return on equity targets is often the “be all” and “end all” of management reporting, one of the holy grails was taking capital losses and turning them into operating income.  Net result on income is zero, but it looks like you are making a lot of returns off of operations.

At one company that I worked for, the new CEO want to great pains to declare how ethical the new CFO was.  I murmured to my boss, “Not ethical, but clever.”  He gave me a smile.  She had pulled that very trick, and if one reconciled the Statutory and GAAP accounting, the chicanery was obvious.

At AIG, my managers were quite concerned about what went above the line and below the line.  If an accounting item didn’t figure into net income my managers didn’t care about it, even if it diminished shareholders equity.

As an investor, this made me skeptical about income statements.  But if you don’t have an income statement, what do you do to estimate profitability?

Well, you could look at the change in tangible net worth due to common shareholders, and add back dividends, including the value of spinoffs, and net money spent on buybacks.  That is what a shareholder earns, in book value terms.  Back when I was an analyst of the insurance industry, there were companies run by value investors that would present their returns that way showing the the growth in fully converted book value over time.  In a sense , Berkshire Hathaway does that as well, but it doesn’t pay a dividend, so it is simply the increase in book value.

In the short run the market is influenced by net income due to common shareholders.  But there is a difference between the two measures of income, and I call the difference “cram.”  Cram is the amount of extra income reported through the income statements that does not makes its way through the balance sheet.

That said, I have another measure that I nickname “jam.”  Jam is the amount of money gained/lost from buying back stock.  In general, when companies buy back stock they dilute value for investors.  Better to retain and reinvest.

How do I know this?  I have been working on an accounting quality model, which is still a work in progress.  An aside, I have had my share of calls from consultants who tell me they have an earnings quality model that covers the whole market.  When they call me I ask them how they analyze financial companies.  I get the intelligent equivalent of a shrug.  The reason is that accruals on the financial statements of industrials and utilities are quite similar, but for financials, they are quite different.

Here are some of the results of my model on the S&P 100:

The data covers the last 4 3/4 fiscal years.  Why did I use fiscal years? Because data capture with companies is most complete at fiscal year ends, when they file their 10Ks.

What did I find?  In general, most companies lose money off of buybacks, whether it is 24% of cumulative net income, or 32% of final tangible net worth.  Individual company performance varies a great deal.  More surprising to me was that cram on average was only 1% of cumulative net income.  Maybe GAAP isn’t so bad on average after all.  But averages conceal a lot of variation — I would not want to own companies that lose a lot of money off of buybacks, or those that inflate net income versus growth in tangible book.

If buybacks ceased, companies might have a lot of slack assets on hand.  I know that companies keep themselves slim to avoid takeovers,  A large amount of slack assets invites others to come in and buy the assets to manage them.  Still, it seems that most buybacks waste the money of shareholders.  This seems to be another example of the agency problem, wheremanagers take an action that benefits them, but harms shareholders.

I would be negative on both cram and jam.  Good companies don’t report earnings in excess of what shareholders obtain, and they don’t buy back stock except when it is cheap.

Full disclosure: long ALL COP CVX ORCL PEP

I resisted getting this book when it first came out.  Much as I enjoy Ken Fisher as a writer, and appreciate the interaction that I have had with him over the years, the title turned me away.  “Three questions? Only three?  Investing is far more complex than that.”  I would say that to myself.

After reviewing his most recent book, I said to myself, “Well, you’ve reviewed all of his books but one; you may as well do it.”  So, I borrowed the book from a friend.

I wish I had read it sooner.  The three questions are simple ones, and they have been mentioned elsewhere on the internet, so here they are:

• What do you believe that is actually false?
• What can you fathom that others find unfathomable?
• What the heck is my brain doing to blindside me now?

The idea is to get us to think more deeply.  Test the received wisdom to see if it is really true.  Look for unusual areas of competitive advantage that you have that are possessed by few.  Your emotions will often lead you astray: look for opportunity amid fear; look for shelter amid wild abandon.

Competitive advantage in investing is an elusive thing.  The clever idea that you might discover is just one journal article away from an academic toiling in obscurity, but will go to a  hedge fund two years from now.

Patterns that work in one market should work in most markets.  If your discovery seems to work in most places, it might work well, until it is discovered and used heavily.

I found a number of insights useful.  Like me, he uses E/P relative to bond yields to try to estimate whether markets are rich or cheap.  I also found his insights about how the yield curve affects style investing to be useful.  I do something like that through my industry rotation.

Now, in the intermediate-run, most things that people are scared about don’t affect the market much.  Government deficits seem to be a positive for stocks in the short run.  Trade deficit?  Little effect on stocks.  Weak dollar?  Little effect.  This book debunks a number of common worries, though I would say that if the problem got significantly bigger, perhaps the result would be different.

Ken Fisher offers what I would deem to be good advice on Asset Allocation, and how to make sell decisions, amid many other issues.  I enjoyed the book a lot, and would recommend it to my readers.

Quibbles

Occasionally, the book seems disjointed.  Ken Fisher is covering a lot of ground, and he takes a decent number of “side trips” to explain concepts.  The flip side of that is that the book covers many areas of the equity markets, and helps to explain what drives them.

Now, sometimes I wonder if multivariate approaches might reveal different conclusions than what Ken Fisher comes to.

Who would benefit from the book: Investors with moderate experience in investing who are finding the going harder than they expected.  This book will help them take a step back, and think twice about investment decisions.

If you want to buy the book, you can buy it here: The Only Three Questions That Count: Investing by Knowing What Others Don’t (Fisher Investments Press)

Full Disclosure: Book reviews are my main profit center at my blog.  They allow me  to create a win-win situation for me and my readers.  I don’t want my readers to waste their money to reward me.  I would rather they buy things that they want to buy at competitive prices through Amazon.  If they enter Amazon through my site, I get a small commission, and their price does not change at all.  Such a deal.

As I roll through the day, i often make comments on the blogs and websites of others.  I suppose I could gang them up, and post them here only.  I don’t do that.  Other sites deserve good comments.  Today, though, I reprint them here, with a little more commentary.

1) First, I want to thank a commenter at my own blog, Ryan, who brought this article to my attention.  I’ve written about all of the issues he has, but he has integrated them better.  It is a long read at 74 pages, but in my opinion, if you have 90 minutes to burn, worth it.  I will be commenting on the ideas of this article in the future.

2) My commentary on Dr. Shiller’s idea on Trills drew positive attention, but the best part was being quoted at The Economist’s blog.

3) Tom Petruno at the LA Times Money & Company blog is underappreciated.  He writes well.  But when he wrote Fannie and Freddie shares soar, but for no good reason.  I wrote the following:

7) Then we have Evan Newmark, who is a real piece of work, and I mean that mostly positively.  His article:  My comment:

With markets, it doesn’t matter what people say.  What matters is what they rely upon.

Face it, people have opinions, and when asked only the most cautious or prudent won’t give an answer.  Talk is cheap.

But money talks.  What will people or institutions risk some of their financial well-being in order to make money?

Turning points are exceptionally difficult to call with time precision.  Anyone can say that a trend is going to break for a long while before it breaks; the trick is to be able to make the change within a short distance of the inflection point.  I’ve done it a few times, but I have little confidence in whether I can do it regularly.

Examples:

• Five months before the crest of the housing bubble, I wrote a piece on why it would pop soon.
• A few months before the subprime mortgage crisis hit, I wrote a piece on why it would end badly.
• In March of 2000, I told the investment department that I worked in that financing for tech companies was unwinding, and that the tech bubble would deflate.
• In October 2002, I sensed that the bear market was over and began taking risk in my own portfolio, as well as my main client’s portfolio.
• In May 2003, I told my boss that we were in a liquidity rally and that shorting lower grade companies was suicidal, because financing was becoming available for marginal ideas.  In early 2004, I confirmed that by writing a piece showing that the bull market had a way to go.
• And recently, I made predictions on munis, mortgage bonds, agency bonds, and investment grade and junk corporates.

Now part of this is that if you predict enough things, you will have some right ones to point to.  I am obviously picking and choosing here, but when I made these predictions, there was a method to my madness.  I am not like Cramer, who makes predictions every day.  I wait for points where markets are out of kilter, and then I act, and sometimes predict.

Calling turning points is very difficult.  I want to offer two bits of advice to those to try to do so.

1) Look for situations where the yield is unsustainable on the high side or on the low side.

Examples:

• Earnings yield too low during the tech bubble.  Also workers were relying on stock to rise, because they were getting much of their pay through options.
• Net yield on much residential investment real estate negative in 2005-7, without even factoring in maintenance costs.  When someone is relying on price appreciation in order to break even something is wrong.
• Toward the end of the commercial real estate bubble, the same was true.  Equity investors began to rely on price appreciation in order to break even.
• When spreads on high yield blew out, at its worst the market was assuming that half of all high yield issues would die, with low recoveries.  Even the Great Depression wasn’t that bad.  The same was true in a faint echo for BBB Corporates.
• During the recent bottom in March 2009, high quality companies could be bought for less than their net worth and at earnings yields unseen since 1973-74.

2) Look for a qualitative change when you think we might be near a turning point.

• Chatter changes at/near turning points.  Certainty gives way to uncertainty.  Uncertainty gives way to worry.  Worry gives way to panic.  In October 2005, Googlebots that I created tipped me off to the change in the residential real estate markets way ahead of most parties.
• Inflection points tend to be times of stasis as far as economic variables go, but confusion in terms of chatter.  During the tech bubble in early 2000, the chatter became decidedly less certain.

Inflection points are times of change, and chatter should reflect that.

Coming back to contrarianism, ask yourself, “What are people relying on to be true, that may not be true?”  That is what it means to be a contrarian.  Mere disagreement means little.  Where have men placed their bets?  Betting against the consensus is what a contrarian does.

Before I start, I would like to toss out the idea of an Aleph Blog Lunch to be hosted sometime in January 2010 @ 1PM, somewhere between DC and Baltimore.  Everyone pays for their own lunch, but I would bring along the review copies of many of the books that I have reviewed for attendees to take home, first come, first served.  Maybe Eddy at Crossing Wall Street would like to join in, or Accrued Interest. If you are an active economic/financial blogger in the DC/Baltimore Area, who knows, maybe we could have a panel discussion, or something else.   Just tossing out the idea, but if you think you would like to come, send me an e-mail.

Onto the comments.  I try to keep up with comments and e-mails, but I am forever falling behind.  Here is a sampling of comments that I wanted to give responses on.  Sorry if I did not pick yours.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=–==-=–==-

Blog comments are in italics, my comments are in regular type.

http://alephblog.com/2009/12/16/notes-on-fed-policy-and-financial-regulation/#comments

Spot on David. I often think about the path of the exits strategy the fed may take. In order, how may it look? What comes first what comes last? Clearly this world is addicted to guarantees on everything, zirp, and fed QE policy which is building a very dangerous US dollar carry trade.

Back to the original point, I would think the order of exit may look something like:

1. First they will slowly remove emergency credit facilities, starting with those of least interest, which were aggressively used to curb the debt deflationary crisis on our banking system. The added liquidity kept our system afloat and avoided systemic collapse that would have brought a much more painful shock to the global financial system. Lehman Brothers was a mini-atom bomb test that showed the fed and gov’t would could happen – seeing that result all but solidified the ‘too big to fail’ mantra.

2. Second, they will be forced to raise rates – that’s right folks, 0% – 0.25% fed funds rates is getting closer and closer to being a hindsight policy. However, I still think rates stay low until early 2010 or unemployment proves to be stabilizing. As rates rise, watch gold for a move up on perceived future inflationary pressures.

3. Third, they can sell securities to primary dealers via POMO at the NY Fed, thereby draining liquidity from excess reserves. I think this will be a solid part of their exit strategy down the road – perhaps later in 2010 or early 2011. As of now, some $760Bln is being hoarded in excess reserves by depository institutions. That number will likely come way down once this process starts. The question is, will banks rush to lend money that was hoarded rather then be drained of freshly minted dollars from the debt monetization experiment. For now, this money is being hoarded to absorb future loan losses, cushion capital ratios and take advantage of the fed’s paid interest on excess reserves – the banks choose to hoard rather then aggressively lend to a deteriorating quality of consumer/business amid a rising unemployment environment. This is a good move by the banks as the political cries for more lending grow louder. The last thing we need is for banks to willy-nilly lend to struggling borrowers that will only prolong the pain by later on.

4. And finally, as a final and more aggressive measure, we could see capital or reserve requirements tightened on banks to hold back aggressive lending that may cause inflationary pressures and money velocity to surge. Right now, banks must retain 10% of deposits as reserves and maintain capital ratios set by regulators. Either can be tweaked to curb lending and prevent $700bln+ from entering the economy and being multiplied by our fractional reserve system.

I think we are starting to see #1 now, in some form, and will start to see the rest around the middle of 2010 and into 2011. The last item might not come until end of 2011 or even 2012 when economy is proven to be on right track and unemployment is clearly declining as companies rehire.

Thoughts????

UD, I think you have the Fed’s Order of Battle right.  The questions will come from:

1) how much of the quantitative easing can be withdrawn without negatively affecting banks, or mortgage yields.

2) How much they can raise Fed Funds without something blowing up.  Bank profits have become very reliant on low short term funding.  I wonder who else relies on short-term finance to hold speculative positions today?

3) Finance reform to me would include bank capital reform, including changes to reflect securitization and derivatives, both of which should require capital at least as great as doing the equivalent transaction through non-derivative instruments.

http://alephblog.com/2009/12/15/book-reviews-of-two-very-different-books/#comments

David,
A few years back you mentioned to me in an e-mail that Fabozzi was a good source for understanding bonds (thank you for that advice by the way, he is a very accessible author for what can be very complex material.)  In the review of Domash’s book you mention that he does not do a good job with financials. I was wondering, is there an author who is as accessible and clear as Fabozzi, when it comes to financials, who you would recommend.

Regards,
TDL

TDL, no, I have not run across a good book for analyzing financial stocks.  Most of the specialist shops like KBW, Sandler O’Neill and Hovde have their own proprietary ways of analyzing financials.  I have summarized the main ideas in this article here.

http://alephblog.com/2007/04/28/why-financial-stocks-are-harder-to-analyze/

http://alephblog.com/2009/12/05/the-return-of-my-money-not-the-return-on-my-money/#comments

Sorry to be a bit late to this post, but I really like this thread (bond investing with particular regard to sovereign risk). One thing I’m trying to figure out is the set of tools an individual investor needs to invest in bonds globally. In comparison to the US equities market, for which there are countless platforms, data feeds, blogs, etc., I am having trouble finding good sources of analysis, pricing, and access to product for international bonds, so here is my vote for a primer on selecting, pricing, and purchasing international bonds.

K1, there aren’t many choices to the average investor, which I why I have a post in the works on foreign and global bond funds.  There aren’t a lot of good choices that are cheap.  It is expensive to diversify out of the US dollar and maintain significant liquidity.

A couple of suggested topics that I think you could do a job with:  1) Quantitative view of how to evaluate closed end funds trading at a discount to NAV with a given NAV and discount history, fee/cost structure, and dividend history;   2) How to evaluate the fundamentals of the return of capital distributions from MLPs – e.g. what fraction of them is true dividend and what fraction is true return of capital and how should one arrive at a reasonable profile of the future to put a DCF value on it?

Josh, I think I can do #1, but I don’t understand enough about #2.  I’m adding #1 to my list.

http://alephblog.com/2009/12/05/book-review-the-ten-roads-to-riches/#comments

I see that Fisher’s list reveals his blind spot–how about being born the child of wealthy parents. . .

BWDIK, Fisher is talking about “roads” to riches.  None of us can get on that “road” unless a wealthy person decided to adopt one of us.  And, that is his road #3, attach yourself to a wealthy person and do his bidding.

I am not a Ken Fisher fan, but I am a David merkel fan—so what was the advice he gave you in 2000?

Jay, what he told me was to throw away all of my models, including the CFA Syllabus, and strike out on my own, analyzing companies in ways that other people do not.  Find my competitive advantage and pursue it.

That led me to analyzing industries first, buying quality companies in industries in a cyclical slump, and the rest of my eight rules.

http://alephblog.com/2009/11/28/the-right-reform-for-the-fed/#comments

“The Fed has been anything but independent.  An independent Fed would have said that they have to preserve the value of the dollar, and refused to do any bailouts.”

This seems completely wrong to me.  First, the Fed’s mandate is not to preserve the value of the dollar, but to “”to promote effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates.”  I don’t see that bailouts are antithetical to those goals. Second, I don’t see how the Fed’s actions in 2008-2009 have particularly hurt the value of the dollar, at least not in terms of purchasing power.  Perhaps they will in the future, but it is a bit early to assert that, I think.

Matt, even in their mandates for full employment and stable prices, the Fed should have no mandate to do bailouts, and sacrifice the credit of the nation for special interests.  No one should have special privileges, whether the seeming effect of purchasing power has diminished or not.  It is monetary and credit inflation, even if it does not result in price inflation.

¨Make the Fed tighten policy when Debt/GDP goes above 200%.  We’re over 350% on that ratio now.  We need to save to bring down debt.¨

David, I fully agree (as with your other points).
However, I do not see it happening.

I´d appreciate your, and other readers´, take on this.

Carol, you are right.  I don’t see a limitation on Debt to GDP happening.

As to nations rolling over each other’s debts for 10 more years, I find that unlikely.  There will be a reason at some point to game the system on the part of those that are worst off on a cash flow basis to default.

The rollover problem for the US Treasury will get pretty severe by the mid-2010s.

http://alephblog.com/2009/11/13/the-forever-fund/#comments

Any chance of you doing portfolio updates going forward? I’d be curious to see if you still like investment grade fixed incomes, given the rally.

Matt, I would be underweighting investment grade and high yield credit at present.

As for railroads, I own Canadian National – unlike US railroads, it goes coast to coast, and slowly they are picking up more business in the US as well.

Long CNI

http://alephblog.com/2009/11/10/my-visit-to-the-us-treasury-part-7-final/#comments

Did none of the bloggers raise the question of the GSEs? I can understand Treasury not wishing to tip their hands as to their future, but I would have expected their status to be a hot topic among the bloggers.

I also don’t buy the idea that the sufferings of the middle class were inevitable. Over the past 15 or so years the financial sector has grown due to the vast amount of money that it has been able to extract. Where would we be if all of those bright hard working people and capital spending had gone to the real economy? I’m not suggesting a command economy, but senior policymakers decided to let leverage and risk run to dangerous levels. Your comment seem to indicate that this was simply the landscape of the world, but it seems more to be the product of a deliberate policy from the Federal government.

Chris, no, nothing on the GSEs.  There was a lot to talk about, and little time.

I believe there have been policy errors made by our government – one the biggest being favoring debt finance over equity finance, but most bad policies of our government stem from a short-sighted culture that elects those that govern us.  That same short-sightedness has helped make us less competitive as a nation versus the rest of the world.  We rob the future to fund the present.

http://alephblog.com/2009/11/07/my-visit-to-the-us-treasury-part-6/#comments

it’s not clear from your writing whether the treasury officials talked to you about the GSEs or whether your comments (in the paragraph beginning with “When I look at the bailouts,”) are your own. could you clarify?

q, That is my view of how the Treasury seems to be using the GSEs, based on what they are doing, not what they have said.

http://alephblog.com/2009/10/31/book-review-nerds-on-wall-street/

“There are a lot of losses to be taken by those who think they have discovered a statistical regularity in the financial markets.”
David, take a look at equilcurrency.com.

Jesse, I looked at it, it seems rather fanciful.

http://alephblog.com/2009/10/27/book-review-the-predictioneers-game/#comments

David,
Just wondering if there’s an omission in this line:

“The last will pay for the book on its own. I have used the technique twice before, and it works. That said, that I have used it twice before means it is not unique to the author.”

Did you mean to write “that I have used it doesn’t mean it is not unique….”

In the event it is, I’ll look it up in the book, which I intend to buy anyway.
Otherwise, may I request a post that details, a la your used car post,your approach to buying new cars?

Saloner, no omission.  I said what I meant.  I’ll try to put together a post on new car purchases.

http://alephblog.com/2009/10/22/book-review-the-bogleheads-guide-to-retirement-planning/

thanks for the book review. it sounds like something that i could use to get the conversation started with my wife as she is generally smart but has little tolerance for this sort of thing.

> unhedged foreign bonds are a core part of asset allocation

i agree in principle — it would be really helpful though to have a roadmap for this. how can i know what is what?

I second that request for help in accessing unhedged foreign bonds – Maybe a post topic?

JK, q, I’ll try to get a post out on this.

http://alephblog.com/2009/10/20/toward-a-new-theory-of-the-cost-of-equity-capital-part-2/#comments

to the point above, basically just an IRR right?

JRH, I don’t think it is the IRR.  The IRR is a measure of the return off of the assets, not a rate for the discount of the asset cash flows.

When I was an undergraduate (after already having been in business for a long time), I realized that M-M was erroneous, because of all the things they CP’d (ceteris paribus) away. For my own consumption, I went a long way to demonstrating that quantitatively, but children, work and family intervened, and who was I to argue with Nobel winners.

But time, experience and events convince me that I was right then and you are right now. As you’ve noted the market does not price risk well. In large part this is due to a fundamental misunderstanding of value. The professional appraisal community has a far better handle on this, exemplified by drawing the formal distinction between “fair market value as a going concern”, “investment value”, “fair market value in a orderly liquidation”, “fair market value in a forced liquidation” and so on. One corollary to the foregoing is one of those lessons that stick from sit-down education, that “Book Value” is not a standard of value but rather a mathematical identity.

Without going into a long involved academic tome, the cost of capital (and from which results the mathematical determination of value per the income approach) has a shape more approaching that of a an asymmetric parabola (if one graphs return on the y axis and equity debt weight on the x.).

If I was coming up with a new theorem, risk would be an independent variable. So for example:

WAAC = wgt avg cost of equity + wgt avg cost of debt + risk premium

You’ll note the difference that in standard WAAC formulation risk is a component of the both the equity and debt variable – and practically impossible to consistently and logically quantify. Yes, one can look to Ibbottson for historical risk premia, or leave one to the individual decision making of lenders, butt it complicates and obscures the analysis.

In the formulation above, cost of equity and cost of debt are very straightforward and can be drawn from readily available market metrics. But what does risk look like? Again if you plot risk as a % cost of capital on the y axis and on the x axis the increasing debt weight, on a absolute basis risk is lowest @ 100% equity. From there is upwards slopes. However, risk however is not linear, but rather follows a power law.

The reason risk follows a power law is that while equity is prepared to lose 100%, debt is not. Also, debt weight increases IRR to equity (in the real world) contrary to MM. Again, debt is never priced well, because issuers don’t understand orderly and forced liquidation, whereby in “orderly”, e.g. say Chapter 11,recoveries may be 80 cents on the dollar, and forced, e.g., Chapter 7, 10 cents on the dollar. One really doesn’t begin to understand the foregoing until you’ve been through it more than a few times.

So in the real world, as debt increases, equity is far more easily “playing with house money.” A recent poster child for this phenomena is the Simmons Mattress story. In the most recent go round equity was pulling cash out (playing with house money) and the bankers were either (depending on one’s POV) incredibly stupid for letting equity do so, or incredibly smart, because they got their fees and left someone else holding the bag. I’m seen some commentators say that ‘Oh it was OK because rates were so low, the debt service (the I component only) was manageable.’ Poppycock; sometime it’s the dollar value and sometimes it’s the percentage weight and sometimes it is both.

But you’ve already said that: “company specific risk is significant and varies a great deal.” I would also add that – or amplify – that in any appraisal assignment the first thing that must be set is the appraisal date. Everything drives off that and what is ‘known or knowable’ at the time.

Gaffer, thanks for your comments.  I appreciate the time and efforts you put into them.  This is an area where finance theory needs to change.

http://alephblog.com/2009/10/10/pension-apprehension/

I have a DB plan with Safeway Stores-UFCW, which I’ve been collecting for a few years. I’m cooked?

Craig, not necessarily.  Ask for the form 5500, and see how underfunded the firm is.  Safeway is a solid firm, in my opinion.

Long SWY

http://alephblog.com/2009/09/29/recent-portfolio-actions/#comments

David, I am curious about your rebalancing threshold. Do you calculate this 20% threshold using a formula like this:

= Target Size / Current Size – 1

I have a small portfolio of twenty securities. A full position size in the portfolio is 8% (position size would be 1 for an 8% holding). The position size targets are based generally on .25 increments (so a position target of .25 is 2% of the portfolio and there are 12.5 slots “available”). I used that formula above for a while, but I found that it was biased towards smaller positions.

Instead I began using this formula:

= (Target – Current Size) / .25

So a .50 sized holding and a full sized holding may have both been 2% below the target (using the first formula), but using the second formula, they would be 8% and 16% below the target respectively. I found this showed me the true deviation from the portfolio target size and put my holdings on an equal footing for rebalancing.

I was curious how you calculated your threshold, or if it was less of an issue because you tended to have full sized positions. For me, I tend to start small and build positions over time. There are certain positions I hold that I know will stay in the .25-.50 range because they either carry more risk, they are funds/ETFs, or they are paired with a similar holding that together give me the weight I want in a particular sector.

Brian, you have my calculations right.  I originally backed into the figure because concentrated funds run with between 16-40 names.  Since I concentrate in industries, I have to run with more names for diversification.  I don’t scale, typically, though occasionally I have double weights, and rarely, triple weights.  The 20% band was borrowed from three asset managers that I admire.  After some thought, I did some work calculating the threshold in my Kelly criterion piece.

A fuller explanation of the rebalancing process is here in my smarter seller pieces.

http://alephblog.com/2009/09/04/tickers-for-the-latest-portfolio-reshaping/

Have you seen DEG instead of SWY?
Extremely able operator. Some currency diversification as well. I’d like to know your thougts.

MLS, I don’t have a strong idea about DEG – I know that back earlier in the decade, they had their share of execution issues.  It does look cheaper than SWY, though.

Long SWY

http://alephblog.com/2009/06/11/problems-with-constant-compound-interest-2/

I like your post and want to comment on a couple of items.  You point to the peak of the 1980’s inflation rates and the associated interest rates.

The reason that the yield spread exploded is well known.  Here is a snippet from Irving Fisher.  http://capitalvandalism.blogspot.com/2009/01/deflationary-spirals.html

CapVandal – Great comment.  A lot to learn from here.  I hope you come back to blogging; you have some good things to say.  Fear and greed drive correlated human behavior.

In the Fall of 2005, I was at the Annual Meeting of the Casualty Actuarial Society in exotic Baltimore, Maryland.  The Keynote address was by Roger Lowenstein who did a talk on two topics.  Warren Buffett the great investor, and the looming problems from the demographic crisis.

At the end of what was arguably a good talk, he asked for questions.  No one raised their hands.  After a pause, he asked for questions again, and I raised my hand.  I commented that he should have given his talk to the Life actuaries — they are the ones concerned about longevity and health costs, and if he really wanted to do a favor for casualty actuaries, don’t talk about Buffett the investor — talk about Buffett the P&C insurance CEO.

He commented that he was asked to speak about the topic by the CAS.  I like Lowenstein, so if you are reading this Roger, my apologies for making the comment.

Warren Buffett on Business is one step closer to the book I would like to see — I would like to see a book on Buffett as an insurance CEO.  Buffett is a great insurance CEO, and deserves a lot of credit in that capacity.  (Warren, I doubt you are reading this, but if you would like me to write that book, please e-mail me.)

But Berkshire Hathaway is an insurance/industrial hybrid, unique among companies.  Warren Buffett on Business ignores Buffett the investor to take up issues that are just as significant: Buffett the business owner and manager.

The words in the book are Buffett’s.  The man who organized the book took Buffett’s words over the last 25-30 years, and organized them into categories regarding management issues.  The topics include:

• Berky acts like a partnership even though it is a corporation.
• Corporate Culture and Governance
• Competent Managers and Honest Communication
• GEICO and Gen Re acquisitions (personally I think Buffett got hosed moving to terminate financial contracts  at Gen Re rapidly.  There is a rule of thumb that says negotiations on illiquid contracts should be undertaken slowly, unless the other side is panicking.)
• Assessing and Managing Risk
• Compensating Management
• Time Management
• Crisis Management
• Acquisitions — Buffett gets to own a wide number of unique corporations, because the one selling out wants the culture preserved, and if the price is right Buffett will do that.
• Ethics in Business
• And more…

Both in the chapters and in the appendices, the words of Buffett shine forth as a way to manage corporations for the best long term results, even if things don’t work so well in the short run.

Quibbles

Much as I like the words of Buffett, I prefer a second voice adding analysis.  Let the words of Buffett star, but let someone else add color and history, because Buffett’s own words are not complete enough.

Also, an analysis of how Buffett managed the insurance lines of his enterprise would be welcome.  Even for those looking exclusively at investment issues, the insurance enterprises offered Buffett the balance sheet he needed to buy assets that could take a while to work out.

Who would benefit from this book: Any manager of any company would benefit from this book.  Buffett lovers, if you have read the last 25-30 years of annual reports from Buffett, and notable things he has said outside of that, you likely do not need this, unless you have specific questions on management that you want answered by Buffett, and you can’t remember what he said in the past.

For most of the rest of us, this will still be a valuable book.  If you want to buy this book, you can buy it here: Warren Buffett on Business: Principles from the Sage of Omaha

Full Disclosure:  I review books because I love reading books, and want to introduce others to the good books that I read, and steer them away from bad or marginal books.  Those that want to support me can enter Amazon through my site and buy stuff there.  Don’t buy what you don’t need for my sake.  I am doing fine.  But if you have a need, and Amazon meets that need, your costs are not increased if you enter Amazon through my site, and I get a commission.  Win-win.

I like investing internationally, because of the diversification it offers, both in stocks and bonds.  Or, think of it as a hedge.  Will the American Experiment continue to prosper?  We have come a long way from the Founding Fathers, and more than half of it is not good.

But there are some place in our world that I will not invest in.  I have two requirements.

• Contract law must be close to that in the US, or better.
• Accounting practices must be close to the quality of the US, or better.

Sounds simple, but foreign tales are beguiling.  There is an exclusiveness about them, and a sense of greater knowledge for the one who has bothered to learn a trifle.  My acid test is watching over a long period and seeing how they treat foreign shareholders.  That is a good measure of the morality of management.  If they cheat foreign shareholders, they will eventually cheat domestic shareholders as well.

So, what don’t I invest in?

• Russia
• China
• Most of the Middle East.
• Venezuela
• And other places that do not protect foreign shareholders on a level that is at least close to that of citizens.

The idea is to avoid situations where your rights as a shareholder might be ignored.  It does not matter how cheap an asset is; if the ability of the asset to be liquidated is low, so should the valuation of the asset be low.  Don’t buy pigs in pokes.

This has application today with Dubai.  The Dubai government is telling creditors that it will not stand behind Dubai World, and nor will the UAE, but Abu Dhabi will stand behind UAE banks.  This is tough on foreign creditors because foreign creditor rights in Dubai have not been tested until now.  Even domestic rights are unclear.

A Note on Debt Risks

Much Islamic debt, because of the prohibition on interest, acts like an extremely volatile hybrid bond during times of stress.  This incident will prove instructive on how these bonds keep or lose value in a reorganization.  What happens here will probably have an impact on how much money will be willing to flow into these vehicles in the future.  Personally, I never found them compelling, and probably won’t in the future.  There is something compelling about straight senior unsecured debt that pays interest.  I think the guarantees involved, together with straightforward reorganization processes, create a fair game where it is easier to decide whether lending or borrowing makes sense.

Complexity in bonds is usually a loser for the lender — whether complexity of the borrower’s finances, complexity of holding company structures, complexity of the governing laws, or even enforcing a complex contract where the lender duped the less-knowledgeable borrower.

What applies to corporate debt — long term buy and hold investors do okay with investment grade debt, but less well with junk debt, and worse the junkier it gets.  Layer on top of that the difficulty of being able to psychologically buy and hold during a crisis.  Even if you personally have the fortitude to do so, there may be others that influence you that don’t.  (E.g., the rating agencies come along near the trough of the crisis, and tell the CEO that they will downgrade you if you don’t sell bonds with the risk du jour.  Or, your clients look at their statements, and see the unrealized losses and beg you to sell — it doesn’t matter, the screaming is always the loudest at the bottom (in hindsight).

A Final Note on Sovereign Risks

Sovereign and quasi-sovereign risks like Dubai World may play a larger role in overall credit risk as the broader crisis plays out.  When I was younger, I thought the great risk of the Euro was that it would be too weak.  Bite my tongue.  The risk is that it could be too strong, and marginal European countries (Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, and many Eastern European countries) that have too much Euro-denominated debt relative to their ability to tax and pay will find themselves pinched — and they can’t inflate their way out.

When I first came to bond investing (early 90s), sovereign risks were viewed  skeptically, excluding the large Western nations — bond managers had been taught by the greyheads who had seen sovereign defaults, and the difficult of recovering money in default, still had a bias against sovereign and quasi-sovereign risks.  That bias is largely gone today, after a period of few sovereign losses.  Yes, Mexico, Russia and Argentina have given their share of heartburn, but the significant growth in the emerging markets has made bondholders forgiving.  Add in the long term structural deficits of the US and Japan, and it makes for a really interesting investment picture.

Be aware.  If you hold sovereign debts, look at the ability of the government to tax and pay over the long haul.  On quasi-sovereigns, analyze the explicit guarantees, if any, and the governing law — as you can see with Dubai World, in a crisis, only the guarantees matter, and only to the degree that they are enforceable under law.  With Dubai World, it will be judged in Dubai courts by a judge appointed by the ruling family of the emirate, which owns the equity of Dubai World.  Not a strong bargaining position in my opinion.  The only thing worse than relying on the kindness of strangers, is relying on the kindness of adversaries.

A Final Aside

I knew about how dodgy the investments were that Dubai and its corporations were undertaking, so I was always a skeptic, though I never wrote about Dubai, because it is so far afield for me.  What I did not know was the near slavery of foreign workers tricked to go to Dubai, and then forced to work with little to no rights.  Read the story, it is not pretty, but reinforces a belief of mine that governments and corporations willing to cheat one group of people, will cheat other groups of people as well.  Character is important in any credit decision, and the government of Dubai does not have good character in my book.

Every one one us has limited bandwidth for analysis of data.  We pick and choose a few ideas that seem to work for us, and then stick with them.  That is often best, because good investors settle into investment methods that are consistent with their character.  But every now and then it is good to open things up and try to see whether the investment methods can be improved.

For those that use market indicators, this is the sort of book that will make one say, “What if?  What if I combine this market indicator with what I am doing now in my investing?”  In most cases, the answer will be “Um, that doesn’t seem to fit.”  But one good idea can pay for a book and then some.  All investment strategies have weaknesses, but often the weaknesses of one method can be complemented by another.  My favorite example is that as a value investor, I am almost always early.  I buy and sell too soon, and leave profits on the table.  Adding a momentum overlay can aid the value investor by delaying purchases of seemingly cheap stocks when the price is falling rapidly, and delaying sales of seemingly cheap stocks when the price is rising rapidly.

Looking outside your current circle of competence may yield some useful ideas, then.  But how do you know where you might look if you’re not aware that there might be indicators that you have never heard of?  Market Indicators delivers a bevy of indicators in the following areas:

• Options-derived (VIX, put/call)
• Volume and Price driven (Money flow, rate of change, 90% up/down days, and more)
• Where the fast money invests (money in bull vs bear funds, sector fund sizes, and more)
• Analyzing the likely motives of other classes of investors (margin balances, short interest, etc.)
• Price Momentum and Mean-Reversion
• Measuring asset classes and sectors using fundamental metrics  (Fed model, sector weightings, Q-ratio, etc.)
• Investor sentiment surveys
• How to use analyst opinions, if at all?
• News reporting and reactions of stocks to news
• Odd bits of news (CEO behavior, little things that indicate a qualitative change in the life of a company)
• Insider buying and selling
• Commodity market data (COT, etc.)
• Bond market behavior (credit cycle, Fed moves, Credit Default Swaps, and more)
• Changes in the capital structure (M&A, equity/debt issuance, etc.)
• Monitoring the greats (13F filings)

No one can use all of these indicators.  You can probably only use a fraction of these indicators.  But being aware of how others view the market can widen your perspective, and help to reduce negative surprises on your part.

Quibbles

By its nature, since the book cuts across a wide number of areas in 216 short pages, you only get a taste of everything.  I liked this book, but there is room for a second book in this area — one of additional indicators passed over (I have a bunch!), or going into greater depth on the indicators covered.

Who will benefit from this book?

You have to have a quantitative bent, at least to the level of being willing to go out and collect simple data in order to benefit here.  Now, most serious investors do that, so I would say that serious investors can benefit from the “cook’s tour” of market indicators that this book gives, unless they are so serious that they know all of these indicators.  (Like me.)

If you would like to buy the book, you can buy it here: Market Indicators: The Best-Kept Secret to More Effective Trading and Investing.

Full disclosure: This book is unusual for me in two ways.  First, the author (not the PR flack) sent me a copy, with a nice handwritten letter thanking me for my blog and my assistance.  That is why there is the second reason.  Pages 80-81 summarize the longer argument made in my blog post, The Fed Model, where I take the so-called Fed model, and rederive it using the simple version of the Dividend Discount Model, giving a more robust model with reasonable theoretical underpinnings.

I earn a small commission from Amazon for anyone entering Amazon through my site, and buying anything there.  Your price does not rise from my commission.  Don’t buy anything you don’t want to buy if you want to reward me for my writing.  Only buy what you need if Amazon offers you the best deal.