Does “Momentum” Investing work with “Value” Investing?
See the research paper by Nicholas Barberis below. Barberis concludes that value and momentum are driven by biases that mirror one another. Value is driven by an overreaction problem in which humans are too quick to draw conclusions from a small amount of recent data. In contrast, momentum is driven by an underreaction issue, which is the opposite of verreaction. With underreaction, humans are slow to update their views based on new evidence, which could be due to a systematic behavior bias and/or due to the fact human beings simply have limited cognitive power.
A lot to ponder. I recommend Quantitative Investing by Wesley Gray. Momentum investing is NOT growth investing (buying price at high multiples to underlying fundamentals), because momenum investing is strictly based on recent price movements not fundamentals.
Strategic Presentation May 2017b What would show you that this management team allocates capital well in their resource sector? Are their actions EXTREMELY rare in the Junior Resource Mining industry?
In a blog post in March of this year I discussed the limitations of sentiment as a market timing tool. I wrote that while it can be helpful to track the public’s sentiment and use it as a contrary indicator, there are three potential pitfalls associated with using sentiment to guide buying/selling decisions. Here are the pitfalls again:
The first is linked to the reality that sentiment generally follows price, which makes it a near certainty that the overall mood will be at an optimistic extreme near an important price top and a pessimistic extreme near an important price bottom. The problem is that while an important price extreme will always be associated with a sentiment extreme, a sentiment extreme doesn’t necessarily imply an important price extreme.
The second potential pitfall is that what constitutes a sentiment extreme will vary over time, meaning that there are no absolute benchmarks. Of particular relevance, what constitutes dangerous optimism in a bear market will often not be a problem in a bull market and what constitutes extreme fear/pessimism in a bull market will often not signal a good buying opportunity in a bear market.
The third relates to the fact that regardless of what sentiment surveys say, there will always be a lot of bears and a lot of bulls in any financial market. It must be this way otherwise there would be no trading and the market would cease to function. As a consequence, if a survey shows that almost all traders are bullish or that almost all traders are bearish then the survey must be dealing with only a small — and possibly not representative — segment of the overall market.
I went on to write that there was no better example of sentiment’s limitations as a market timing indicator than the US stock market’s performance over the past few years. To illustrate I included a chart from Yardeni.com showing the performance of the S&P500 Index (SPX) over the past 30 years with vertical red lines to indicate the weeks when the Investors Intelligence (II) Bull/Bear ratio was at least 3.0 (a bull/bear ratio of 3 or more suggests extreme optimism within the surveyed group). An updated version of the same chart is displayed below.
The chart shows that while vertical red lines (indicating extreme optimism) coincided with most of the important price tops (the 2000 top being a big exception), there were plenty of times when a vertical red line did not coincide with an important price top. It also shows that optimism was extreme almost continuously from Q4-2013 to mid-2015 and that following a correction the optimistic extreme had returned by late-2016.
Sentiment was at an optimistic extreme late last year, at an optimistic extreme when I presented the earlier version of the following chart in March and is still at an optimistic extreme. In effect, sentiment has been consistent with a bull market top for the bulk of the past four years, but there is still no evidence in the price action that the bull market has ended.
Regardless of what happens from here, four years is a long time for a contrarian to be wrong. See more at http://www.tsi-blog.com
Lesson? Always place data into context and do not rely on any one piece of information. Sentiment can be useful as part of an over-all picture of a market or company.
This time, the Fiat Chrysler CEO went a step further than usual by declaring that the latest plan for the company is essentially a one-way bet on cheap gas. Production of compact cars will end to free up production capacity for high-margin, low-mileage Jeeps and RAM trucks.
This, combined with Fiat’s more or less complete lack of a fuel economy or electrification strategy beyond buying emissions credits from other manufacturers “foolish” enough to produce electric and hybrid “compliance cars,” is quickly making Marchionne, if not an industry joke, then certainly yesterday’s man.
At least, that is what people are saying. I have an alternate hypothesis. The Auto Industry Is Not Heading to a Good Place (The author, in my opinion, has the correct thesis. Ride sharing, Uber, Tesla, more complex electronics mean less demand and more investment to run in place).
Fiat vs. Ford above
Fiat (FCAU) has done slightly better than GM and much better than Ford (F). However, the auto industry is in a bad place that will worsen.
The context is frightening. Global fuel economy and emissions regulations are becoming so strict that it is possible to meet them only with partial or full electrification of the automobile. And the existing automobile production system, based primarily on stamping sheet metal and amortizing heartbreaking development costs and capital expenditures over millions of units, is incredibly capital inefficient.
What’s more, the industry’s move towards electric vehicles represents a significant challenge to the traditional strategic landscape an automaker faces. An electric vehicle has drastically fewer moving parts than an internal combustion vehicle and is, by design, far more modular, meaning that barriers to new entrants are significantly lower.
Electric vehicles are also far more uniform in their driving dynamics, because there is little scope for refining an electric motor with one moving part. Swathes of engineering and marketing investments become irrelevant. And both ride-sharing enterprises and developments in automation seem increasingly likely to grow beyond niche markets into something properly disruptive to the car ownership business model.
Marchionne Knows This
Last year, Marchionne presented a uniquely critical slide deck about the way the auto industry destroys capital. His argument was that, unless the industry consolidates and stops duplicating engineering costs (e.g., every car manufacturer has its own separately developed but fundamentally identical 2.0L 4-cylinder petrol engine), then the market will eventually force its hand, having gotten sick of miserly returns on billions in investments.
The industry response to this slide deck was more or less complete agreement, with the caveat that competitors would not have to outlast the market so much as merely outlast Fiat Chrysler. Marchionne then pursued an odd and ultimately unsuccessful merger with GM’s Mary Barra, who confidently rejected Fiat Chrysler’s plan, noting, “We are merging with ourselves.” (This presumably referred to GM’s decades-long quest to bring rationality to its stable of brands.)
GM is not only merging with itself, it is also “disrupting” itself — as evidenced by their recently announced Chevy Bolt long-range, affordable electric car. The company claimed the Bolt was designed to be the perfect car for ride-sharing apps. Just before launching the Bolt, GM announced a $500 million investment into Lyft, the main competitor to Uber.
This no doubt surprised competitors who have been making efforts to disabuse markets and investors of the notion that they would become mere providers of hardware to ride-sharing companies like Uber or autonomous car suppliers like Google. Dieter Zetsche, CEO of Daimler, remarked “We do not plan to become the Foxconn of Apple.”
Manufacturers Are Going to Have to Invest
In fact, the bosses of Daimler, BMW, and Audi went looking behind the couch for some spare change to buy joint ownership of Nokia’s (remember them?) mapping service HERE, and did so primarily to stop their rival bidder – Uber – from buying it. High-resolution maps are crucial to autonomous cars; Uber’s CEO has said that, if Tesla can make good on their promise of a long-range, autonomous electric car, he would buy “all” of them.
The Germans are thus investing billions into electric vehicles made out of carbon fiber that pilot themselves using super-high resolution maps, all the while fighting back against Apple and Google’s requests for access to their cars’ infotainment systems. Their global leadership of the auto industry will have to be pried from their cold, dead hands.
Meanwhile, all the difficult bits of the Chevy Bolt (“custom-built” for Lyft, remember) are built in large part by Korea’s LG. One wonders why Lyft (or Uber) would not simply buy the next model directly from LG? I guess even if there is no Foxconn for cars yet, there may be soon. Remember, electric cars are far more modular than internal combustion cars.
Marchionne Says “No Thanks”
Or, if not him, then certainly the Agnelli family. A sort of Italian royalty who control Fiat Chrysler (and Marchionne) via their ownership of the Exor holding company, the Agnellis have been showing signs that they are tiring of the endless drama surrounding Fiat and the auto industry in general. They bought a stake in The Economist in 2015 in a move towards media, but the recent de-conglomeration of Fiat has been noticeable in other ways.
First, in 2013, Fiat’s industrial division was de-merged and combined with CNH Global (maker of tractors under the Case IH and New Holland brands) into a separate company, CNH Industrial. Most recently, Ferrari, the jewel in the Fiat Chrysler stable of brands, was floated in New York.
Speaking of Ferrari, Marchionne took advantage of a recent dip in the fortunes of Ferrari’s eponymous Formula 1 team to unceremoniously eject Luca di Montezemolo as president and chairman of Ferrari and replace him with . . . himself. It should be noted that di Montezemolo was appointed by Gianni Agnelli himself after the death of the founder, Enzo Ferrari, and is a bona fide business superstar in Italy. Marchionne has been playing an increasingly active part in the politics of Formula 1 recently, something that will no doubt continue to make for a less stressful (but still stimulating) retirement when Marchionne puts on his famous blue sweater for the last time in 2018.
But for now, Marchionne has seen the future. Large subcontractors will produce partially or fully autonomous electric vehicles, with the sole differences between them being brand value and design. The car makers that survive may well simply produce cars for Google (Ford recently signed an agreement along these lines), Apple, or Uber. Some, like BMW or Mercedes-Benz, may survive because of their brand and design qualities. Fiat Chrysler does not have this.
Marchionne doesn’t care about expensive gas or electric vehicles because his plan is simple:
Sell the profitable Jeep/RAM brands to another conglomerate that does not compete in these segments (for example, Hyundai KIA).
Sell the unprofitable Fiat to anyone who will take it. Perhaps synergies in the lucrative European light commercial vehicle segment will attract another European maker, such as PSA Peugeot Citroën, whose CEO, Carlos Tavares, has ambitions that were thwarted at his previous employer, Renault.
Sell Alfa Romeo and Maserati to someone who could use a strong brand. Perhaps Volkswagen will finally get hold of its prized Italian trophy if they can sort out their global legal woes.
Retire to play with his giant Formula 1 Scalextric set. Marchionne has been mocked for his firms’ strategy, which has been attributed to hubris. But perhaps he is the one seeing clearest of all.
Is the best way to deal with disruption simply to step out of the way?
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Tit-for-Tat Competitive Analysis
Question: Who wins when–in a perfectly competitive market–competitors fight each other? Prize awarded for best answer.
The chart above shows gold “outperforming” stocks, but note the time period. 1971 was when President Nixon unhinged the dollar from gold. Be careful when assessing performance over a set time period.
I don’t always agree with Dr. Damodaran, but the video can help any analyst writing a research report. You have to link your story to numbers. He mentions that he prefers to teach history majors how to value than teach engineers how to be creative/tell a story with their numbers.
The mistake Prof. Damodaran made on Vale was not normalizing the biggest cyclical boom in iron ore prices in the past five hundred years.
Follow the discussion on valuing UBER. This is a good exercise for valuing platform/network companies: Damordaran on UBER FiveThirtyEight
is an investment plan for raising capital, devised in the 17th century and relatively widespread in the 18th and 19th centuries. It combines features of a group annuity and a lottery. Each subscriber pays an agreed sum into the fund, and thereafter receives an annuity. As members die, their shares devolve to the other participants, and so the value of each annuity increases.
It sounds gruesome, but essentially, it is a liquidating trust with no-or-few expenses. See a 1995 report on the TPL trustthat turned out to be prescient.
TPL Annual Report 2016 Go to last page to see acreage map. Use Google Earth to go view the terrain, then search for oil and gas activity in the area(s)
Part of my search strategy is to look for the quirky, weird stuff.
“The one who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd. The one who walks alone, is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been.” — Albert Einstein
One trick that Warren Buffett uses when he first looks at a company is NOT to look at the price OR another person’s opinion. He doesn’t want price to influence his valuation of the company, and he seeks his own counsel.
Why don’t we test our valuation skills and do a valuation of Core Labs (CLB) with the data below.
Do your own work BEFORE looking at the post below. See how you compare or differ Einhorn’s short thesis on CLB. Do you differ? Why and how.
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Whitney Tilson: CLB and HHC
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1) I (Whitney Tilson) attended the always-excellent Ira Sohn conference on Monday and, as often happens, Bill Ackman and David Einhorn stole the show with two outstanding, incredibly-well-researched ideas, long Howard Hughes (which has been one of my largest positions since it was spun out of GGP when it emerged from bankruptcy after the credit crisis) and short Core Laboratories (CLB), respectively.
CLB Here is Einhorn’s short thesis on CLB (Core Labs)
If you’re interested in learning more about HHC (and seeing the incredible development underway at South Street Seaport), the company is hosting its first investor day there a week from today, Wed. 5/17 from 8:00am to 1:30pm. Email Tracey.Wynn@howardhughes.com to register. I hope to see you there.
As for CLB, it doesn’t happen very often – maybe once every two years – but sometimes I (Whitney Tilson) see (at a conference) or read (on something like ValueInvestorsClub) an investment thesis that is so compelling and blindingly obvious that I immediately put the position on – which is what I did on Monday just after Einhorn’s presentation. Check it out for yourself – it’s that good. A highly cyclical company masquerading as a secular growth story – trading at nearly 9x REVENUES!
