Following the Market

Birdwatching is like market watching

I'm an indexer and dividend investor.  As such, you might think I don't follow the markets closely.  That would be wrong.  Like active stock pickers and market timers, I like to try to understand what is going on and. yes, even guess (knowing that it is a guess is, I believe, a quantum jump in investment sophistication that many ego maniacs in the markets can't make) where the market is headed.

As an economist, I like to keep the market tracking process efficient.

Over the years, I have come to understand that the market is driven by broad themes over various time periods; and understanding these themes is important.  For example, in the mid-70s and early 80s, it was all about energy because of OPEC.  Being underweighted or overweighted, energy drove relative performance.  In the late 1990s and early 2000s, of course, it was all about internet-related stocks both on the way up and the way down.  In 2008, you needed to get the impact of the housing crisis on financial services and, especially, the banking sector right.

Today, I look at relative yields, the dollar, oil prices, and the price of gold.  In particular, I go to

Marketwatch

and record the difference between the U.S. 10-year and the German 10-year.  Here you see that difference at 2.24 - .70 =  +1.54%  (154 basis points).  Eyeballing the other rates shows the advantage of the U.S. 10-year Note as well.

Source: Marketwatch

But for foreign investors, the currency conversion is also important.  Click the FX link, and you find a broad FX index, WSJ$IDX, and the Euro.  I record each of these first thing each morning.  To the extent that foreign investors invest in the U.S.10-year and yields drop and the dollar strengthens, it is a very good investment compared to investing in their home country.

This hasn't gone unnoticed by market observers as an important  influence that has kept U.S. interest rates low despite an aggressive Fed policy and an expanding U.S. economy.

As an aside, I once knew a man who explicitly  sat down and waded through numerous investment publications whenever he felt he didn't understand the markets.  This is the process that many needed to go through earlier this year as their confident predictions of a sharp rise in interest rates didn't just materialize but actually moved in the other direction.  This would have led to an understanding of relative yields and the influence of global yields on U.S. yields.

I also click on "Futures" and get the price of oil and the price of gold.  Each has had, and will have in the future, a major role in moving markets.

The whole process of collecting this data takes just a few minutes and is, I believe, useful in understanding broader markets.  For example, dividend-paying stocks should continue to at least hang in and provide decent performance as long as their yields stay above the yield on the 10-year UST and global yields remain low.

Help For Expat Investors From Andrew Hallam

If you or someone you know is working outside of their home country, you need to get

The Global Expatriate's Guide to Investing

by Andrew Hallam.  The subtitle From Millionaire Teacher to Millionaire Expat refers to his immensely popular book Millionaire Teacher.

Hallam's gift is the ability to explain, using stories and humor, some of the most intricate parts of the investment markets facing everyday workers seeking to attain a secure and satisfying retirement.  These are the parts of the market where a huge part of the financial services industry have, sadly, taken great advantage of investors in the U.S. and, even to a greater extent, globally.

If U.S. citizen investors think they face a complex task investing in the U.S., they should consider the task from the perspective of the out-of-country expat investor.  All countries have their own rules; but, in general, the expat has no type of social security, has to be careful choosing a broker because of how difficult it is to compare fees and different offerings, be aware of laws that could affect tax exclusion, be aware of possible estate taxes from investing too great an amount in certain counties, factor in the cost to convert currencies--and the list just goes on and on.

All of this has not gone unnoticed by the unscrupulous who have invaded expats, especially teachers teaching abroad, with retirement schemes that lock in participants for decades into high cost, commissioned products.  These outrageously priced products have the potential to wipe out almost the entire contributions as well as earnings, if participants decide they want to change course.

In the book, Hallam gives explicit advice for successful investing for all investors--using the low-cost index approach recommended in the first book as well as by such market stalwarts as Buffett, Bogle, and Malkiel--but also introduces the permanent portfolio which has an incredible record.  The second half of the book covers expats in specific countries.  Again, actionable steps are presented so that expats in those countries know exactly what to do.

Part of the problem is that human resource departments are not generally investment savvy.  This book is a must read for them!  This book should be given to every new hire.

Simply stated, the information in this book is available nowhere else.  Everyone would profit by reading it--but especially expats.

Financial Literacy Quiz For High Schoolers and College

Here is a neat little financial literacy quiz put out by AARP appropriate for high schoolers and/or college students:  QUIZ .

If you can be at their elbow, the quiz should generate some discussion.  They may need to ask what a Roth is or what is term insurance.  They may ask why is the annual interest rate on a credit card so important and why a shorter payment term reduces finance charges.

Better to learn these financial literacy concepts on a quiz rather than after paying excessive finance charges or shying away from a 401(k) because they just don't what it is!
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What is "Flight-to-Quality" ?

Source: Capital Pixel

Last week I wrote a post on the important role of bonds in a portfolio when the market gets scared--as in a 15% or greater sell-off.  The post showed that the four times the S&P 500 had negative returns over the past 20 years the Barclay's Bond Index produced positive returns.  When the S&P 500 returned -37% in 2008, the bond index returned greater than 5%.

Thus, bonds are a hedge or a type of insurance in the event of a significant sell-off in stocks.  This shift of assets into bonds is "flight-to-quality" and typically is concentrated in Treasury notes and bonds.  Again, it takes place when the market is scared.

A good way to put on this hedge is simply to use AGG or a similar Barclay's Aggregate Index exchange traded fund for the fixed income portion of assets.  Note three metrics:  .08% expense ratio, 5.3 duration, and 31.29% Treasury issues.  The duration of 5.3 tells you that, if yields rise 1% from 2.3% to 3.3% over the next 12 months, then AGG will fall in price by approximately 5.3%.  Add in 1.8% approximately from interest payments and total return would approximate -3.5%.  There's no free lunch here!

Those looking for a really good "flight-to-quality" hedge might consider TLO - the long Treasury etf. Note that it has a duration of 16.6 years so is a lot more volatile than AGG.  Also note that it was up over 23% in 2008!

Disclaimer:  This post is for educational purposes.  Investors need to do their own research or consult a professional before making investment decisions.  Exchange traded funds mentioned are held by me and by my clients.

Best Spending Tracking Tool Poll

Rob Berger at Dough Roller has recently written up results of a poll for "what software or tool do you use to track your spending?".

As you can see Mint, Quicken, YNAB and Excel are the top four.  I use Excel just because I'm old fashioned and prefer to limit the spread of bank account/broker account information.

Just recently, a client requested I send Schwab account numbers to FutureAdvisor to see a recommended asset allocation.  I told him he could do it, but I didn't feel comfortable doing it.

By the way, Dough Roller is a nice article aggregation site for those interested in DIY investing.  I recommend checking it out each week.

The Most Important Thing About Bonds That Most Investors Don't Know

Not a bad hedge!

I've recently read a couple of books about bonds along with an article about how to protect a portfolio from a stock market correction.  The article was one of those Yahoo! type articles touting something like 10 ways to protect your portfolio.  It listed a number of esoteric ideas including puts, stop loss orders, etc. Nothing about bonds.  Maybe bonds wouldn't be your first thought either.

Maybe they should be.

Let's cut to the chase and take a look at the four times out of the past 20 years that the large cap core index, essentially the S&P 500, has produced a negative annual return along with the return on the Barclay's Aggregate Bond Index:

	2000	2001	2002	2008
Large Cap Core Stock Index	-1.1%	-4.8%	-9.8%	-22.8%
Barclay’s Aggregate Bond Index	+11.6%	+8.4%	+10.3%	+5.2%

 Source:  BlackRock Asset Class Returns

Hopefully something jumps out at you.  The fact is that bonds, as the table clearly shows, offer a pretty decent hedge, i.e. insurance, to dampen the impact of stock market downturns.

People many times want to get wrapped up in the mathematics and look at correlations which, essentially, are fancy averages; but there is more to it than this.  I say this because most correlations disappointed investors in 2008.  Asset classes that were supposed to provide a cushion in the event of a downturn didn't.

Bonds, on the other hand, especially Treasury notes and bonds which comprise most of the Barclay's Bond Index, are the go-to asset when investors get scared!  This is called "flight-to-quality."

Understanding a bit of history can lead to a pretty good idea of how bonds will act in various scenarios. Is it possible for both bonds and stocks to have a negative return?  Surely, especially when inflation picks up.  Most likely, in this situation, if stocks drop (which is not a given), it won't be by much.  On the other hand, if there is a major downturn, 15% or more say, it is probably because  the market is scared and bonds could be expected to do well.

One point worth emphasizing is that fixed income encompasses money markets, certificates-of-deposit, and savings accounts.  Sometimes people treat these as bond like instruments.  They are not.  Their price won't rise in a "flight-to-quality" instance.

What About Levels?

Most of the bond market has fixated over the past few years on the historically low rates and the need to position portfolios for a rise in rates.  After all, the thinking has been there is nowhere to go but up. Well, time has proven that this isn't exactly the case.  But beyond that, where should bond investors be today?

Well, if they load up on short duration bonds and corporate bonds offering higher yields, they could be severely disappointed in a crisis.  For example, if the market became convinced that we were locked into a serious Japanese-type deflation episode, the meager 2.35% 10-year Treasury yield could look robust.

The bottom line is that investors need to recognize that hedging like, insurance like, properties of bonds when managing their portfolios.  When is more the question rather than if when expecting a stock market correction?  When it comes, investors will appreciate their bonds (pun intended).