Lemmings falling off the Cliff!

Lemmings are small rodents usually found in the Arctic. They breed very quickly and when their population reaches a certain critical mass, they are known to commit mass suicide by leaping off the cliff. (Although according to Wikipedia, it is proven that this was not the usual behaviour of lemmings but rather something propaganded by media to create sensational news.)

Anyways this strange behaviour of Lemmings excited many social scientists bcos they have found similar behaviour in people living on a small island south of Malaysia. But since there are no cliffs around, these people employ foreign maids and constantly abuse them for pleasure. Some experts believe that overcrowding and the pursue of status and material wealth leads to such inexplicable symptoms.

Ok let's move on to something related to stocks.

As you would have guess, in financial markets, participants exhibit Lemmings' strange behaviour as well by mindlessly following others' irrational actions. In most aspects of normal life, most people behave rationally when looking to buy a car, a fridge, whatever. They collect information, talk to others, get viewpoints but ultimately come up with a decision that is usually rational.

However when it comes to stocks, somehow, independent analysis becomes a taboo. People like to follow what others are doing. When the market is shouting buy, buy, BUY into the peak, they simply react like Lemmings, rushing ahead regardless and then when they see the Cliff, they happily jump over it, just like all the other Lemmings ahead of them who jumped. (Of course participants won't literally see a Cliff until they fell off it as the market tanked.)

Strange huh?

I think this has got to do with greed (and not overcrowding or pursue of status though). For the general public, they seldom come in contact with stocks, investments in their daily lives but in times of bubbles, unscrupulous bankers, brokers, agents will start calling them up and sell them dumb products at the peak of markets. And they get sucked in bcos of the dumb freebies and all. I guess it's also human nature to get easily persuaded by friends (selling insurance policies) or sweet young bankers (selling some dumb structured pdts). So it's difficult to really fault the general public.

Well I guess the lesson learnt from the Lemmings is this: always think on your feet and dont blindly follow the front Lemming (or the sweet young banker leading you) down the cliff. (Which makes me think about the condo called The Cliff, so those staying there are Lemmings of the property market?)

Defensive stocks

In different markets, different sexy terms come into play. I guess the latest infatuation on Wall Street in recent months has been "defensive stocks". Defensive stocks usually refer to stocks that will see stable profits even during times of trouble, ie like the past few months lah. These would be stocks in industry sectors like: consumer staples ie your food, beverage, razor blades etc. The thinking is that people need to eat, drink and shave no matter what right? Stock market down means everybody goes without food? Unlikely, so these are defensive stocks.

The other sectors are like pharma (your diabetic patient needs his pills regardless of stock market woes), utilities (eh, obvious I hope, we need electricity even during bear markets) etc. So you get the idea, things that we can't do without even during an economic downturn.

So what are things that we do without during the downturn? Well it actually differs for different entities on this planets. For example, Ah Beng who made money punting property and bought himself two Ferraris will still drive his Ferraris and buy Prada bags for his Ah Lians even though his latest punt has gone wrong and he has a $4mn mortgage but his condo at Sentosa is worth probably <$1mn and his monthly salary is $5k. So to him, Ferraris and Prada bags are still things that HE cannot do without even during a slowdown. But for most people and for the stock market, consumer non-staples (like car, furniture, luxury products, massage chairs, high tech goods etc) usually see profit decline.

Also most of the darling sectors that rallied during 2003-07 bull market ie oil exploration, shipping, property etc. One reason would be bcos credit is drying up and most of these sectors require a lot of credit financing to grow their profits. Of course, some experts may beg to differ, these sectors are in a secular boom and some silly sub-prime trouble is not going to derail their "sexy" story. Well... this blog is big enough for differing biews, so share your thoughts if you have some. The other type of defensive names would be stocks that pay high dividend, has huge amts of cash on their balance sheet, or stocks that generate huge cashflow regardless of business cycles

Hurray! Buffett is World Richest!

This is a time for the world's value investors to rejoice. Our hero, Warren Buffett has become the world's richest man, overtaking Bill Gates, Founder of Unpopular Vista and Insecure Windows and Carlos Slim, Monopoly Tyrant oops Tycoon of Mexico. Of course, Lady Luck has got a lot to do with this, here are a few facts to support the thesis:

1) Microsoft has eaten full full and got nothing better to do, so decided to launch a bid for Yahoo! which aggrevated a lot of investors bcos it's quite a stupid move given that Yahoo! is like yesterday's darling (ie like Demi Moore or Alicia Silverstone, does anybody remember them anyways?). Hence Bill Gates lost like 20% of his net worth in a couple of days and got relegated to No.2. Or was it No.3?

2) Thanks to the sub-prime crisis, investors are desperately looking for safe haven to park their money to hide away from the storm, and where's a better to place than to hide with the Guru? So Berkshire stock rallied like nobody's business and our hero became No.1.

So that's that, fellow value investors buck up and follow your idol and the road to riches will be short ride.

Er, wait a minute, although this blogger believes that value investing is a good way to help you grow your wealth, there are a few things that Buffett can do while most of us cannot. So the road ahead is always not that short I'm afraid. The philosophy is important, but it may not reach the same destination depending on the execution. Here's a few tricks that Buffett can use but we cannot:

1) Buffett can buy over whole co.s and ask mgmt to pay out excess cash to Berkshire. This is a very powerful tool as we all know that mgmt simply cannot be trusted to handle shareholders' money. We have seen so many examples of good co.s generating good cashflow only to see it squandered away on useless ventures. I think the most aped example would be Microsoft. Bill Gates must be cursing Steve Ballmer to death now for doing the Yahoo? deal. Shareholders are so much better off if Microsoft just generate cash and return them to shareholders.

Well this trick is something that you and I cannot do. But it is a good philosophy to bear in mind and remember to apply this, if it is ever applicable in our lives. I guess one example would be property. If you are holding a property that can generate rental yield of 15%. I guess you should never sell this property unless it's like a super real estate bubble in which your property will fetch as much price as the whole of Bintan or something. Except for that scenario, you should never sell something that gives you 15% yield bcos in 6 yrs you get back your principal and the ppty will continue to generate 15% per yr for as long as you own the property!

2) Buffett's investment actions follow the self-fulfilling prophecy. There are websites, blogs, analysts, TV programs, cell groups following Buffett's every investment moves and hence whenever Berkshire makes a move, a lot of people will simply charge and buy with the Sage of Omaha. So is it a wonder why whatever Berkshire buys always goes up? Of course, this is also due to Berkshire's brand name. ie whenever Berkshire buys something, it is a stamp of recognition that the stock or investment is undervalued and money is to be made.

In other words, at a certain stage when a famous investor or fund manager becomes so successful, his success will simply feed onto itself bcos a lot mindless followers will simply support him and validate his investment decisions. Again this is something that we cannot do, yet. You see, this blog will become a sensation in time and start recommending stocks which will then send its own army of mindless followers to buy and the early birds here will reap the rewards. Haha fat dream right?

Well hope is a good thing, and all good things never die. (taken fr Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King) So keep hoping!

Shareholders' Equity

The balance sheet is basically an elaborated display of a simple equation.

Assets - Liabiilities = Shareholders' Equity or simply Equity

What this means is that whatever assets that a company owns, subtracting whatever the company owes, gives you what's left for shareholders. This is also known as the book value of the company.

Shareholders' Equity is usually at the bottom right of the balance sheet (Assets on the left side, Liabilities on the top right) and is usually broken down into the following sub components:

Common stock
Paid in capital
Retained Earnings
Preferred stock
Treasury stock
Others: there are actually a lot more complicated stuff but I will just lump it under others and we will talk about that on another day.

Common stock and paid in capital are usually thought of as the original capital of the company. Common stock is the no. of outstanding shares multiplied by its par value which is usually some arbitrary no. like $1 and paid in capital is usually the proceeds received during IPO or subsequent secondary equity financing.

Retained earnings would be the impt sub-segment to know. Needless to say, retained earnings comes from net profit (from the P&L statement). So what this means is that retained earnings should be as big as possible. If you see a company that has an original capital of say $1mn but retained earnings is like $80mn or some big no. then you know this co. has created tons of value for shareholders. And conversely, if paid in capital is bigger than retained earnings, either this firm is still very young, or it has continously raised new money from shareholders ie old shareholders keep getting their stake diluted and the business model's sustainability is questionable

Preferred stock is basically a stock pays dividend forever and is usually not a big sub-segment. Thus it pays to find out why a co. might have a huge preferred stock capital.

Treasury stock is a negative entry (ie the $ amt here is negative not positive) in shareholders' equity and it arises only when a company does share buybacks. This is a good sign bcos it signifies that the company has its shareholders in mind and is using share buyback as a way to return capital to its shareholders.

Step-By-Step Company Analysis

This is an expansion of a previous post on how to do a detailed company analysis.

Company CheatSheet

The zero-th step for company analysis is actually a quantitative stock screen. Poems have a good system to come up with a list of stocks. As for what criteria to use, the post mentioned above has a list which I would recommend pple to use. The screen should include both company specific financial ratios and valuations.

So you put in the criteria, the the system churns out a list of companies. Then you can select any co. that has a nice sounding name or maybe it is in a good industry and study it. It will probably take you 3-4 days (if you have a full-time job and can only spare limited family time to do this ECA) to read the annual report and broker's reports try to understand its business.

Ratios: when doing the screen, you would have included a few financial ratios, but the trick is to actually look at all other ratios, if something bothers you, ie this co's interest coverage ratio or asset turnover is too low. Then perhaps its not wise to invest in the stock.

Next is to focus of qualitative stuff. Some things that I would look for are:
1) Whether the company is in the right regional markets / right industry ie places where there is still a lot of growth, less competition and co. has pricing power.

2) Market share of its products, it is better to be either No.1 or No.2 in its field bcos anything else, it has no pricing power nor the competitive edge over its competitors. Of course, all industries are different, sometimes, the market is such that there is no mkt leader and can never have one.

3) Its business moat / competitive advantage / barrier to entry of its business, the company needs to have that edge where no one can ever get close to them. For Toyota the edge is its manufacturing capabilities, it can make a cheap, reliable and fuel efficient car targeting the mass affluent, and no one else can do that. But the European cars fight with another edge: branding and image. Think Porsche, Ferrari, Lamborgini.

4) Its management, their compensation scheme and their past actions. Has the mgmt been friendly towards shareholders? Have they issued options or other means to dilute shareholders' stake indiscriminately? Any directors resigned?

5) Clarity of its annual report. Sometimes, the annual report of the company can be very flashy but it does not tell you the impt things. ie. the company is trying to hide. It then pays to avoid these co.s.

Of course, the list goes on and on. And as you gain experience as an investor, you refine your thinking, and know what to look out for: the warning signs, the best practices, the business moats and whether the businesses are sustainable.

There are really so many things that you should look out for and even after that it pays to let things cool for a while, re-visit the company after some time, or after when the stock has fallen a lot. Especially in the Ra-Ra markets of 2006-2007.

So when I have decided that this is a company that I should own, I will wait for a good time to buy. When valuation gets cheap enough. Usually I only look at PER. So if the sustainable forward PER is cheap enough, I will buy. This is the most important step as a wrong entry price will decide if this stock is a 10 bagger or just a 1.5 bagger (after 10yrs).

It's not easy but it's rewarding when you get it right.

Mr Market and the ice-cream machine

Global stock markets are technically in a bearish mode, defined as falling 20% below the previous peak. The other well-known technical indicator is 2 consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth equals recession. Guess most pple know this one right?

In this kind of market, it is natural that most participants feel very down. Especially those who don't have a clue about stocks, trading, investing and entered the markets hoping to make a quick buck bcos their friends/colleagues did just that. Or maybe they heard stories of how pple made quick bucks buying COSCO, hold it for a few weeks and made a couple thousand dollars.

Well, now the stories become how pple loss 50% of their portfolio in one month and in absolute terms translate to $15,000-$30,000. They are in so much pain that they cannot eat, cannot sleep, don't want to hear anyone mention sto.., sorry you are not allowed to finish the word. Ok, if you know any of these people, ask them to come here and this blogger shall play Uncle Agony today.

Buffett and his predecessors like to use this term Mr. Market to describe the stock market. For more info on Mr. Market, click the hyperlink. Well the point I want to make here is that Mr. Market, or rather the stock market is like the Hokkien auction coordinator. He keeps shouting prices day in day out. And the prices are dictated by his emotions and they are usually not rational ie. they do not reflect the true value of the stocks.

For now, let's digress a bit. Let's say you bought this ice-cream machine that makes you fantastic vanilla ice-cream that you can sell for $5 per ice-cream, for many many yrs. Then someone comes over today and tells you, "Hey your ice-cream machine is only worth 50 cent, sell me now!", what do you do? Of course you ignore this mad guy right? Then suddenly next day he appears and again tells you, "Hey your ice-cream machine is worth $10,000, sell me now!" In fact, he will come everyday and quote you a price. So should you go happy like a bird when he says it's $10,000 today, and go appetiteless, sleepless, depressed when he says it's 50 cents tomorrow?

Well if you didn't know what you have bought and couldn't care less and the only thing in your mind when you bought it is that you think you can sell it few weeks later at a 15% profit, then, you should be appetiteless, sleepless, depressed bcos now you can only sell it at 50% lower than the price you pay.

But the good news is, if you hold on to it long enough (like 20 years), it's got a good chance that it may cross your buying price. Bcos the average return for stocks is 5-10% per year, so even if it dropped 50% this month, in a worst case scenario, say if the stock only goes up for 5% per year for the next 20 years, it will rise by 100% and reach your buying price. Meanwhile you can decide if you should be appetiteless, sleepless, depressed for the next 20 years. So that's consolation from Uncle Agony. Doesn't help much I guess, hehe.

But if you took pain to calculate how much your ice-cream machine is worth. And took pain to do research, to wait for a good price to buy the machine. Even if conditions are bad today and you can only sell your machine for less than its true worth, you know it's ok. Bcos you know some day, its value will be recognized.

Of course, humans cannot escape from emotions. Even the most experienced value investors feel the pain when their stocks decline 50%. However it is the philosophy that is important here. When the market is shouting that you are wrong, your stock is worth 50 cents, it doesn't mean that you have to be depressed. Re-look into your analysis and see if there is any truth. Usually there isn't, so be resolute and ignore the noise. It is your ice-cream machine, your stock, you don't need someone to tell you how much it's worth. It make take years to prove your point, that's investment, that's the stock market. You have to live with that in order to play this game.

Free Cash Flow Yield or FCF

One advanced but quite useful financial ratio that has not been discussed on this blog is the Free Cash Flow Yield. This no. tries to determine how much return can an investor expect after the company has made its money and invested what it needs for future operations. It also gives an indication of how much the dividend yield could be.

This ratio is not called an advanced ratio for nothing. For those who think investment is easy, well sorry, you have to read maybe 5-6 posts on this blog in order just to understand this one. I have added the links on all the keywords. Anyways, here's the basic.

A company generates cashflow based on its day-to-day operations. Eg. a hawker selling bar chor mee gets money fr his customers. This no. is called Cashflow from Operations.

Next, he needs to spend some of this cashflow on equipment to maintain its operations (bowls, knives, noodle cutting machine 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.

Next we try to compared Free Cash Flow or FCF with the stock price. So you divide FCF by no. of shares. You get the Free Cash Flow per share. This is similar to dividing Net Profit by the no. of shares to get the EPS.

And finally, you divide the FCF per share by the stock price to get the FCF yield. This is similar to EPS divided by stock price to get the earnings yield, the inverse of the all-famous PE ratio. So we all know, the higher the earnings yield, the better, bcos it means more return of investors. Similarly the higher the FCF yield means more money back to investors.

Empirically FCF yield of 5-8% would indicate that the co. is quite good in terms of managing its cashflow and capex. If you get lucky you may find co.s with 10-12% FCF yield. What this means is that this business keeps churning out cash and yet you need not invest in a lot of new stuff to keep it going. This is the kind of businesses that value investors like. See's Candy would be an example that Buffett would place here. In Singapore, I think Vicom would be a good example. No. of cars keep increasing, but not much new investment needed to check more cars.

Sadly, I would guess that 30-40% of all listed co.s would have a negative free cash flow yield, bcos most businesses require a lot of capex just to keep going. The prime example would be semiconductor and/or tech businesses. Every few yrs, technology advances and companies just have to keep investing just to stay competitive. 6" wafers to 8" then to 12". Everytime to inch size changes, all the eqmt have to change. Is it a wonder why Chartered cannot make money?

So that's FCF yield, a good indicator of whether the co. is good or bad at generating cashflow for investors. But it's quite troublesome to calculate this and usually stock screens don't have this ratio easily available although it's on Bloomberg.

To Cut or Not To Cut

In Value Investing, you NEVER cut losses. If you have analysed the company and have determined that it is a good buy, and you bought it. If it goes down, you should be buying MORE of the stock. Since it is cheaper now. Well, that's provided everything is still the same since the time you did your analysis.

But for most novice investors, including this blogger, our analysis is usually flawed. There is probably something that we missed. Remember the market is not stupid. In fact we all know the saying don't we, "The market is always right." If you bought a stock, and it falls 20-30%, chances are something is wrong with the company, at least in the next few mths (well the market is very short-term focused also). And it pays to redo your analysis.

Well if you are willing to wait out the storm (which may take years), then all is well, it may go down 20-30%, but eventually it will come back, and it will surpass your cost price, in time. If you are a true blue value investor, and you think the co. fundamentals have not change when you decided to buy it back then, and if you got the GUTS, then BUY MORE of it.

For those not so true blue value investors, well you may want to follow some trading rules, ie to cut loss at a certain level. Some recommend 10%, some 15% below the price you bought, depending on how much pain you can endure. Hehe. But remember the tighter the cut loss level, the easier it gets triggered and the easier you get whipsawed. Btw whipsaw means you sell after the stock tanked 15% and then it goes to rally 100% and you go and bang your head on every wall you see.

Cutting loss is actually also rational in some ways bcos you can buy more of the stock at a cheaper price. If the stock is now $10 and you used $1000 to buy 100 shares. It drops to $5. And you use another $1000 to buy 200 shares. So you have 300 shares.

But if you cut loss when it drops to $8. You get back $800. It drops to $5 and you use the original $800 plus another $1200 you get to buy 400 shares! In both cases, you spend $2000 but if you cut loss and buy back at a lower price, you get more shares!

Having said that, it is not easy to cut loss bcos of the psychological factor. This is well studied in behaviour finance. People tend to hold on to their losses far longer than they should. And they take profits too early. Bcos if they cut loss, they have to admit they were wrong, realized their mistakes. But if they simply hold on, it's not realized, there is still HOPE that it will turn around. Vice versa, for profits, once they locked in, they would have proven a point, they got it right. And the right to brag about it later on. So pple always take profit too fast. It is in the wiring of our ape evolved minds. A seasoned investor tries to overcome this malfunction and makes the money.

Of estimates and consensus thinking

I attended an investment session where the instructor asked the class (of around 20 pple) to estimate the size of Thailand vs Singapore. Was it 50x bigger? Or 100x bigger? Or 500x or what?

He wanted to prove a point. The true answer will lie in the range of everybody's estimate. Bcos someone was bound to get it right. Well his point was quite valid, in the end, the answer did lie within the range of everyone's estimate.

But what was more striking to me was that most estimates are wrong and some VERY WRONG. For those dying to know how big is Thailand vs Singapore, well it's actually 73x. The closest estimate was 50x. And only one guy got that close. Some had it 10,000x. My estimate was 400x.

This made me think very deeply about the nature of estimates. And more specifically, estimates of future earnings of listed companies. We know that the sell-side or brokers have their army of analysts to forecast listed companies' earnings for next yr, or 2 yrs out. Maybe, just maybe the analysts' estimates on a listed company's EPS that we, and most investors rely on, might usually be wrong as well. And it's logical that they should be wrong. Bcos estimates, by virtue that they are estimates, are usually wrong!

Of course, you may argue that analysts have access to information since they get to talk to industry people, competitors, company management etc. Well the analogy with Thailand vs Singapore may not be quite right today, since we have Google and Wikipedia.

But imagine if it were the Stone Age and the class was given 1 yr to walk Thailand and Singapore and come up with an estimate, how likely is it for the class to get it right? Probably as likely as the analysts to get next yr's EPS right, right? Which implies that estimates based on some info but INCOMPLETE info is not much help and that's the way it should be.

So consensus thinking and crowd thinking, by logically extending the argument, can actually be usually wrong. This can be quite scary bcos most of us (well some of us) usually follow others' action thinking that they did their homework so we are safe. E.g. I will go for a stall with a respectable queue in front of the shop at an unfamiliar hawker centre. As for financial markets, there is this thinking that even if we are wrong, so would most others and so it shouldn't be that bad.

Now based on the recent poll, I guess most pple would agree that Singtel is a bad investment since most pple thought that Singtel gave back 0% return since IPO. But guess what, the actual answer is more than 44% return since IPO, which is at least 3%pa based on the price of Singtel when the poll started (around S$3.60). Bcos Singtel gave back lots of dividend and capital back to shareholders during the 15 years it was listed. Since then, Singtel reached a new high of S$4.00 or so. That's another 10%. So again, most people are wrong. Ok you may argue 3%pa is not very attractive, esp after putting your money there for 15 yrs. Well its better than fixed D, and the point here is actually estimates are usually wrong, just a reminder.

Also it's a mere 15 years since Singtel IPOed. Statistically, it's not really that significant yet. Yes in order to be of statistically significant, the track record has to be 18 yrs or more! If you hold on to Singtel for the next 3 yrs or more, maybe the annual return will converge 8%pa or something.

So I guess the moral of the story here is this: Don't trust what most people do, they are usually wrong. Do your own homework and come up with the logical conclusion. Or you can visit this blog (which tries to post accurate logical conclusion on most stuff) more often.

The Efficient Market Revisited

There has been a lot of debate since the 1950s whether markets are efficient or not. Btw, if you are asking what the heck is an Efficient Market, you can read this posts first.

Label: Modern Portfolio Theory

Ok Efficient Market. Essentially, some academics came out with this theory that nobody can earn a superior return than the market return (ie average investment return) over an extended period of time bcos markets are damn bloody efficient. ie if there is an inefficiency (or a discrepancy between price and value), eg a stock is worth $5 but is only trading at $3, people will simply keep buying the stock until it is fairly valued. So no matter how hard you try, you can only earn the average index/market return if you invest in stocks/bonds whatever, which is about 8%pa.

As with academics, they made it complicated. So they came up with three forms of Efficient Market which I have forgotten what they are. But the message is nobody can beat the market whether you use fundamental analysis, or technicals or whatever intelligent tools you can come up with. So even if you managed to spot one inefficiency, you are just lucky and you won't be able to do it over and over again. The academics dare you to prove them wrong man! They really do! And sadly I think they are winning. Not 100% but quite close.

Having said that, actually there is a flaw in the EMH, or Efficient Market Hypothesis. The flaw is that the markets are not efficient to begin with. It becomes efficient bcos the market participants are constantly taking out the inefficiencies. Imagine 1 million investors/speculators in the market and everyone just managed to spot 1 price/value discrepancy, then the market will be quite efficient already right?

So the markets become efficient bcos there are lots of participants taking out the inefficiencies all the time. The thing is that most participants can probably pick out 1 or 2 inefficiencies during a certain time frame but not a hell lot over long periods. Hence in general, markets are quite efficient to any one person.

But what if they are those who can consistently spot inefficiencies and earn the difference between price and value? Does that mean that the market is not efficient? In my opinion, the markets are still efficient it's just that this group of people have superior tools to enable them to pick out more inefficiencies than others. Of course for those still blur blur one, we are talking about value investors.

One reason why value investors can do this is bcos of their investment philosophy and investment horizon. Most pple nowadays go for instant reward, taking quick profits. They are not interested in owning businesses, waiting for its value to grow over time. They want profits NOW. Hence although a lot of people may know about value investing, they either

1) don't believe it works; they just don't believe in the owning business thingy
2) may not want to practise it bcos it takes too long to see the fruits
3) they think they are practicing value investing but they still buy and sell stocks like oranges or mobile phones or cars

So those Superinvestors for Graham and Doddsville patiently buy businesses while the world revolves around trading stocks like oranges or mobile phones or cars and Voila! They beat the major indices flat with their 30 yr track record of 25-40%pa. But sad to say, there are probably only a handful of these people and they don't really have a strong statistical argument against the Almightly Efficient Market.

Conclusion: The markets are not 100% efficient but they are efficient enough such that you don't get a free lunch if you don't work hard enough for it. Work hard = read books / annual reports, do a lot of macro, industry, company analysis etc.