Tag Archives: Bonds

Poster Board on Sentiment; A Contrarian Investor

I like to have a reference to refer back to a year or five years from now capturing certain points in time.   The market seems to be placing peak confidence in financial assets (stocks) vs. gold.

This post continues from a prior post: http://csinvesting.org/2016/11/17/when-no-one-wants-em-search-strategy/

The Bearish Gold Articles keep on coming:  http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-why-you-should-never-buy-and-hold-gold-2016-12

http://seekingalpha.com/article/4032167-gold-miners-perfect-bear-case

http://bloom.bg/2hWukKn Running out of metal.

Even bullish mining investors expect “waterfall declines” and gold going below $1,100. Momentum creates the news:  http://www.kitco.com/news/video/show/Gold–Silver-Outlook-2017/1456/2016-12-22/Mining-Stocks-Could-See-Waterfall-Declines—David-Erfle   To be fair, he is long-term bullish, but note the “certainty, inevitability” of gold falling in USD below $1,100 or even to $1,000.  Since he is probably considered strong hands (better capitalized with more experience in precious metals miners) his view indicates VERY bearish near-term (1 day to two/three months sentiment). As I interprete this news.

Financial risk is increasing on US company balance sheets, but then who cares while confidence is high?

As an investor, you want to monitor the amount of capital (especially in a capital intensive business!) going into and out of a business.   An industry starved of capital augurs well for future returns!

‘Anonymous Billionaire’ in the Spotlight After 1,000% Rally

  • Alaska fund is No.2 fund focused on Brazilian equities
  • Barros’s fund is now buying up Fibria, Marcopolo, Vale

Luiz Alves Paes de Barros is something of an enigma in Sao Paulo’s financial circles. At 69, he’s known around town as the “anonymous billionaire” for quietly amassing a fortune by wagering on stocks almost no one else seemed to want.

In Magazine Luiza SA, Barros may have made one of his best bets yet.

Starting in late 2015, Barros’s Alaska Investimentos Ltda. made the battered retailer one of its biggest holdings, a brazen move in a nation stuck in the middle of its worst recession in a century. It paid off. Magazine Luiza has surged more than 1,000 percent since reaching a record low about a year ago, making it the top stock in one of the world’s top-performing markets. That turned Alaska’s Black Master, which Barros co-manages with Henrique Bredda and Ney Miyamoto, into the No. 2 fund among 569 peers focused on Brazilian equities, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Barros’s latest success only adds to the intrigue surrounding one of Brazil’s most storied, but media-shy, individual investors. Early in his career, he traded commodities and was a partner of star fund manager Luis Stuhlberger at what is now Credit Suisse Hedging-Griffo. Barros then spent the next half century investing only his own cash, almost exclusively in Brazilian stocks, and regulatory filings show he personally holds 1.2 billion reais in equities.

When it comes to managing other people’s money, Barros is a rookie, having co-founded Alaska in July 2015. But his investing method remains the same. He only holds a handful of stocks, favors companies with bottom-of-the-barrel valuations and usually jumps in as everyone else is bailing.

“Perfecting patience is all I’ve done over the past 50 years,” Barros says. “I love when things get bad. When it’s bad, I buy.”

During two interviews, first in Alaska’s shoebox office in the heart of Sao Paulo’s financial district and then at his personal office on the city’s oldest business thoroughfare, the silver-haired asset manager explained what drew him to Magazine Luiza and went over the stocks he likes now: Fibria Celulose SA, Braskem SA, Marcopolo SA and Vale SA.

“The market has forgotten these stocks,” he says.

Alaska started building a stake in petrochemicals maker Braskem about four months ago (the stock has surged 48 percent since mid-August after tumbling 20 percent this year before then) and pulpmaker Fibria a few months later. Barros likes both companies because they’re fundamentally sound — and valuations are low. Braskem’s price-to-earnings ratio is 8.3, less than half the level three years ago. Fibria’s valuation is less than half the average of the past two years.Marcopolo, a maker of trucks and buses, is a play on Brazil’s rebound from recession, while miner Vale will benefit as global investors start seeking value again over safety. There’s no economic expansion in Brazil without infrastructure investments, he says.

“Vale won’t be a disaster for anyone. When iron-ore prices rise again, Vale will fly,” he said.

If those stocks return just a fraction of what Magazine Luiza did, they’d count as stellar investments. In all, Alaska acquired almost 40 percent of Magazine Luiza’s free-floating shares, regulatory filings show. In 2016’s third quarter, Alaska unloaded half its stake. What’s left of Alaska’s holdings in Magazine Luiza is now worth about 111 million reais ($33 million).

Asked how he knew Magazine Luiza would do as well as it did, he says he didn’t. “I just knew it was cheap.” The fact that the retailer of appliances and electronics had a market value of 180 million reais even though a bank had offered to pay 300 million reais for the right to offer extended guarantees on Magazine Luiza products made that clear.

“Either the bank was crazy or there was value there,” Barros says.

Alaska’s Black Master fund has returned 143 percent in 2016, compared with a 33 percent gain for Brazil’s benchmark Ibovespa stock index. The gains were also driven by a stake in Cia. de Saneamento do Parana, the water utility known as Sanepar that’s almost tripled this year.

Alaska is still a relatively small player in Brazil’s 2.38 trillion-real stock market. The asset manager employs 11 people (“That includes the lady who serves the coffee,” Barros says). While Alaska oversees about 1.6 billion reais, three-quarters of that is Barros’s own cash. But the fund is actively seeking new clients.

Why now, after 50 years of going it alone?

“Because I’m positive that the market is going to rise,” he says.

Stock and Bond Perspective

US Treasury Interest Rates

 

A. Gary Shilling from Forbes Magazine
October 22, 2013
When the Fed started talking about reducing its $85 billion monthly purchases of Treasurys and mortgage-backed securities in May, Treasury bonds started to fall (chart 1) and yields jumped (chart 2).
Although Fed officials have vigorously denied that tapering signals an impending rise in interest rates, investors obviously didn’t believe the central bankers.
Many interest rate forecasters shout that the three-decade-long decline in Treasury bond yields is over, and they may be right-finally. These same pundits have been saying so repeatedly ever since rates started down in 1981.
As I discussed in my recent book, The Age of Deleveraging, and in many Insights before and since, back in 1981, few agreed with me that serious inflation was unwinding and interest rates would fall. Indeed, the consensus called for rates to remain high or even rise indefinitely.
Yet when 30-year Treasury yields peaked at 15.21% in October of that year, I stated that inflation was on the way out and “we’re entering the bond rally of a lifetime.” Later, I forecast a drop to a 3% yield. Again, most other forecasters thought I was crazy.
Most investors have a distinct anti-Treasury bond bias, and not just because they fervently believe that serious inflation and leaping yields are inevitable. Stockholders inherently hate them. They say they don’t understand Treasury bonds. But their quality has been unquestioned, at least until recently, and their prices rose promptly in 2011 after S&P downgraded them.
Treasurys and the forces that move yields are well-defined-Fed policy and inflation or deflation are among the few important factors.
Stock prices, by contrast, are much more difficult to fathom. They depend on the business cycle, conditions in that particular industry, Congressional legislation, the quality of company management, merger and acquisition possibilities, corporate accounting, company pricing power, new and old product potentials, and myriad other variables.
Stockholders do understand that Treasurys normally rally during weak economic conditions, which are negative for stock prices, so they consider declining Treasury yields to be a bad omen. Brokers also don’t want to recommend Treasurys since commissions on them are low, and investors can avoid commissions altogether by buying them directly from the Treasury.
Wall Street denizens also disdain Treasurys, as I learned firsthand while at Merrill Lynch and then White, Weld years ago. Investment bankers didn’t want me along on client visits when I was forecasting lower interest rates. They wanted projections of higher rates that would encourage corporate clients to issue bonds immediately, not wait for lower rates and cheaper financing costs. That’s what’s happening today in anticipation of Fed tightening and higher interest rates-more financing to pay for mergers and acquisitions as well as other needs.
Professional managers of bond funds are a sober bunch who perennially fret about inflation, higher yields, and subsequent losses of principal in their portfolio. But if yields fall, they don’t rejoice over bond appreciation but worry about reinvesting their interest coupons and maturing bonds at lower yields.
This disdain for bonds, especially Treasurys, persists despite their vastly superior performance vs. stocks since the early 1980s. Starting then, a 25-year zero-coupon Treasury, rolled into another 25-year annually to maintain the maturity, beat the S&P 500, on a total return basis, by 6.1 times (chart 3), even after the recent substantial bond sell-off.
This is one of our very favorite charts since we have actually participated in this marvelous Treasury bond rally as forecasters, portfolio managers and investors. And please note that we’ve never, never, never bought Treasurys for their yield. We couldn’t care less what the yield is-as long as it’s going down! We want Treasurys for the same reason that most of today’s stockholders want equities-appreciation.
It is true the Fed usually starts to raise the federal funds rate it controls before economic expansions are very old. This time, however, any move towards higher rates is likely to be some time off, not until the Age of Deleveraging and the related slow growth are over. Normally, deleveraging after major financial crises takes a decade to complete. Since deleveraging this time started in 2008, there’s about another five years to go.
Meanwhile, I believe Treasury yields are more likely to go down than up for a number of reasons. First, with slow economic growth persisting, gridlock in Washington, business uncertainty and ample supplies of capacity and labor on a global scale, the U.S. employment situation will likely remain weak.
The Fed has said it wouldn’t raise its federal funds rate until the unemployment rate broke 6.5%. Nevertheless, that target is fading because it’s decline in primarily the result of the falling labor participation rate, not rising employment. As investors more and more understand the Fed’s falling unemployment rate target, Treasury yields, which have anticipated a rise in rates, will probably decline as they have recently.
Inflation is close to zero and deflation is probably only being forestalled by the earlier massive fiscal and continuing monetary stimuli. But fiscal drag has replaced stimuli, resulting in the falling federal deficit. Also, the impending Fed tapering won’t tighten credit by reducing excess bank reserves through central bank sales of securities, but it will reduce the monthly additions to that $2.2 trillion horde.
For some time, I’ve believed that the Grand Disconnect between investors’ focus on Fed largess and their lack of interest in limping economic performance was unsustainable. Notice (chart 4) the close correlation between the rising S&P 500 index and the expanding balance sheet of the Fed since it started flooding the economy with money in August 2008.
I’ve e also been looking for a shock to close that Grand Disconnect. The negative effects of the federal government shutdown on consumer and business confidence and, even more so, the devastating fallout from a failure to raise the debt limit this month may serve that purpose. The recent decline in stock prices may be a prelude.
A substantial drop in stock prices will benefit Treasurys, not because of the economic weakness and likely deflation generated by the bear market-generating shock but also due to the resulting investor rush to Treasurys as the ultimate safe haven.
Furthermore, stocks are vulnerable. The S&P 500 index recently reached an all-time high but corrected for inflation, it remains in a secular bear market that started in 2000 (chart 5). This reflects the slow economic growth since then and the falling price-earnings ratio, and fits in with the long-term pattern of secular bull and bear markets.
Furthermore, from a long-term perspective, the P/E on the S&P 500 is 44% above its long run average of 16.5 (chart 6), and I’m a strong believers in reversion to well-established trends, this one going back to 1881. Also, since the P/E in the last two decades has been consistently above trend, it probably will be below 16.5 for a number of years to come.
Finally, stocks are vulnerable because of the elevated level of profit margins. As a share of national income, profits recently reached a record high as American business in recent years reacted to the lack of pricing power with falling inflation and to the meager sales volume growth by slashing labor and other costs as the route to bottom line growth.
But productivity growth engendered by cost-cutting and other means is no longer easy to come by. Also, neither capital nor labor gets the upper hand indefinitely in a democracy, and compensation’s share of national income has been compressed as profit’s share leaped.
In addition, corporate earnings are vulnerable to the likely strengthening of the dollar, which reduces the value of exports and foreign earnings by U.S. multinationals as foreign currency receipts are translated to greenbacks.
In our Jan. 2013 Insight, I predicted a further decline in the 30-year Treasury bond yield from 2.9% at that time to 2.0%. I also expected the 10-year Treasury note yield to drop from the then-1.73% level to 1.0%. Rates did fall until April, but then rose sharply until recently. The 30-year bond yield jumped to 3.92% before receding to the current 3.70% while the 10-year note yield reached 2.99% but is now 2.62%.
My earlier targets are probably too optimistic for this year but I do expect further declines in Treasury yields in future quarters. The “bond rally of a lifetime” will end some day, but it probably isn’t over yet.
Excerpted from October issue of Gary Shilling’s Insight. Gary Shilling is president of A. Gary Shilling & Co. and author of The Age of Deleveraging: Investment Strategies For A Decade Of Slow Growth And Deflation (John Wiley & Sons, 2011). He is also the editor of Gary Shilling’s Insights newsletter. (source: www.shortsideoflong.blogspot.com)
S&P 500 Performance
Have a good weekend. I hope to be back posting as life returns to normal.

Interesting Charts of Where We Are Now

The Markets

My takeaway is this: Now is the time to buy a home and take on low-cost long-term debt if you were ever considering buying a home to live in. Long-term bonds look like a little risk for no reward.

But, when in doubt, ignore the pundits and market forecasters and find undervalued bargains wherever they happen to be.

http://scottgrannis.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-bondequity-disconnect.html

The Good News on Natural Gas

http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2012/08/natural-gas-production-sets-new-records.html

CASE STUDY on Xerox (XRX)

There is, finally, the supremely important problem of combating general fluctuations of economic activity and the recurrent waves of large-scale unemployment which accompany them.  This is, of course, one of the gravest and most pressing problems of our time.  But, though its solution will require much planning in the good sense, it does not — or at least need not — require that special kind of planning which according to its advocates is to replace the market.  Many economists hope, indeed, that the ultimate remedy may be found in the field of monetary policy, which would involve nothing incompatible even with nineteenth-century liberalism.  Others, it is true, believe that real success can be expected only from the skillful timing of public works undertaken on a very large-scale.  This might lead to much more serious restrictions of the competitive sphere, and, in experimenting in this direction, we shall have to carefully watch our step if we are to avoid making all economic activity progressively more dependent on the direction and volume of government expenditure. But his is neither the only nor, in my opinion, the most promising way of meeting the gravest threat to economic security.  In any case, the very necessary effort to secure protection against these fluctuations do not lead to the kind of planning which constitutes such a threat to our freedom.–Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, pp.121-22.

CASE STUDY

Your boss drops XRX’s 10K, www.yousendit.com/download/M3BscHBNTkxTRTdyZHNUQw on your desk. Then he asks, Should we sell out of this position since the company’s market cap is about $11 to $12 billion with $9 billion of debt and an underfunded Pension Fund?

Is this company dangerously over leveraged? Yes or no and why? Please reply in 20 minutes or less. If you feel you can’t adequately answer, then what would you need to find out? State your reply in no more than a sentence or two.

Value-Line Tear Sheet on Xerox for Reference:
http://www.yousendit.com/download/M3BscHBNTkxPSHo0WjhUQw

Prize to be determined.

Long-Term Bonds

The cure (low interest rates) IS the disease: http://mises.org/daily/5164

If you own long-term government bonds then the question you have to ask yourself is……………………..http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0-oinyjsk0

Housekeeping

I will post the analysis of Coke/Pepsi Case Study this weekend. And we have one final installment on ROIC before burying that dead horse.

Have a good weekend!