Fundamentals vs. Technicals, Templeton, Ackman, Analysis of Valeant

Fundamental vs. Technical Analysis

https://monetary-metals.com/technical-vs-fundamental-report-19-mar-2017/

Technical analysis, in all of its forms, uses the past price movements to predict the future price movements. In some cases (e.g. momentum analysis) it calculates an intermediate signal from the price signal (momentum is the first derivative of price). But no matter the style, one analyzes price history to guess the next price move.

This is necessarily probabilistic. There is no way to know that a particular price move will follow the chart pattern you see on the screen. There is no certainty. And when it does work, it is often because of self-fulfilling expectations. Since all traders have access to the same charts, and the same chart-reading theories, they can buy or sell en masse when the chart signals them to do so.

Fundamentals or Arbitrage:

Arbitrage works just like a spring. If the price in the futures market is greater than the price in the spot market, then there is a profit to carry gold—to buy metal in the spot market and sell a futures contract. If the price of spot is higher, then the profit is to be made by decarrying—to sell metal and buy a future.

There are two keys to understanding this. One, when leveraged speculators push up the price of gold futures contracts, then that increases the basis spread. A greater basis is a greater incentive to the arbitrageur to take the trade. Two, when the arbitrageur buys spot and sells a future, the very act of putting on this trade compresses the spread.

If someone were to come along and sell enough futures contracts to push down the price of gold by $50 or $150 or whatever amount is alleged, then this selling would be on futures only. It would push the price of futures below the price of spot, a condition called backwardation.

Backwardation just has not happened at the times when the stories of the big “smash downs” have claimed. Monetary Metals has published intraday basis charts during these events many times.

The above does not describe technical analysis. It describes physics—how the market functions at a mechanical level.

There are other ways to check this. If there was a large naked short position in a contract that was headed into expiry, how would the basis behave? The arbitrage theory predicts the opposite basis move. We will leave the answer out as an exercise for the interested reader, as thinking this through is really good work to understand the dynamics of the gold and silver markets (and you can Google our past articles, where we discuss it).

This check can be observed every month, as either gold or silver has a contract expiring (right now it’s gold, as the April contract is close to First Notice Day).

Templeton

Ackman and Valeant

Ackman and his disasterous investment in Valeant The are many psychological lessons in this article.  What can you learn?

Ironically, one of the best research on Valeant was done by Allergan: Allergan analysis of Valeant 2014.   Did Ackman’s analysts even read it?   At least you have an example of solid research.

Compare to Ira-Sohn-2015-Presentation on Valeant and Other Platform Companies   Studying the two different presentations provides a FREE course on valuation and presenting a research idea.  But not 1 person in 10,000 would be willing to sweat the details like studying the two documents linked above.

Oh well, opportunity for those who work.

5 responses to “Fundamentals vs. Technicals, Templeton, Ackman, Analysis of Valeant

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.