Random Thoughts on Various Investment Topics

In this post I would like to share my thoughts on my stance on various matters in investing like whether EMH works or not, TA is bullshit or not etc. So let's start!

Value concepts: I subscribe to most value investing concepts like margin of safety, circle of competence, buy things on sale, value-for-money etc. Most of these are very common-sensical and I don't think there is a need to argue with that. If you have no idea what are these, start reading this blog from the first post back in early 2006.

EMH is bullshit: One thing that I do not agree with other value investors would perhaps be the lack of respect for efficient markets. I think that markets are efficient and it's not easy to beat them. The market is the confluence of everybody's viewpoints and this collective wisdom is actually, usually right, at that point in time. However the market also has an investment horizon that is the average of its participants' horizon, which is usually not very long, abt 1 yr I think. This is probably the only reason why value investors get to have an edge, bcos we look at co.s with solid fundamentals that should outlast market's short-termism over time. Still, I don't think it's easy to get much higher than average return of 8%pa.

Chart reading: I used to think that chart reading is pretty much bullshit bcos if you look at past tosses of coins, can you use that to predict the outcome of your next toss? No. But that is what TA is trying to do. However, prices are not like coins and do have some memory so it might predict future prices. But my guess is its predictive power is probably 2-3 days. So, not that useful. The reason why TA can still work is probably self-fulfilling prophecy at work. Lots of participants playing the game with TA and hence prices do bounce off support levels. I did a simple simulation on the comment section of the last post. Basically, it's possible to make positive return using TA but again, you may not beat market returns. Nonetheless, there are pple who can beat the market using TA and I salute them.

Trading rules: I think this is a useful tool but it works only if you fit it to your temperment, style and investment horizon. E.g. cut loss at -10%. Some can be religious and do it everytime. Some cannot, and see -10% become -50% and curse and swear. According to the value doctrine, you should buy MORE when it drops bcos it just got cheaper right? Well it can go even cheaper, like 2008 and 2009 or even 2010. And your initial analysis must be right. ie things have not changed. If things have changed, the stock is no longer at the original intrinsic value that you calculated, then really must cut. Take profit rule sucks I think. If you sell anything with a 20-30% profit, how are you ever going to make the big buck?

Diversification: Again, this is probably where I differ from the guru (ie Buffett). I think this makes a lot of sense. Diversification is said to be the only free lunch in investing. Of course one major shortcoming is that you must have enough capital. Some textbook says around 30 different investments and they must be relatively uncorrelated lah. This is hard, bcos in today's world, everything just follows everything else. Nevertheless, don't put all your eggs in one basket. Yes we have limited time, money etc. You research on this stock so much and buy 1 lot and see it go up 200%. WTF right? But which is more painful, entire savings become zero or missing out 200%? Beware of the Black Swan!

Well, as most would have realized, I don't subscribe to everything on the value investing doctrine. But I think the core of successful investing has to be Graham/Buffett value philosophy. And now is the time to take action as the fire sale is going on!

Free Cash Flow and Dividend Stocks

As we enter the new year, this is the bonus post that hopefully can make us rich in time to come!

Short Name Industry Subgroup Dividend Yield
SINGAP SHIPPING Transport-Marine 10.53
SIA ENGINEERING Commercial Services 10.05
MOBILEONE LTD Cellular Telecom 9.864
SINGAP AIRPORT T Airport Develop/Maint 9.859
DEL MONTE PAC LT Food-Canned 9.586
SINGAP REINSURAN Reinsurance 9.154
SINGAP PRESS HGS Publishing-Newspapers 8.599
CEREBOS PACIFIC Food-Misc/Diversified 8.503
SINGAPORE POST Transport-Services 8.17
SINGAPORE FOOD Food-Misc/Diversified 7.684
SINGAPORE EXCH Finance-Other Services 7.49
HAW PAR CORP Diversified Operations 6.964
SINGAPURA FINANC Finance-Mtge Loan/Banker 6.667
UNITED O/S INSUR Property/Casualty Ins 6.55
HONG LEONG FINAN Finance-Other Services 6.341
PARKWAY HLDGS Medical-Hospitals 5.804
GREAT EAST HOLD Life/Health Insurance 5.791
SING INV FIN Diversified Finan Serv 5.714
CHUAN HUP HLDGS Transport-Marine 5.263
UNITED OVERSEAS Commer Banks Non-US 5.208
RAFFLES EDUCATIO Schools 5.13
APB BREWERIES Brewery 3.168

This is a list of stocks that have never had a single year of negative free cash flow for the past 8 years and hence I would deem that they should be able to pay dividends for the foreseeable future.

As a surprise, high dividend yield is not selected as a criteria for this list but 15 out of 23 stocks have a dividend yield of more than 6% which I think as high considering that with their strong FCF generative ability, the co.s have less probability of cutting their dividends and what you see is likely to be what you can get as dividends. But don’t be too hopeful, co. mgmt can play the conservative card and decide to keep cash and not pay you.

Incidentally, out of the 700 stocks listed on SGX, only 30 stocks had never had a year of negative FCF and in my opinion, these should be part of the truly investable stocks on SGX.

This drives another point that I have made before. Most stocks on SGX are crap and it is not worth spending time investigating and investing in them.

This does not mean that this list represents ALL the investable stocks on SGX. Or that stocks that don’t make it to this list equals crap. Certainly not! It also does not mean that every stock on this list will turn out to be 5-10 baggers in the future. If this happens, I would require a 25% share of your future profits. But probably, I should have made so much money that I wouldn’t be blogging here. Right?

The list is generated with no regard to the qualitative aspect of the various co.s, like mgmt capabilities, co’s past actions, true source of their cashflow, shareholder friendliness etc. I would advise you to do a lot more work on each of these co.s if you are seriously thinking of putting money into them. Names that I would avoid now would be Parkway: seems like that they might run into cashflow problems with their huge expansions. Others would be Singapura Finance, Raffles Education. Singapura Finance: totally don't know what they do. Raffles Education: wary of what they are doing...

It is unlikely that 80% or even 60% of the stocks on this list will turn out to be spectacular investments. Looking at the 10 year performance to date for this list of stocks, a handful of them have actually declined 50% in the past 10 yrs, making them serious lemons!

Well, that’s investing. Something like finding your life partner. You never get 100% of what you want: e.g. no chores, no quarrels, honeymoon every day, guy’s nights out with no curfew, no anniversary Carat upgrade request but Omega watch present every year, yeah dream on... Hopefully, we get some of what we want, and live with some of what we don't want. And things don't turn out too bad.

My hope would be that this list gives similar results.

Enterprise Value and Free Cash Flow II

This is a continuation of the last post talking about EV and FCF.

A company generates cashflow based on its day-to-day operations. Eg. SIA selling air tickets with fuel surcharges 2x actual ticket prices. The millions of ticket sales generate cash. Of course SIA needs to pay the pilots, the stewardesses, the fuel, landing charges etc. After netting the expenses, it should still have cash left. Some co.s don't, if you own some of these, good luck! Anyways, this no. is called Cashflow from Operations.

Next, SIA needs to spend some of this cashflow on equipment to maintain its operations. Like buying new planes, pilot training programs, etc. This no. is called Capex which is the short-form for capital expenditure.

When you deduct Capex from Cashflow from Operations, you get a no. called the Free Cash Flow. Basically, that's what's left that can be distributed to shareholders or to pay down debt. If the company has no debt, it's basically money that can be paid to the shareholders.

Over the course of many many years (like 10 yrs or more), a good co. will generate significant Free Cash Flow and has the capacity to even grow this amt over time. Now finally, things are getting interesting right? These are co.s that value investors look out for. Usually, I would look at that past 10-15yrs of FCF and take an average amt to use that to calculate EV/FCF. I am assuming that the company can generate this average FCF in the future for many many years.

Let's look at SIA. Over the past 10 years, SIA has 5 yrs of positive FCF and 5 yrs of negative FCF. Cumulatively, it generated a miserable S$175mn of FCF. Our ministers' salaries over 10 years would have generated as much. This is what the most profitable airline in the world can manage. Moral of the story: Don't ever buy an airline!

Combining the two things, you get EV/FCF which is just a measure of the cheapness of the company. The lower the better, like the PE ratio. If this ratio gives 5x, it means that theoretically, you get back your money in 5 yrs. Usually it doesn't get cheaper than that. EV/FCF ranges from 5-15x usually.

Again, back to SIA, the EV is S$8.8bn based on current stock price of S$11+. Calculating EV/FCF give 8800/175 = 50.3x. If you buy SIA today, the free cashflow generated should be able to cover your purchase in about 50 yrs. That's great isn't it? Maybe just in time to cash out and pay for the funeral expenses!

Enterprise Value and Free Cash Flow I

Once upon a time, we talked about a radical ratio called EV/EBITDA which was invented and nearly won the Nobel Prize in Most Innovative Financial Ratio ever invented. Well someone topped that and invented EV/FCF which is Enterprise Value over Free Cash Flow.

What's so great about EV and its alphapetical soup of acroynms? Ok, let's define the terms first.

EV = Market cap + Net Interest bearing debt
FCF = Cashflow from Operations - Capex

For the uninitiated, pls follow the hyperlinks and read what is Market Cap, Cashflow from Operations etc. I will explain EV and FCF.

EV stands for Elise Vuitton, cousin of Louis Vuitton who recently came out with her own luxury brand of leather bags to grab share from the legendary LV.

Oops, wrong number. Ok, here's the real deal.

EV is sort of the theoretical takeover price of a company. In the event of a buyout, an acquirer would need to pay the market price (or market cap) to the existing shareholders. However he would also have to take on the company's debt, but pocket its cash (hence looking at NET interest bearing debt is impt). If a company has no debt and some cash, then EV is less than market cap and the acquirer will be getting a bargain!

Actually in today's market, some co.s are trading below net cash! This means that EV is actually negative. You get paid to buyout some co.s listed on SGX! It goes to show how irrational things can get when markets go crazy. However, as quoted by the great Keynes: markets can stay crazy longer than you can stay liquid. Well usually also longer than you can stay patient lah. Nevertheless, having said all that, it goes to show that markets today are really cheap. This is the Great Singapore Clearance Sale value investors have been waiting for! But wait tomorrow things can get cheaper though.

Anyways, that's EV. In the next post, we shall explore Free Cash Flow or FCF.

Losers' Game

This is the title of an essay and a book by one of the most prominent minds in finance. Just google it to read the original text. I will provide a brief summary here.

In this world, there are two types of games being played. Winners' games and Losers' games. In winner's games, the winner wins through his own actions. In loser's games, the winner wins through his opponents actions. The usual example to illustrate this is tennis. There are actually two type of tennis being played in the world, as observed by some hotshot coach. Amateur tennis and professional tennis.

Professional tennis is a winner's game. Federer wins by delivering the ace that nobody can counter. Or that smash, or whatever. The winner wins through his own actions. In amateur tennis, usually Ah Lian wins by doing nothing. Why? Bcos Ah Beng tries to deliver the ace or that smash to Ah Lian but the ball goes out-of-bounds. Ah Lian wins bcos Ah Beng keeps doing silly things when he is not up to it.

According to the original author: professional golf is also a loser's game. The winner wins by playing it right and let their opponents hit bunker or sand or whatever. But Tiger plays it like a winner's game. Hit bunker but comes back spectacularly and ends with a birdie. That's why everybody loves him!

And finally, the core of this post. What is the biggest losers' game in town? Yes, that's investing. Investing is a loser's game. How do you beat the market?

First, you cannot make silly mistakes. In all loser's games this is the first criteria. You cannot try to be like Federer. Play it safe. do the boring parry. In investing it means don't buy on rumour, don't try to do that punt bcos it dropped 50% in one week, next Monday sure rebound one! Or die die do 2 trades every month to meet that stupid broker quota to save a few dollars on overseas stock deposited at the broker. These are like Ah Beng trying to be Federer. Well unless you ARE like Federer, ie you can trade damn well and earn these quick bucks with 99% success rate, like legendary traders Baruch, Livermore. If so, then ermmm why are you reading this post, you should already be a Big Swinging Dick trading big bucks and writing your own blog! Well, I'm flattered anyways.

Second, you only beat the market when it makes mistakes. Alas, the market don't make mistakes. The market is always right, remember? Well the market is right until the time horizon where all the participants can see what's going on. E.g. the market fell 50% this year as all the participants can only see the severe recession coming in 2009. Nobody knows what's gonna happen after that. If we don't go into the 1930 Great Depression scenario, global economy will bounce back in 2010, 2011, 2012, who knows. But when it does, solid co.s like Coca Cola, Canon, LVMH will continue to grow. So that's one way to beat the market. Sometimes, the market does some obvious mistakes. Like mkt cap of Citigroup going lower than the combined mkt cap of Sg 3 banks. Unless C is going under, this should not happen. And after Lehman went down and create this mess, will the authorities let Citi go down? So in such rare occasion, you can beat the market. But by and large, market don't give you that many chances.

So the conclusion: don't trade, play it safe, and according to the author, who is a strong supporter of indexing, buy indices. Buy the STI ETF, or the S&P500 or the Hang Seng. It's futile to beat the market, so just earn market return.

Fallacy of scruntinizing ratios for the past few years

Financial statements are very essential in fundamental analysis and value investing. To value investors, it's like soldier's M16, accountant's Excel, taxi driver's taxi, you get the idea. From the statements, we calculate the all important ratios. Basically it's one number divided by another and that's supposed to give you insights into the company's business operations, its edge or whatever. Something like adding apple juice to aloe vera and drinking the new juice will actually make you thin!

Actually around like 2% of the time, looking at ratios actually help a bit. The problem is we always only look at last yr's ratios. Or maybe some diligent analyst will look at ratios for the past 5 yrs. Not bad huh. 5 yrs quite long right? Presidential term only 4yrs. Alas, do they know on average how long is one economic cycle from peak to peak or trough to trough?

Well, its seven years on average. The recent one, 2001 to now and still going. The one before 1997 to 2001. 4 yrs, well sometimes it's shorter than average, obviously. So by looking at 5 yrs of ratios like ROE, operating margin, debt to equity ratio, can you really tell if the co. is really good? Esp if you are looking at 2002-2007 and the ratios just keep improving every yr? Like those we see in annual reports. Sooooo impressive. This co. is really something, we tell ourselves.

Our hero, Warren Buffett some yrs back started to ask co. owners to come forward to him if they intend to sell their stake to Berkshire. One of his criteria: GROWING earnings for the past 15-20 years. So seven years still quite amateur actually. Of course, most Sg co.s were not around 20 years ago. So we just have to make do with seven years lor.

So, that's the moral of the story: a co. with improving ratios for the past few years is not necessary a capable one. Rising tide lifts all boats. Keep the economic cycle in mind when looking at ratios for the past few years.

So when will the market bottom out?

The bottom will be somewhere in the next 12-24 mths. ie Dec 09 to Dec 10. What? 24 mths? So my portfolio has to suffer another dunno how many % downside? What kind of prediction is that!?? Well, let's start with the disclaimer first, nobody ever predicted nothing. Bell said nobody needs phones, Ford said nobody needs cars, and the most famous one: Bill Gates said nobody needs computers. So that is just my contribution. It won't be right. Maybe we have already seen the bottom. Who knows? Maybe we didnt avoid the Great Depression scenario. We just don't know yet. 

Ok, let's get to the facts. 

Few trillion dollars have been forked out. Wall Street will be rescued. Global coordinated efforts to help stabilize the whole banking and credit system have done the trick. The life-and-death crisis has been resolved for now. We are out of the ICU, for now. But the stock market keeps tanking! Well, the patient is still very sick. Still on drip and breathing weakly. It takes time to heal. There are still bad stuff in the financial system that needs to be cleared. More disposals and write-off before we are good to go. May go back to ICU again also. But chances not high. Hopefully! We don't want Great Depression II. Check this post. 

As for the "real" economy, it has started to slow and will continue to slow. Esp US. It is said that we need another few trillion dollar fiscal packages for Main Street. The common folks stuck with paying mortgages that cost more than their homes need money. And those pple using credit card loan lines to buy food and pay bills. So wait for some help to come in the next few weeks. Then we need to wait for China to come back. The credit bubble that fuelled part of China's spectacular growth has burst, so China feels some impact, but it's economy is robust enough to withstand the negative impact. 

Given a few quarters, it will come roaring back. And hopefully, it will lift the rest of the world up. In terms of magnitude, we are probably not far from the bottom. Or may already be at the bottom. But in terms of time, things need time to recover. Positive catalysts on the REAL economy must appear before the market can move up. They won't appear so soon but quite a good likelihood it will come in the next 12 to 24 months. 

So time to open the purse strings, it's the great Singapore sale on SGX coming up!

Game Theory - Part 2

This is a continuation of the last post on game theory

Just for argument sake, let's look at the taxi industry in Singapore. There are 6 taxi companies, ie 6 prisoners. The Big Brother is of course Comfort, with 60% market share, having 14,000 taxis out of the total population of 23,000 taxis. Then there is No.2 SMRT with 3,000 taxis or so.

Currently everyone is just following Big Brother moves and nobody is saboing one another. Which is very good for the industry, as profits can improve for everyone. However, passengers suffer lor. We have to accept price hikes no matter what.

Actually, if you think about it, 1 taxi co. can play punk and not follow suit. E.g. SMART taxi sabo the rest by reducing flagdown rate $2, which is significantly lower than its rivals' $3. By doing this it can actually gain market share. Well that's theory lah, in reality, it will not work bcos

1) Passengers currently cannot choose taxis in a taxi queue, so some kind of mentality change needs to take place, maybe like local celebrities leading the movement of choosing taxis in a queue or something

2) Taxi drivers of SMART may not be smart enough (no pun intended :) to realize this can actually boost their revenue and hence protest fervently to the lower flagdown rate

3) The taxi capacity (or supply) in Singapore is actually very tight, demand for taxis at peak hours dramatically exceeds the taxi population capacity, hence there is no need to resort to cutting prices to gain market share to boost revenue at this stage.

Well all this would change as our society matures. Some day in the distant future, taxi usage may decline and taxi population may actually exceed demand and there will be such a need to resort to price wars.

But even so, as one can imagine, after SMART reduces flagdown to $2, Comfort can simply reduce to $1.90 and crush all competition. So nobody will dare to do such things today. So in this set of prisoners, the outcome is usually quite favourable bcos there is a dominant leader that can dictate others' decisions.

However, back to our distant future scenario, taxi usage is in decline and most taxi co.s are struggling, in desperation, SMART, Prime, SMRT and Silvercab merge to form one company which will now have 50% market share. This new entity then reduces flagdown rate to fight Comfort. We may see the worst case scenario in the prisoner dilemma, ie both parties suffer as they reduce prices but yet cannot gain market share. However this will actually be very good for consumers.

Well, that's a sort of real-life game theory analysis of industries. Hope it can give some insights when you think about the companies that you want to invest in.

Game Theory - Part 1

Game theory is something that was very popular about 10 years ago I think. It tries to mathematically deduce what is the best course of action given a set of circumstances. The most simplistic example would be the famous Prisoner Dilemma.

For the uninitiated, I will give a Singapore version. Say two opposition party members ganna sued by our beloved Gahmen and are put into difficult situations. The Gahmen needs either one of them to confess in order to sue them till their pants drop, so has resorted to interrogate each of them separately whether they want to confess to their crimes.

Gahmen: Hey loser, if you confess your crime and sabo your friend, we will lighten the sentence for you.

Opposition: I will never befray my comrade, screw you!

Gahmen: You sure? Your friend in the next room is going sabo you, you know?

Opposition: You are lying! He will never betray me, we play Goli together one!

Gahmen: Look we are the most transparent, most efficient, most clean Gahmen in the world basically here are your choices:

1) If you don't confess, and he sabos you, you get sued $1mn, he just pays $1000 for wasting our time and walk away
2) You confess and sabo him, you pay $1000 and walk away
3) If you both sabo each other, you get sued $1mn each
4) If you both don't confess, basically we lock you two up for 3 days, you both pay nothing and then you can walk, bcos we have no other way to get evidence

Transparent enough right? So it depends whether you trust your friend or not, if you really think he will not sabo you, then you should not confess.

Opposition: He will never betray me, we play Goli together one!

Ok, so that's Prisoner Dilemma. How does it apply to investing?

Essentially, a firm in a competitive industry is always in the prisoner's situation.
1) If the firm cut prices and competition doesn't, then it gains market share
2) If competition cut prices and the firm doesn't then it loses market share
3) If both cut prices, then both are in a worse situation than before
4) If both maintain prices, or even better, both raise prices then both parties will improve their situations

Well, value investors look for firms that won't get into this kind of situation. Firms in businesses where there is no competition or somehow the firm has a huge economic moat that shields it from price wars or other threats.

In the next post, we shall discuss a real life competitive industry involving Prisoner's Dilemma

How to be a millionaire?

Based on the recent poll, most people actually got the right answer. I guess it's the way the question is structured and the answers are listed out. So congrats to those who chose the last answer (1.134mn answer).

Btw, the question is "If you save $1600 a month and your money earns you 10% return per yr on average, what is your total savings at the end of 20 yrs?"

So that's the answer, just save $1600 a month, let it grow at 10%pa, in 20 yrs you become a millionaire. I guess most readers would say, hey that's not exactly an easy think to do. Some households don't even EARN $1600 a month. And most households in Singapore can barely save a few hundred dollars. And 10%pa is very high target, what's more you need to make 10%pa for 20yrs!

Well, you are right! It is not easy, it's not meant to be easy. If it's that easy why don't we see millionaires everywhere? (Well actually they ARE everywhere, about 70,000 of them in Singapore.)

Nevertheless, I think there are a few takeaways here.

1) If you are really determined about becoming a millionaire, this is one sure way to reach your goal instead of relying on some lucky event to happen in your life. E.g. waiting for your HDB or condo en-bloc, or punting the stock market, or winning 4D etc.

2) Time is an element that you can control. Say if you are not sure you can hit the 10%pa, but we are sure about 5%pa right (bcos CPF pays 5%) then work with 5%. The same amt, $1600 compounded at 5% will reach $1mn in 27 years. So the trick is to start early. If poss. better start to start at age zero. Start for your children! Hehe.

Btw I have to spreadsheet that will calculate this for you. Send me an email at xtam.sg@gmail.com if anyone needs one.