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December 2020 Strategy Letter - Soufflés and Sledgehammers
As we have noted previously, one cannot practically ignore the celebration regarding our annual lap around the sun, although I think it’s fair to say that there are roughly 7.5 billion people outside of Silicon Valley—or those who run large cap growth/tech funds—that are delighted to see 2020 declared over.
Mr. T and Today’s Investment World
It would be correct to say that a number of us have had a little more “alone” time on our hands over the last 6 months and it is also correct to note that the online world provides many chances to waste said time. Which brings me to Mr. T of A-Team fame, who for completely nostalgic and personal family reasons, comes to the fore at particular times with his “I Pity the Fool” meme.
Here is a Strategy: Buy as Much ViaSat as You Can Stomach
We spend a lot of time in these pages endeavoring to wax poetically about the world at large and our investment place within it, even though that is not really what we do for a living. We get it. Some people just want to know our thoughts about the investment world…and yes, we do have opinions on that subject.
Repetition Can Be a Form of Change
Despite Sauron and Einstein’s failed attempts at unified theory, 2019 was simply the tenth year whereby interest rates were low and went lower, credit remained both cheap and plentiful, the economy was “good enough,” and those who can print money re-dedicated themselves to a willingness to print money. The logical conclusion to this set of events is to buy and hold U.S. equities. Drop the mic—again.
The Great Complacency...Continued
At this point last year, we were effusively cautious after a period of terrific performance. We suggested that while we considered a material number of portfolio stocks to represent "solid" values, their near-term appreciation was going to be limited after the big numbers of 2013.
Metastability?
We remain cheerfully bearish on fixed income and slightly less so on equity markets. The combination of volatility and confusion produces opportunities and since we have had a lot less of the former, we have seen a lot fewer of the latter. Not much of this has changed this year...but things do change-sometimes for reasons we can "see" and sometimes due to factors we can't. We remain utterly convinced that Federal Reserve policy is our greatest known unknown and we remain extraordinarily skeptical that the Great Monetary Experiment will end with a purely beneficial outcome. This quart
Steve Jobs Didn't Give a *[email protected]% About the Debt Ceiling
A quick nod to Bloomberg columnist Caroline Baum from whom we lifted our title. Anything else you might have been (or will be) subjected to on the subject of how the government operates pales in materiality to the headline. And as miserable as our predicament seems to anyone over the age of 13, it really and truly is old and increasingly dull news. To wit, I present the following, highly curated list of quotes-please note the timeline.
Who Are You Going to Believe-These Non-GAAP Numbers or Your Lying Eyes?
Great performance in the short-run-either absolute or relative-is a mixed blessing. If an investor owns a portfolio of stocks that is embedding 30% undervaluation, and voila, finds himself up 30% (this is a hypothetical number for the purposes of this example but its not far from recent reality) in six months, without a concurrent upward improvement in underlying fundamentals, you have to be a regular on CNBC to expect another 30% return over the next six months.
Harleys and Leather Jackets
We are just about done with Proxy Season and with summer in full swing, there is nothing more that we would like to do than kick back and indulge in the 75 pages of shame, greed, ignorance, and political correctness-with only the occasional bright light of shareholder friendly corporate governance-that make up SEC Form 14A, aka the Proxy Statement. I would postulate that this document remains an underrated and under-read part of the investment puzzle as it is the factual record of managements incentives.
Call Him Ishmael
One of the hardest things to conquer as a value investor is the concept of "price." The industry remains mired in fascination with abstract prices like 100, 1,000, 14,000, previous highs, new lows, etc. The stock is up x% from x dollar price; it is down x% from x price. There is also much in print and general fretting in regard to "price action," with lots of attention paid to where the stock has "been" and how this move relates to other "moves," as in "the largest move since last December 12th."
The Lost Decade...Found?
While much of the fundamental picture has played out as we expected over the past 18-24 months, the financial markets appear to be concerned solely with the existence or non-existence of macro headlines and events. There seems to be a disconnect between market movements and fundamentals which means doing real work based on intellectual honesty and logic puts you at a disadvantage. Chasing momentum and profiting from central bank market manipulation appear to be the current winning strategies.
Idiosyncratic Risk...and the Other Kind
If the recent election demonstrated anything of relevance to an investor, it should have been the beginning of the end of the tyranny of the "catalyst." The day before the election, an investor could have legitimately been worried about any number of micro, macro, domestic or global issues. And yet the sun rose, work was attended to by those who have jobs, markets opened, fell, and closed and the collective attention moved to the next "perceived" catalyst-the so-called fiscal cliff. Calling Roseanne Roseannadanna.
Volcker Does Not Rule
There are many reasons an interested observer can conjure as to why the US economy remains in a petulant quagmire, and some of them are actually not political in nature. Our mini-treatise today is on our particular favorite: the inanity of financial services regulation and the whipping boy of the month, Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan.
Caviar for the General
The stock market as measured by the S&P 500 is up almost 30% over the last 6 months, and has doubled from the March 2009 lows and yet most investors remain underinvested. Despite this temporary risk aversion, we remain convinced that stocks remain a unique species: the higher the price and less compelling the value, the more they seem to be desired by investors. In addition to the number of reasonably valued assets that can be found in financial markets, this represents an anecdotally strong underpinning for a reasonable intermediate future in our opinion.
'Tis the Season I Doubt You Will Remember
While deep value investors tend to perform well over reasonable time frames, adjusting reported performance for risk poses a substantial problem. Deep value portfolios contain lower-quality, fundamentally riskier assets. Returns ought to be higher to compensate for greater underlying risk. Under conditions of severe economic distress, higher risk levels in value portfolios lead to disastrous investment results.
Occupy Yahoo
This is the first part of a non-vampire trilogy which will explore some of our inner thinking on the juxtaposition of "business vs. value vs. people" in the investment decision making process-a process that has led us to recent investments in Yahoo, HP and News Corp in our non-small cap strategies. In this first installment, we will focus on Yahoo for no other reason than to honor the company's place within the pantheon of failed corporate governance.
Whole Foods vs. Twinkies: 2011 Outlook
Our ?Outlook? usually falls back on a ?normalized? sense of equity returns in the mid- to high-single digits for the long run, from which we add to or subtract from factoring in current valuations in the portfolio and the market as a whole. We think between reasonable economic activity, operational competence and generally solid capital allocation strategies, we can expect the value of our holdings to appreciate at least in line with a normalized ?forecast,? and then we get our boost from purchasing this value and/or growth at 20% to 50% of our estimate of intrinsic value.
The Rule of 72
The 'rule of 72' allows the lay investor to determine how long it will take for him to double the value of his investment. It is calculated by dividing the number 72 by the annual yield of an investment. For example, if one divides 72 by the current 10-year Treasury bond rate of 2.7 percent, the formula generates an output of 26.6 years to double one's money. Under almost any definition of an intelligent investment plan, that seems like a very long time. If you cannot earn a rate of return above the 3 percent after-tax cost of debt for 10 years, then you should quit.
Cage Match
Contrary to public opinion, there is enormous opportunity for an investor today to focus on the business and valuation details of a particular investment while everyone else is running around trying to tie the world together into some neatly gift-wrapped strategy that can be easily quantified and traded by a computer algorithm. Yes, it can be frustrating when everything seems to go down on a day when the market goes down, but no one said this is easy. And when it gets that easy, you should be selling into it.
Taking the Man at His Word
Berkshire Hathaway is more economically cyclical that it has been in the past, and would have a much bigger tailwind in an improving economy. The stock also tends to be seasonally strong into the annual meeting. Investors should not squeeze every last dollar of potential profit out of an investment, however, without considering risk. We will therefore take the company at its word: 'The past growth rate in Berkshire?s book value per share is not an indication of future results and our book value per share will likely NOT increase in the future at a rate even close to its past rate.'
Bonds for the Long Run
RCB is a classic value-based investor. They note that the 2009 rally has left them with fewer buying alternatives. However, they state, "equities as an asset class will outperform investment grade bonds of almost any stripe over the intermediate and longer term using January 2010 as our starting point?? They believe equities are valued ?to do okay,? since 2009 and 2010 earnings do not represent a ?normalized? environment. ?Moving forward, the real fun in 2010 will be how investors react to the possibility of higher interest rates driven by a stronger than expected economy.?
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