What Other Choice Do You Have?

[The Machine]

 

 

Thanks to central bankers, prudent stock investors may as well as buy CYNK...

 

LORD OVERSTONE said it best, writes Tim Price on his ThePriceOfEverything blog.

"No warning can save people determined to grow suddenly rich." 

But there is clearly a yawning chasm between the likes of those folk cheerfully bidding up the share price of CYNK, and prudent investors simply trying to keep their heads above water.

"Paid promoters have helped push CYNK [CYNK Technology Corp] market cap to $655 million after a 3,650% increase in the share price on Tuesday. 

 

"CYNK had assets of just $39 (no zeroes omitted) as of March 31, 2014 and a cumulative net loss of $1.5 million. The 'company' has no revenue. 

 

"CYNK claims that it is 'a development stage company focused on social media.' However, the 'company' does not even have a website and has just one employee [who acts as President, Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer and Company Secretary]. 

 

"With no assets, no revenue and no product, CYNK has no value. Author expects that CYNK shares are worthless."

- Article on CYNK Technology (which is based in Las Vegas) from Seeking Alpha

What has effectively united these two otherwise disparate communities, prudent investors and CYNK buyers, is today's central banker.

 

Andy Haldane, the chief economist for the Bank of England, speaking at an FT conference last week, conceded that ultra-accommodative monetary policy had "aided and abetted risk-taking" by investors and that policy makers had wanted to use higher asset prices to try and stimulate the wider economy (that is to say, the economy) into a more robust recovery.

"That is how [monetary policy] is meant to work. That's why we did it."

If the Bank of England had not slashed interest rates and created £375 billion out of thin air, "the UK economy would have been at least 6% smaller than it is today." A curiously precise figure, given the absence of any counterfactual. But regardless of the economic "benefits" of quantitative easing, Haldane did have the grace to admit that...

"This will mean, on average, that financial market volatility will be somewhat greater than in the past. I think it will mean, on average, that those greed and fear cycles in financial markets will be somewhat more exaggerated than in the past. That, for me, is the corollary of the risk migration." 

Which is a bit like an arsonist torching a wooden building and then shrugging his shoulders and saying, "Well, wood will burn." 

 

Our central bankers, of course, will not be held accountable when the crash finally hits, even if the accumulated dry tinder of the boom was almost entirely of their own creation. Last week the Bank for International Settlements, the central banker's central bank, issued an altogether more circumspect analysis of the world's current financial situation, in their annual report. It concluded, with an entirely welcome sense of caution, that:

"The [monetary] policy response needs to carefully consider the nature and persistence of the forces at work as well as policy's diminished effectiveness and side effects. Finally, looking forward, the issue of how best to calibrate the timing and pace of policy normalisation looms large. Navigating the transition is likely to be complex and bumpy, regardless of communication efforts. And the risk of normalising too late and too gradually should not be underestimated." 

Translation: ZIRP (Zero Interest Rate Policy – and in the case of the ECB, which has taken rates negative, NIRP) is no longer working – if it ever did. 

 

Hyper-aggressive monetary policy has side effects. Getting out of this mess is not going to be easy, and it's going to be messy. Forward guidance, which was meant to simplify the message, has instead hopelessly confused it. And there are big risks that central banks will lose the requisite confidence to tighten policy when it is most urgently needed, and allow an inflationary genie entirely out of the bottle.

 

The impact of central banks' unprecedented monetary stimulus on financial markets is so overwhelming that it utterly negates any sensible analysis of likely macro-economic developments. 

 

On the basis that sometimes it's simply best not to play some games, we no longer try. What should inform investors' preferences, however, is bottom-up asset allocation and stock selection.  The US equity market is clearly poor value at present. That doesn't mean that it can't get even more expensive, and the rally might yet have some serious legs. But overvaluation at an index level doesn't preclude the existence of undervalued stocks well away from the braying herd. (We think the most compelling macro value is in Asia and, if we had to single out any one country, Japan.) 

 

John Hussman:

"The central thesis among investors at present is that they have no other choice but to hold stocks, given the alternative of zero short-term interest rates and long-term interest rates well below the level of recent decades.

 

"Investment decisions driven primarily by the question 'What other choice do I have?' are likely to prove regrettable. What we now have is a market that has been driven to one of the four most extreme points of overvaluation in history. We know how three of them ended."

The conclusion seems clear to us. If one chooses to invest at all, invest on the basis of valuation and not on indexation (the world's largest stock market, that of the US, is one of the most seemingly conspicuously overvalued).

 

As an example of the sort of valuations currently available away from the herd, consider the following. You can buy the US S&P 500 index today with the following metrics: 

• Price / earnings: 18.2 
• Price / book: 2.76 
• Dividend yield: 1.89%  

Meanwhile, Greg Fisher in his Halley Asian Prosperity Fund (albeit currently closed) is buying quality businesses throughout Asia on somewhat more attractive valuations. (By geography, the fund's largest allocations are to Japan, Vietnam and Malaysia.) The fund's current metrics are as follows: 

• Average price / earnings: 7 
• Average price / book: 0.8 
• Average dividend yield: 4.5%.  

But the realistic prospect of growth is also on the table. The fund's average historic return on equity stands at 15%. 

 

Pay money. Take choice. To quote Robert Shiller, quoted in John Hussman's weekly market comment:

"I am definitely concerned. When was [the cyclically adjusted P/E ratio or CAPE] higher than it is now? I can tell you: 1929, 2000 and 2007. Very low interest rates help to explain the high CAPE. That doesn't mean that the high CAPE isn't a forecast of bad performance. When I look at interest rates in a forecasting regression with the CAPE, I don't get much additional benefit from looking at interest rates...We don't know what it's going to do. There could be a massive crash, like we saw in 2000 and 2007, the last two times it looked like this. But I don't know.

 

"I think, realistically, stocks should be in someone's portfolio. Maybe lighten up...One thing though, I don't know how many people look at plots of the market. If you just look at a plot of one of the major averages in the US, you'll see what look like three peaks – 2000, 2007 and now – it just looks to me like a peak. I'm not saying it is. I would think that there are people thinking it's gone way up since 2009. It's likely to turn down again, just like it did the last two times."