Learning Some Commodities

I spent the past few weeks learning about the futures market, as well as various commodity classes. The reason is I am having a tough time taking directional views of stocks given the generally high multiples, so I prefer relative value ideas instead. But relative value comes much more naturally in fixed income, currencies and commodities. I also hope what I learn here help in my equities investments when the time is right. Some notes here.

Waiting for Back Ended Oil Contango to Normalize

Exploration and Production (E&P) stocks seem to be still pricing in $60-70 oil in the longer term. However December 17 and Dec 18 futures are trading around $54 and $57 respectively. So I’m still waiting for E&P stocks to fall further. But we’re getting there.

Term structure of futures is supposed to tell you market’s future view of storage capacity, cost, and inventory. These things are in turn dependent on the market’s forward view of production and consumption.

Crude oil is currently in an oversupply position so I’m not surprised that the front end of WTI futures (CL) is showing some contango. But this condition extends to the back-end too. Below shows how the spread between Dec 2018 and Dec 2016 evolved over the past year. (This is Dec 2018 minus Dec 2016, so higher = contango).

I read this as the market saying oil will be way oversupplied even in December 2016, thus demand for storage will still be high (implying the market still expects a turnaround in oil by December 2018). That seems inconsistent. By 2H16, if we still have an oil glut I would think the market would be convinced that cheap oil is here to stay (perhaps due to technological advances lowering marginal cost of a barrel), then the back ended futures should come down as well. Term structure should normalize.

I would prefer betting on term structure to normalize than taking a pure directional view. Maybe short Dec 2018 futures and buy Dec 2016 and just keep them there. This would be better than trying to pick a bottom by going long front end futures (and risk sell low / buy high on each rollover)

Additional Notes

The mathematical definition of contango is “convenience yield” < (interest + storage cost). Where “Convenience Yield” is a plug, a calculated number you back into. As such, “convenience yield” reflects a mishmash of miscellaneous factors including not just the value of having it now (“convenience”), but also sellers’ desire for insurance, arbitrageurs expectations, speculator sentiments…etc. So a contango could be due to a few possibilities, the main ones are:

• Trade buyers: well stocked already so no one wants more oil now. Value of convenience is low.
• Trade sellers: low need for insurance (else they would have sold futures and push back-end future prices down)
• Storage providers. Inventory level is high and storage capacity could be running out. So storage cost is bid up.
• Speculators and arbitrageurs. Their actions could just be trend following or be based on nuanced view of future balance.

Some people (like Gartman here) argue that futures term structure have NOTHING to do with future expectations of prices, but just a function of supply/demand and storage cost. That sounds like a smart thing to say but they are really just playing on semantics. All supply and demand have some element of participants’ future expectation - if oil trades at $10 and you expect spot prices to be $100 a year from now, you would buy now, store some oil and sell in the future. You would not only impact the supply and demand of oil, but also bid up storage cost in the process.

The Great British Pound Appreciation of 1996-1997

Above is the historical trade weighted exchange rate for British Pound. Since the latest 80’s there are 3 episodes of big moves. First a gap down around 1992, then a big spike up from second half of 1996 to early 1998, and finally the collapse from 2H07 to end of 2008. The last one is straightforward– the Great Financial Crisis really started in 2007 after the subprime bubble popped. The first one I know also. That was Soros and Druckenmiller breaking the Bank of England.

But what about that big run up in 1996-1997? What happened there?


The Bank of England does a great job of archiving their old reports, and one can quickly figure this out by searching through their Inflation Reports from 1996-1997. What happened was a rare combination of 1) monetary divergence, 2) fiscal divergence, and 3) political uncertainty in the rest of Europe.

The monetary policy part is fairly similar to what’s happening today. Back in 1996 the market expected other European countries to lower their rates while Bank of England was expected to tighten money.

But that was only part of the story. The real driver there was countries gearing up to join the Euro system. Keep in mind this is 1996 and the Euro did not exist yet. Other European countries were preparing to join the EMU and they had to meet the “Maastricht convergence criteria” – which would require them to reduce budget deficits. Here’s how the old BOE report explained it:

“A reduction in planned fiscal deficits abroad—such as that taking place on the Continent to meet the Maastricht convergence criteria—would tend to reduce interest rates there, both because lower deficits raise national saving and because fiscal consolidation may reduce aggregate demand in the short run. The exchange rates of the countries undertaking fiscal consolidation would depreciate as financial capital sought higher returns elsewhere”

And this: 

“the portfolio shift away from currencies of countries most likely to participate in EMU may also have reflected higher risk premia because of the uncertainties involved”

To prove the importance of the EMU and Maastricht convergence, BOE’s November 1997 report even had an interesting study showing that the Italian Lira and Deutsche Mark were getting increasingly correlated, while Sterling/Mark significantly less so. 

So there, a combination of monetary divergence and expected fiscal divergence (due to the advent of Euro) caused the GBP to revaluate upward in 1996-1997.

Here’s what I couldn’t help wonder though: how much of U.K. not joining the Euro could be attributed to its humiliating experience in 1992 trying to tie a currency? Is it possible that Soros, Druckenmiller, and the currency speculation world “taught” U.K. the importance of having an independent monetary policy? Without Black Wednesday, could U.K. have ditched the GBP for the EUR?

If so, Soros and gang might have "broke" the Bank of England, but they saved the GBP.

Shorting AUD/USD: on FDI and Reflexive Potential

Summary Reasons for Shorting AUD/USD

• Technical downtrend is intact
• Demand of AUD will be weaker in the future due to lower FDI and portfolio flows. Trade balance is negative but that’s a less important factor in my mind.
• Factors that make AUD’s “reflexive” – price movement here can be self-reinforcing, rather than self-correcting 

Shorting AUD/USD is a fairly popular trade. Here are what I gather as the most cited rationales for shorting AUD/USD. Australia's main exports are iron ore and coal but prices for which have fallen and will likely stay low due to weak demand from China. Trade balance will deteriorate. The Reserve Bank of Australia thinks further depreciation is necessary and will keep rates low or even cut rates to stimulate the economy.

I agree with that line of reasoning, but trade balance and lower interest rates are not the only reasons that AUD will continue to depreciate. Going forward, in my opinion, foreign direct investment and potential for “reflexivity” will be bigger drivers of AUD decline.

Importance of Foreign Direct Investment

In the chart below, I used balance of payments (BOP) from 2006 to 2014 as proxy for historical inflows and outflows. Australia has persistently ran trade deficits and even bigger primary income deficits. What propped up demand for AUD in the past few years were foreign direct investments (FDI) and sometimes portfolio flows.

Note how trade balance is a relatively minor contributor versus other flows. Primary income is mostly stable while portfolio investment is fickle (and likely negative going forward). FDI though, has been consistently strong, but will likely deteriorate drastically going forward.

FDI is concentrated in the mining sector (~roughly 40% of foreign investment in Australia), and that is likely to drop off given prevailing weakness in commodity prices. Demand from China will stay weak given its continued shift away from an investment driven economy.

Reflexivity - Quick Background

But how much of that is already priced in? That’s always tough to know. A different question though, is will lower exchange rates hurt economic fundamentals and lead to even lower prices? i.e. is there a reflexive relationship here? I think so, but first a quick summary of George Soros’ reflexivity framework (as it relates to currencies) is as follows:  

• Prices are driven by different factors of supply and demand. Some of these factors are self correcting, and some are self-reinforcing. 
• Self-correcting means weaker prices -> improving demand vs supply -> stabilization in prices. 
• Self-reinforcing means weaker prices -> deteriorating demand vs supply -> further weakening in prices. 
• To see if a trend will continue, an analyst can break down price into different sources of supply/demand, and determine if self-reinforcing flows outweigh the self-correcting ones. 

In the context of foreign exchange:

• Price = nominal exchange rates. Supply and demand are inflows and outflows in the balance of payments items. 
• Trade balance is typically a self-correcting: lower nominal currency -> lower real currency -> better trade competitiveness and trade balance -> stabilization of currency 
• Portfolio investments tend to be self -reinforcing: lower nominal currency -> expectation of even lower FX -> expected currency losses tend to outweigh interest rate differentials for bonds and detract from equities returns). 
• FDI could be either self-correcting or self-reinforcing 

Analysis

With that background, here’s why I think AUD/USD will be a reflexive situation that keeps driving downward.

1. The main self-correcting flow, trade balance, is a relatively minor factor here (as shown in the BOP chart above). Further, Australia’s trade balance will likely see less improvement from currency devaluation due to its unique situation. Lower prices of main exports (iron ore and coal) is not going to help much if the problem is structurally lower demand from your customer in the first place. Australia’s main competitor in iron ore is Brazil and that currency is even weaker. So Australia is not going to get much of a boost in trade balance from weaker AUD.

2. FDI is likely a self-reinforcing flow in this case – weaker AUD will lead to weaker FDI. Remember again, FDI for Australia is big in the mining sector. With commodities, prices are in USD but local production costs are in the local currencies. When Australia and Brazil’s currency weaken versus the USD, local costs are effectively lowered and that will pass through to lower commodity prices. Would you invest in a mining project when 1) commodity prices will likely stay low or get even worse, and 2) the sector already has excess capacity? I don’t think so.

3. Portfolio inflows are self-reinforcing. For Australia, portfolio flows are mostly debt securities as opposed to equity. 10 year government bonds for Australia yield ~2.85% versus ~2.25% in the United States. What little extra yield you get from investing in an Australian bond could easily be overwhelmed by movements in currencies, which is decidedly negative in this case.

My conclusion is that the downward move in AUD/USD will continue, because the self-reinforcing elements (FDI and portfolio outflows) outweighs the self-correcting mechanism of trade balance.

This may take a while to play out though, and you incur negative carry on the trade. So timing and technicals do matter. AUD/USD hovers around 0.74 at the time of this writing. I am short and have a stop loss around 0.77 and my eventual target is as low as 0.65. The risk is if Australia comes out with massive investment project (develop North Australia for example) and attracts money from abroad. But that is unlikely in the current government and in any case unlikely to offset weakness in mining projects.

What Drives NZD/USD

In my last post I mentioned shorting the NZD/USD. At the time of that trade, I only had a rough sketch of the thesis: 1) the chart already showed a breakout to the downside, and I was waiting for a retouch to confirm the resistance level around 0.71, 2) I happened to be looking into Fonterra and had developed a negative view, but I thought NZD/USD might be a better way to implement that short. 3) a quick calculation of fair value based on BIS Narrow REER showed me that NZD could go as low as 0.60, thus a highly favorable risk and reward.

Then Reserve Bank of New Zealand announced a (surprise) rate cut on 6/11/2015 and NZD collapsed below 0.71. New Zealand is now lowering rates while US is raising rates. I also got my technical confirms and went ahead with the short. During the past 2 weeks that trade works really well - the NZD has went down so fast that I’m now reassessing the situation and bracing for a pullback (but staying short).

It was a bit of an “invest first, investigate later” type of situation, and I wanted to catchup in terms of understanding what drives NZD/USD over the long run. So I plotted the chart below with 1) NZD/USD, 2) the Dollar Index (DXY), and 3) NZD real effective exchange rate.

The cool thing about currencies is that they do move in long, multi-year trends. In the next section, I listed out the major up and downs over the past 2 decades and did some research to explain the drivers. The short-one sentence summary would be this: the drivers of NZD/USD are USD strength, NZ’s growth differential vs rest of the world, interest rate differentials, and commodity prices/terms of trade. I'd put inflation differentials up there too but that has a more indirect effect as it really drives the market through interest rate policies.

Summary of various NZD/USD trends

• 1988 (not shown on chart) 
• NZD collapsed from ~0.7 to ~0.55. NZ had stagnant growth and bursting of a commercial property bubble.

• Late 1996 – late 2000 – Big downtrend from 0.7 to 0.4
• USD was on a strong uptrend. US went through an investment boom and productivity spike which drove up USD’s real equilibrium exchange rate (think of a 2 dimensional plane with a) upward sloping savings – investment and  b) a downward sloping current account balance on the X-axis and real exchange rate on the Y-axis. The S-I curve is upward sloping while the current account balance curve is downward sloping. Here the USA have more investment, so the Savings - Investment curve would shift to the left, leading to higher real exchange rate)
• On the NZ side, in 1997 the economy fell into recession with after 2 summers of drought. NZ was also hit by the Asian financial Crisis.

•  2002-2005 – big uptrend. From ~.40 to .~74
• General weakness in USD. USD was overvalued at its previous peak, but the structural factors that boosted USD were now reversing. The downward move coincided with bursting of the dot com bubble, and the subsequent low US interest rates. 
• NZ has positive growth differential versus rest of world. NZ had a positive output gap and positive short term interest rate differential. Commodity prices were strong.

• 2005-2006- dip from ~.74 to ~.60 then a rebound
• The market believed that New Zealand was falling into recession, and GDP contracted slightly in December 2015. But this turns out to be a false alarm and GDP reaccelerated in 2006, and NZD/USD went on a strong rebound from 2006 to mid-2008 (~0.6 to >0.8)

• 2008/2009 - a massive dip during the Great Financial Crisis. There was another dip in 2011 when NZD fell from 0.88 to 0.74 due to prospect of Eurozone breakup.

• June 2011 – 1H2014: NZD/USD traded with general uptrend rising toward 0.89 
• Context for 1H14. NZD benefited from diverging monetary policy versus the rest of the world. The market had gotten used to QE with US, Eurozone, Japan all in monetary easing mode. But in 1H14 the RBNZ actually hiked rates. NZD benefited from strong interest rate differentials (both spot and expectations). Meanwhile Fonterra and the dairy sector enjoyed historically high prices, so the country enjoyed strong terms of trade which propped up the NZD.

• 2H14 to current.. big downtrend from 0.89 to 0.67
• US Dollar Index went on a big spike. 
• On NZ side, growth slowed and market had developed expectation of continued rate hikes which was not met. Dairy prices and commodity prices have collapsed. RBNZ came out with aggressive stance saying NZD is over-valued and actually intervenes to depreciate NZD. 
• By June 2015 RBNZ cut the Official Cash Rate and set expectations for further rate cuts. NZD/USD dropped below a critical support level. 

Summerset Group's Business Model - Potential Short

I have been digging around New Zealand the past week or so. I have not found any stocks I would act on right away, but I did find a few interesting business models that could make for good trades later. Summerset is one and I’ll focus on that here. Fonterra is another. I also went ahead and shorted the New Zealand Dollar (short NZD/USD), but that is for another post.

Summerset Group (SNZ.ASX)

This is a short candidate but not now. Summerset is a developer and operator of retirement villages and aged care facilities in New Zealand. Looking past the healthcare angle however, Summerset essentially borrows money from old people to speculate in properties. This I will explain in the paragraphs to follow. I will also explain why this could be a good short and when to short it.

The Business Model

Summerset’s business model produces 3 cash flows. First, you (the retirees/customers) pay around $300-500k NZD upfront, for the right to live in the villa/townhouse/apartment units. Second, you pay a weekly contribution toward village operations (for things like water, staff, activities…etc). Third, when you decide to leave (or die), you or your estate get 75-80% of your initial money back (Summerset keeps 20-25% of initial amount as “Deferred Management Fee”). It’s important that the customer don’t actually get ownership, and Summerset gets the capital gain from any price appreciation when units are resold.

Follow the cash flows above, Summerset basically borrows money from retirees, pay a negative interest rate (the weekly contributions), and pay back 75-80% of principal at the end. What do they do with that borrowing? They build/develop more properties.

The accounting reflects these economics. The large amounts that customers pay upfront are in fact booked as “Residents’ Loans”, a liability on Summerset’s balance sheet. The footnotes then attribute the asset “Investment Property” as the sum of residents’ loans and Summerset’s equity. On the income statement, main revenue sources are the weekly fees, the amortized deferred management fees, as well as any valuation gains in investment properties.

Main Sources of Profit

Of the various revenue sources, property value gains are the main source of profit. Without that Summerset would barely breakeven or be cash flow negative. A quick look at the financial statements will make this clear.

First, in the income statement if you back out the “Fair value movement of investment property”, pretax income would be close to $0. Second (as shown below), management’s non-GAAP “underlying profits” shows that profit came solely from “realized gain on resales” and “realized development margin”. This should make clear that Summerset is essentially a profit developer and heavily dependent on property value.

I also wonder what fair value really means. In Summerset’s business model, a sale of “License to Occupy” is not a true sale of property, but rather a retiree lending money to the company. Are those transaction prices really reflective of property value? The annual report does have this to say – but that doesn’t tell me much: “The fair value of the Group’s investment property is determined on a semi-annual basis, based on market values, being the estimated amount for which a property could be exchanged on the date of the valuation between a willing buyer and a willing seller in an arm’s length transaction after proper marketing wherein the parties had each acted knowledgeably, prudently and without compulsion”. 

Let’s move on to the cash flows statement, which shows similar results. Without the borrowing from resident’s loans, cash flow from operations would actually be negative. 

Leverage and Liquidity

I have nothing against property development or land speculation. When times are good this is a fine business model. Even the liquidity risk from resident departure /loan redemption is mitigated, as Summerset contractually do not have to repay the “resident’s loan” until they receive money from a new buyer.

But it’s also obvious that Summerset would be in trouble when there’s a big property down turn. The company is leveraged 3x in terms of asset to equities. There is very little cash on hand, and the bulk of its assets are in illiquid assets such as land, buildings, equipment…etc. An economic downturn could lead to higher retiree departure and loan redemptions (to free up cash for other uses like supporting their unemployed children). Competitors could have their own liquidity issue leading to a downward spiral of asset value impairments. If resale values are lower than residents’ loans, and new sales are low (most likely in a property downturn) then the company could have trouble redeeming residents loans. At the minimum we’ll see some ugly margins if not liquidity issues and lawsuits.

What to Do?

So yes, Summerset is basically a highly leveraged builder that borrows money from grandmothers. Its profits are completely dependent on property value gains. Meanwhile news media is full of reports about NZ being in a property bubble, with one of the most expensive housing markets in the world. The stock is trading at more than 2x P/B.

All these make SNZ a short, but not yet: 1) I actually think the property market has more room to run, as much of the price gains are due to supply constraints in Auckland. 2) This is further supported by NZ’s central bank easy monetary policy. 3) Summerset’s sales were strong in 1Q15 and its stock is showing bullish technicals.

If not now, then when? I am waiting for signs of credit deceleration from the banks before acting on this. Before retirees pay Summerset hundreds of thousands for a “License to Occupy”, they have to sell their existing homes to someone else, so Summerset needs a solid housing and credit environment.

What I can see happening is the NZ property market continue to run for a while as the central bank keep lowering rates to depreciate the NZ Dollar and keep its exports competitive (think Fonterra and its farmers). The low rates encourage building and could lead to oversupply of retirement homes. Eventually monetary policy will stabilize and loan growth at the banks will slow. Slower credit and oversupply of buildings would then have a depressive impact on property values, crushing Summerset’s margins and stock price.

Interestingly, bank stocks (it’s the same big 4 that dominate both Australia and NZ) have shown weaknesses in the last month while Summerset and its peers have stayed strong. The two cannot diverge forever.

Spotting Turns in Market Cycles

This is the hypothesis I’m working under. To the well-read there’s nothing new here, and lots of market players probably already look at the world this way. But it took me a while to piece it together, as schools don’t teach this and you don’t get this type of stuff from reading Warren Buffett. 

First though, I want to address a common misunderstanding of credit and growth.

An Essential Point about Debt and Growth

I was reading an old economic report from Goldman Sachs by Andrew Tilton. In that report there is a sentence that stood out with its clarity of thought.

“…the growth rate of spending is related to the second derivative of credit – accelerating credit can fuel an increase in growth, but credit cannot accelerate forever, and when it begins to decelerate there will be a negative impact on spending growth.”

Everyone knows that spending growth can be driven by changes in credit – duh!? But that’s actually not exactly right. It’s really the second derivative of credit. There’s a subtle but incredibly important difference here - one that most people have a hazy understanding of (including myself until recently). That lack of clarity shows up when people talk about the world’s high level of debt, and they say something like this: “You can’t cure debt with more debt. Forget about actually pay down debt, how about just stop borrowing for a start? Is that too much to ask?”

Let’s walk through this with a simple example. Let’s simplify and say the whole nation is just one person. Let’s say I want to buy some fancy car for $100k. I don’t have the money, so I borrow $100k and buy. GDP for that year is $100k. Next year though, if I don’t do anything – not paying down debt or increasing debt), GDP naturally goes down to $0! In order to keep GDP flat, I’d have to borrow another $100k to buy another car– doubling my debt just to have 0% GDP growth.

This is what Goldman means by spending growth being related to the acceleration (2nd derivative) of credit, and not just changes (1st derivative) in credit. That is the tyranny of debt addiction. GDP growth could go negative just from people borrowing less than before (in the above example, say I only borrow and spend $50k in year 2, then GDP is down 50%).

Per Federal Reserve data, U.S. total credit market borrowing (SAAR) was $2,472bn in 4Q14. GDP was $17,701bn for the same period. So new borrowing contributed to ~14% of the GDP. If everyone stops borrowing, GDP would take a 14% hit. We would have massive unemployment and social unrest.

That’s just not an option. So the sensible way to “deleverage” is not to decrease the level of outstanding debt in absolute terms. But rather to INCREASE debt at a slower rate, and try to increase income at a faster pace, so that both debt and GDP increase in absolute amounts, but the ratio of Debt/GDP declines. In this sense, we have no choice but to “cure debt with more debt”

Implications 

So what does that have to do with investments? In my last post I mentioned Kostolany’s explanation of how liquidity drives broader markets. But he gave little guidance on when that would happen. Ray Dalio though, has a framework on the typical deleveraging processes and when central banks need to provide liquidity to the market. Combining the two frameworks should us a better sense of credit cycles and turns in the equity market.

I read Dalio’s writings on credit cycles a long time ago but did not understand it completely. Turns out understanding the above dynamics of debt and GDP growth was the missing piece – particularly the “why” behind various government’s alternatives. I went back and re-read his stuff and everything became clearer this time around.

In his paper “An In-Depth Look at Deleveragings”, Dalio mapped out the typical steps to deleveraging. In the first phase of deleveraging, debt growth either decelerates or turn outright negative, and countries attempt to cope via some form of austerity. Debt to GDP ratio will go up mostly because of declines in GDP. In the second phase, austerity and resource transfer reached its limits, and central banks are forced to pull the monetary policy lever and pump some liquidity into the system.

That’s when the stock market will take off despite the weak economy. The increased liquidity mostly goes to juice up the financial markets first, since people still lack confidence in the real economy.

So here are the big picture steps: Watch out for countries that are in the start or middle of deleveraging. Ideally you find a country that had explosive growth in Debt/GDP ratios and then a subsequent deceleration of debt which triggers a deleveraging cycle. Follow that deleveraging cycle and wait for central bank to print money – that would be time to play the stock market.

Appendix: Where is the U.S. in the Cycle?

Where is the U.S. in the long term cycle? The blue line in the chart below shows nominal Debt/GDP levels. The takeaways are 1) the U.S. went on a debt binge starting late 1970’s, so it’s possible that much of our GDP growth the past 40 years are just a debt fueled mirage. 2) The Great Financial Crisis was the first time we deleveraged to any material extent since the 1940s’. 3) Despite the deleveraging since 2008, debt/GDP is still at an extremely high level. 4) the pace of deleveraging has slowed and we actually have signs of re-leveraging.

My data does not go back to show the Great Depression. But per Dalio’s data, Debt to GDP went all the way from 155% in 1930 to 252% in 1932, then down to 168% in 1937. That’s a much greater swing of leverage levels – one that probably contributed to the rise of Hitler and World War II.

Given the still high level of debt and the deflationary forces of any potential deleveraging, as well as the already high P/E levels, I have to agree with the common notion that equity markets are in for long years of low returns ahead.

Kostolany on What Makes Stocks Go Up; Capital Flows and Technicals

Andre Kostolany on What Makes Stocks Go Up

I was doing some reading on Andre Kostolany and found something interesting. According to him, what makes stocks go up can be summarized in one simple formula: Cash availability + Sentiments = Market Trend. Basically for a market to go up, people need to have cash to buy stocks, and they have to want to buy stocks. Of the two, cash is the more important one, since high liquidity creates a rising market which would then drives sentiments.

Kostolany gave convincing examples where markets go the opposite way of underlying economic conditions. In a weak economy, people scale back consumption which increases savings rate. Since confidence about the real economy is weak, those savings get channeled to the securities market. Likewise, when central banks loosen monetary policy to support a weak economy, much of that extra cash goes to prop up the markets.

In this framework, what makes stock market go up is about monetary policy, available cash on the side lines, international capital flow and FX. Fundamentals are part of the equation, but mostly serve to influence public sentiments and expectations, as well as rationalize prevailing biases. In fact, an improving economy might lead to negative sentiments regarding corporate earnings, if higher labor and input cost lower profit margins.

This all makes a lot of sense to me. As a result I spend some time on macro the past few weeks, particularly on the topics of international capital flow, balance of payments…etc. 

International Capital Flow and Implications

My rudimentary credit analysis on the USA follows. The U.S. has current account deficit running $400-500bn the past few years, it finances that with capital inflows, which represent foreign claims on U.S. assets and effectively depletes national wealth over time. But that national wealth is incredibly high. The household sector alone has ~$83 trillion of net worth, so technically that current account deficit can persist for 150+years before U.S. networth gets depleted.

So solvency is not an issue, but how about liquidity? For now, foreigners are choosing to finance U.S consumption, presumably because 1) political stability, 2) economically U.S. being one of the “cleaner shirts” among nations, and 3) to a lesser extent strong USD appreciation the past year. Political stability will likely stay around in the coming decades, but relative economic position could change. At some point the U.S. may have so much debt that growth is weighed down by interest payments, while recovery in China and Europe can both draw capital away from the United States.

China is not helping either. In the past decade China piled up U.S. treasury bonds in its FX reserves. That helped to keep the RMB down and sustain its trade surplus. But now it seems to prefer exporting capital to other emerging markets, which not only helps the trade surplus but also enhances its influence and prestige abroad.

If capital reverses direction, that out flow could start a vicious cycle. Capital outflows would weaken the dollar, accelerating withdrawals of hot money. The Fed can raise rates in an attempt to attract capital, but that would tighten money and credit and kill the markets. The economy would have to adjust by consuming less - leading to deflation. At that point decades of accumulated foreign capital at the U.S. could rush out the door and a deflationary cycle sets in.

Value investors like to say “no one gets the macro right”. That’s probably true. I do believe though, that you have to be planned for all scenarios instead of just assume things will be fine in the long run. In terms of money management, it’s not so much trying to guess what the economy will do, but planning out how I will react to different scenarios.

A Technical Experiment - Game Planning

“Stock market goes up in the long run” is a mantra that take hold at top of markets, conveniently serve to justify ever higher valuation - “this stock trades at 25x P/E? Doesn’t matter, buy it anyways because over the long run I’ll be fine.” This mentality has two implications, 1) at some point the public become fully invested – there’s no buying power left, and stocks have nowhere to go but down on the next sign of economic weakness and 2) the market increasingly trade on technicals.

I’m convinced that the broader market is trading on macro/technical with “fundamentals” being merely an excuse to buy stocks. According to this report from Factset, market prices have grown at a faster pace than earnings expectations the past few years. Earning expectations have steadily declined since beginning of the year yet the market trickled upward. The same report also pointed out that market is reacting less to earnings beats and misses than the past – an indication that fundamentals have taken a backseat to technicals.

What to do? A sensible thing to do is target stocks that are less correlated to the broader market: small/microcap/illiquid stocks, special situations, turnarounds..etc. A major portion of my portfolio is mid/large cap value stocks though, and there I sense the fundamentals valuations are becoming less relevant – (and will be even less relevant if the market keep marching upward).

I’m in the middle of an experiment in timing the market with technical analysis. I use SPDR S&P 500 ETF (“SPY”) as a proxy for the market. Here’s the plan.

Current Trading range & initial set up

• Current trading range is 205-212 and we’re currently at $212 per share. We are very close to a strong resistance around 212-213, a line that have held up since February. SPY tested that resistance 3 times the past month with no success. If it fails to break through again, my suspicion is that we’re due for a 5-10% correction. 
• I shorted some SPY with 213 as a stop, so that if it breaks upward past 213 my loss would be limited. This short is ~18% of portfolio equity, with w.a. cost basis of 208.3. So I stand to lose 40bps if I get stopped out at 213.

• I left my single names untouched. Some of them have their own stop losses anyways. These single name exposures are about 90% of equity.
• Note that I’m actually violating proper technical trading principals here in the sense I’m jumping the gun even before a clear breakout or trend emergence. As discussed later, I risk being whipsawed)

If SPY breaks to the upside

• My shorts get stopped out so I take 40bps of loss. But my single name exposures would still be there to take advantage of any potential uptrend.
• Should I reverse course and get longer (would put me on leverage)? Only if a breakout proves that it established a new pricing range. That to me requires the emergence of a new support level (say 213-214 area) – mostly in the form of a retracement and subsequent bounce.

If SPY moves down

• My short position would be showing a profit, but probably not enough to offset losses on my single names. I would think about adding to the short. But only if SPY breaks below support levels such as 205 or 200. 

If SPY moves up past 213, but that turns out to be a false move and SPY reverse downward back to say 208. Instead of establishing a new pricing range, that move would have merely expanded the range.

• This would be tough to swallow. I would have incurred 40bps of hedging cost with no gains to show for it. That’s what you get for jumping the gun before a clear trend emerges. Should I risk another 40bps and risk getting whipsawed yet again? Only if there are proof that a downward trend is emerging. That to me requires 1) Negative fundamental news dominating the headlines (perhaps worries about Europe & China), 2) technical indicators that confirms the trend in the form of ADX/DMI, a lower low…etc. 

The way market is going, I could be stopped out of this trade as early as tomorrow. In that case we might be in for a summer “melt up” as in 2014. I will not fight it.