Showing posts with label stocks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stocks. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 8, 2021

8/6/21: This Recession Is Different: Corporate Profits Boom

 

Corporate profits guidance is booming. Which, one might think, is a good signal of recovery. But the recession that passed (or still passing, officially) has been abnormal by historical standards, shifting expectations for the recovery to a different level of 'bizarre'.

Consider non-financial corporate profits through prior cycles: 



Chart 1 above shows non-financial corporate profits per 1 USD of official gross value added in the economy. In all past recessions, save for three, going into recession, corporate profit margins fell below pre-recession average. Three exceptions to the rule are: 1949 recession, 1981 recession and, you guessed it, the Covid19 recession. In other words, all three abnormal recessions were associated with significant rises in market power of producers over consumers. And prior abnormal recessions led to subsequent need for monetary tightening to stem inflationary pressures. Not yet the case in the most recent one.

The second chart plots increases in corporate profit margins in the recoveries relative to prior recessions. Data is through 1Q 2021, so we do not yet have an official 'recovery' quarter to plot. If we are to treat 1Q 2021 as 'recovery' first quarter, profits in this recovery are below pre-recovery recession period average by 2 percentage points. Again, the case of two other recessions compares: the post-1949 recession recovery and post-1980s recovery are both associated with negative reaction of profits to economic cycle shift from recession to recovery.

Which means two things:

  1. Market power of producers is rising from the end of 2019 through today, if we assume that 1Q 2021 was not, yet, a recovery quarter (officially, this is the case, as NBER still times 1Q 2021 as part of the recession); and
  2. Non-financial corporate profits boom we are seeing reported to-date for 2Q 2021 is a sign not of a healthier economy, but of the first point made above.
In effect, some evidence that Covid19 pandemic was a transfer of wealth from people to companies that managed to trade through the crisis. 

Monday, May 3, 2021

3/5/21: Margin Debt: Things are FOMOing up...

 Debt, debt and more FOMO...


Source: topdowncharts.com and my annotations

Ratio of leveraged longs to shorts is at around 3.5, which is 2014-2019 average of around 2.2. Bad news (common signal of upcoming correction or sell-off). Basically, we are witnessing a FOMO-fueled chase of every-rising hype and risk appetite. Meanwhile, margin debt is up 70% y/y in March 2021, although from low base back in March 2020, now back to levels of growth comparable only to pre-dot.com crash in 1999-2000. Adjusting for market cap - some say this is advisable, though I can't see why moderating one boom-craze indicator with another boom-craze indicator is any better - things are more moderate. 

My read-out: we are seeing margin debt acceleration that is now outpacing the S&P500 acceleration, even with all the rosy earnings projections being factored in. This isn't 'fundamentals'. It is behavioral. And as such, it is a dry powder keg sitting right next to a campfire. 

Sunday, November 29, 2020

29/11/20: Bubblishiousness

 

Illustrating FOMO and Bubblishiousness vs Reality: Tesla

Source: https://twitter.com/michaeljburry/status/1333110859329990661?s=20

Ya kidding me, not... It's like 10:0 score right now...


Thursday, September 17, 2020

17/9/20: Stonks are Getting Balmier than in the Dot.Com Heat

Via Liz Ann Sonders @LizAnnSonders of Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. a neat chart summarizing the madness of the King Market these days:


Yeah, right: PE ratio is heading for dot.com madness levels, PEG ratio (price earnings to growth ratio or growth-adjusted PE ratio) is now vastly above the dot.com era peak, and EPS is closer to the Global Financial Crisis era lows. 

What can possibly go wrong, Robinhooders, when a mafia don gifts you some chips to wager at his casino?


Thursday, August 20, 2020

20/8/20: All Markets are Now Monetized

 

While the economy burns, the stock markets are literally going bonkers. Here are the main implied volatility options:

Which are symmetric, in so far as they treat volatility as symmetrically-valued to the upside and downside. And here is another way of looking at the same concept via repricing speed, or the rate of change in actual P/E ratios of S&P500 over longer time horizons, in this case: 20 weeks running P/E ratios change:

Source of the chart is @longvieweconomics. What does the above show? We have S&P500 at an all-time high. S&P500's PE ratio (PER) is only slightly below the 2000 peak. And, we have the fastest rate of S&P over-valuation increase in history - full 85 percentage points trough to peak. Both, the fundamentals and the momentum of their deterioration are absolutely out of control. Of course, this is just the stocks. One must never mention the massive bubble blown up by the Fed in the bonds markets. 

The 20-weeks moving change in weekly yields for Aaa-rated bonds maxed out at historical high of -44.06% (remember, lower yields = higher prices) in the week of July 31st this year. Top three historically highest rates of change took place in the three weeks of July 24th-August 7 this year. Overall range of bonds repricing is in the range of 60 percentage points in the current cycle:

This is plain horrendous: there is nothing in the macro and micro fundamentals that can warrant these changes. Except for the expectation of continued monetary accommodation of the Wall Street into the infinitely long future. 


Friday, July 24, 2020

24/7/20: Bonds v Stocks: Of Yields, Investors and Large Predators


Corporates are reeling from the COVID19 pandemic impacts, yet stocks are severely overpriced by all possible corporate finance metrics. Until, that is, one looks at bonds.


Over the 3 months through June 2020, average 10 year U.S. Treasury yield has been 0.69 percent. Over the same period, average S&P500 dividend yield was 2.02 percent. The gap between the two is 1.33 percentage points, which (with exception of March-May average gap of 1.42 points) is the highest in history of the series (from 1962 on).

Given that today's Treasuries are carrying higher liquidity risk (declining demand outside the official / Fed demand channel) and higher roll-over risks (opportunity cost of buying Ts today compared to the future), the real (relative) bubble in financial markets todays is in fixed income. Of course, in absolute returns terms, long-term investment in either bonds or equities today is equivalent to a choice of being maimed by a T-Rex or being mangled by a grizzly. Take your pick.

Wednesday, July 22, 2020

21/7/20: Stonks and Stinks: S&P500 Net Profit Margins


Stonks reporting season is rolling on. And so far, things are predictably gloomy:


Yeeks! But wait, by sector:

  • Seven out of eight sectors are reporting lower net profit margins than 5 year average, with Utilities being the only sector reporting above average margins;
  • Nine out of nine sectors reported so far have lower net profit margins than in 2Q 2019.
Per Factset: "For the second quarter, the S&P 500 is reporting a year-over-year decline in earnings of -44.0% and a year-over-year decline in revenues of -10.5%."

Double yeeeks!

Meanwhile, what's S&P and stonks are doing? 1 month chart:


and 3 months

Because happiness is just around the corner for all.

Thursday, May 7, 2020

7/5/20: No Value in Them, Stonks

No, folks, the markets are still not in line with fundamentals:


And that applies to all three sets of fundamentals: pre-COVID19 conditions in the underlying economy (secular stagnation), during-COVID19 collapse of the economy, and post-COVID19 expectations for the economy.

Which, of course, explains why Buffett sees no opportunities for buying, given the above chart is one of his favourite indicators of value.

Wednesday, March 25, 2020

24/3/20: Q2 2020 S&P 500 Earnings Outlook: Not As Ugly as It Will Be


Per Factset March 23 report, "the aggregate earnings growth rate for Q2 2020 changed from slight year-over-year earnings growth on March 12 (+0.8%) to a slight year-over-year earnings decline on March 13 (-0.7%)." Note: back at the end of January 2020, the expectation was for y/y growth of 5.9 percent. Worse, "expectations for earnings growth for Q2 2020 have been falling over the past few months. On September 30, the estimated earnings growth rate for Q2 2020 was 8.0%. By December 31, the estimated earnings growth rate had fallen to 5.7%. Today, the estimated earnings decline is -3.9%."

"Four of the 11 sectors are now projected to report a year-over-year decrease in earnings for the second quarter: Energy (-68.4%), Consumer Discretionary (-14.4%), Industrials (-9.9%), and Financials (-7.4%)."

All of that, before the second half of March kicked in...

Thursday, March 19, 2020

18/3/20: Dow Jones Industrials: COVID Impact


Top 50 movements down and up in Dow Jones Industrial Average from 1985 through today:

% change on
close, down
% change
on close, up
19/10/1987-22.61%13/10/200811.08%
16/03/2020-12.93%28/10/200810.88%
12/03/2020-9.99%21/10/198710.15%
26/10/1987-8.04%13/03/20209.36%
15/10/2008-7.87%23/03/20096.84%
09/03/2020-7.79%13/11/20086.67%
01/12/2008-7.70%21/11/20086.54%
09/10/2008-7.33%24/07/20026.35%
27/10/1997-7.18%20/10/19875.88%
17/09/2001-7.13%10/03/20095.80%
29/09/2008-6.98%29/07/20025.41%
13/10/1989-6.91%17/03/20205.20%
08/01/1988-6.85%02/03/20205.09%
31/08/1998-6.37%26/12/20184.98%
18/03/2020-6.30%08/09/19984.98%
11/03/2020-5.86%29/10/19874.96%
22/10/2008-5.69%24/11/20084.93%
14/04/2000-5.66%16/03/20004.93%
20/11/2008-5.56%10/03/20204.89%
08/08/2011-5.55%15/10/20024.80%
07/10/2008-5.11%28/10/19974.71%
19/11/2008-5.07%30/09/20084.68%
05/11/2008-5.05%16/10/20084.68%
06/11/2008-4.85%20/10/20084.67%
14/04/1988-4.82%01/10/20024.57%
12/11/2008-4.73%17/01/19914.57%
19/07/2002-4.64%04/03/20204.53%
10/08/2011-4.62%24/09/20014.47%
10/02/2009-4.62%30/11/20114.24%
11/09/1986-4.61%05/04/20014.23%
05/02/2018-4.60%11/10/20024.20%
16/10/1987-4.60%16/12/20084.20%
27/02/2020-4.42%15/10/19984.15%
15/09/2008-4.42%09/08/20113.98%
20/09/2001-4.37%26/08/20153.95%
04/08/2011-4.31%11/08/20113.95%
02/03/2009-4.24%04/01/19883.94%
27/08/1998-4.19%18/04/20013.91%
08/02/2018-4.15%10/05/20103.90%
03/09/2002-4.10%18/09/20083.86%
12/03/2001-4.10%01/09/19983.82%
05/03/2009-4.09%31/05/19883.82%
17/09/2008-4.06%17/03/20033.59%
30/11/1987-4.03%05/07/20023.58%
20/01/2009-4.01%13/03/20033.57%
15/11/1991-3.93%11/03/20083.55%
03/12/1987-3.92%14/12/19873.53%
14/11/2008-3.82%18/03/20083.51%
22/10/1987-3.82%21/01/20093.51%
14/10/1987-3.81%08/12/20083.46%

Saturday, February 8, 2020

8/2/20: Price-to-Sales Ratio Hits an All-Time High for S&P500


Stock are not overvalued, folks. Because, you know, stocks valuations are no longer making any sense...

Via @HondoTomasz, comes this nice chart, plotting the 18-year high in S&P500 PE ratios (gamable) and the all-time highs in Price-to-Sales ratio (less gamable). Do remember, folks, sales are a positive function of inflation and inflation has been pretty weak, of late. Which means that sales are facing two headwinds at the same time: low inflation pressures and low demand growth pressures. Yet, share prices are just keep climbing up in this new economic paradigm that looks like the old Dot.Com paradigm.

Friday, December 28, 2018

28/12/18: BTCD is neither a hedge nor a safe haven for stocks


A quick - and dirty - run through the argument that Bitcoin serves as a hedge or a safe haven for stocks. This argument has been popular in cryptocurrencies analytical circles of recent, and is extensively covered in the research literature, when it comes to 2014-2017 dynamics, but not so much for 2018 or even more recent period dynamics.

First, simple definitions:

  1. A financial instrument X is a hedge for a financial instrument Y, if - on average, over time - significant declines in the value of Y are associated with lower declines (weak hedge) or increases (strong hedge) in the value of X.
  2. A financial instrument X is a safe haven for a financial instrument Y, if at the times of significant short-term drop in the value of Y, instrument X posts increases (strong safe haven) or shallower decreases (weak safe haven) in its own value.
So here are two charts for Safe Haven argument:


The first chart shows that over the last 12 months, there were 3 episodes when - over time, on average, based on daily prices, stocks acted as a strong hedge for BTCUSD. There are zero periods when BTCUSD acted as a hedge for stocks. The second chart shows that within the last month, based on 30 minutes intervals data (higher frequency data, not exactly suitable for hedge testing), BTCUSD did manage to act as a hedge for stocks in two periods. However, taken across both periods, overall, BTCUSD only acted as a weak hedge.

The key to the above is,  however, the time frame and the data frequency. A hedge is a longer-term, averages-defined relationship. Not an actively traded strategy. And this means that the first chart is more reflective of true hedging relationship than the later one. Still, even if we severely stretch the definition of a hedge, we are still left with two instances when the BTCUSD acts as a hedge for DJIA against two instances when DJIA acts as a hedge for BTCUSD.

People commonly confuse both hedging and safe haven as being defined by the negative symmetric correlation between assets X and Y, but in reality, both concepts are defined by the directional correlation: when X is falling, correlation myst be negative with Y, and when Y is falling, correlation must be negative with X. The downside episodes are what matters, not any volatility.

Now, to safe haven:

Again, it appears that stocks offer a safe haven against BTCUSD (6 occasions in the last 12 months) more often than BTCUSD offers a safe haven against stocks (2 occasions).  Worse, the cost of holding BTCUSD long as a safe haven for stocks is staggeringly high: some 60-65 percentage points over 12 months, not counting the cost of trading.

In simple terms, BTCUSD is worse than useless as either a hedge or a safe haven against the adverse movements in stocks.

Wednesday, December 19, 2018

19/12/18: From Goldilocks to Humpty-Dumpty Markets


As noted in the post above, I am covering the recent volatility and uncertainty in the financial markets for the Sunday Business Post : https://www.businesspost.ie/business/goldilocks-humpty-dumpty-markets-2018-433053.


Below is the un-edited version of the article:

2018 has been a tough year for investors. Based on the data compiled by the Deutsche Bank AG research team, as of November 2018, 65.7 percent of all globally-traded assets were posting annual losses in gross (non-risk adjusted) terms. This marks 2018 as the third worst year on record since 1901, after 1920 (67.6 percent) and 1994 (67.2 percent), as Chart 1 below illustrates. Adjusting Deutsche Bank’s data for the last thirty days, by mid-December 2018, 66.3 percent of all assets traded in the markets are now in the red on the annual returns basis.

CHART 1: Percentage of Assets with Negative Total Returns in Local Currency

Source: Deutsche Bank AG
Note: The estimates are based on a varying number of assets, with 30 assets included in 1901, rising to 70 assets in 2018

Of the 24 major asset classes across the Advanced Economies and Emerging Markets, only three, the U.S. Treasury Bills (+19.5% YTD through November 15), the U.S. Leveraged Loans (+7.45%), and the U.S. Dollar (+0.78%) offer positive risk-adjusted returns, based on the data from Bloomberg. S&P 500 equities are effectively unchanged on 2017. Twenty other asset classes are in the red, as shown in the second chart below, victims of either negative gross returns, high degree of volatility in prices (high risk), or both.


CHART 2: Risk-Adjusted Returns, YTD through mid-December 2018, percent

Source: Data from Bloomberg, TradingView, and author own calculations
Note: Risk-adjusted returns take into account volatility in prices. IG = Investment Grade, HY = High Yield, EM = Emerging Markets

The causes of this abysmal performance are both structural and cyclical.


Cyclical Worries

The cyclical side of the markets is easier to deal with. Here, concerns are that the U.S., European and global economies have entered the last leg of the current expansion cycle that the world economy has enjoyed since 2009 (the U.S. since 2010, and the Eurozone since 2014). Although the latest forecasts from the likes of the IMF and the World Bank indicate only a gradual slowdown in the economic activity across the world in 2019-2023, majority of the private sector analysts are expecting a U.S. recession in the first half of 2020, following a slowdown in growth in 2019. For the Euro area, many analysts are forecasting a recession as early as late-2019.

The key cyclical driver for these expectations is tightening of monetary policies that sustained the recovery post-Global Financial Crisis and the Great Recession. And the main forward-looking indicators for cyclical pressures to be watched by investors is the U.S. Treasury yield curve and the 10-year yield and the money velocity.

The yield curve is currently at a risk of inverting (a situation when the long-term interest rates fall below short-term interest rates). The 10-year yields are trading at below 3 percent marker – a sign of the financial markets losing optimism over the sustainability of the U.S. growth rates. Money velocity is falling across the Advanced Economies – a dynamic only partially accounted for by the more recent monetary policies.

CHART 3: 10-Year Treasury Constant Maturity Rate, January 2011-present, percent

Source: FRED database, Federal reserve bank of St. Louis. 


Structural Pains

While cyclical pressures can be treated as priceable risks, investors’ concerns over structural problems in the global economy are harder to assess and hedge.

The key concerns so far have been the extreme uncertainty and ambiguity surrounding the impact of the U.S. Presidential Administration policies on trade, geopolitical risks, and fiscal expansionism. Compounding factor has been a broader rise in political opportunism and the accompanying decline in the liberal post-Cold War world order.

The U.S. Federal deficit have ballooned to USD780 billion in the fiscal 2018, the highest since 2012. It is now on schedule to exceed USD1 trillion this year. Across the Atlantic, since mid-2018, a new factor has been adding to growing global uncertainty: the structural weaknesses in the Euro area financial services sector (primarily in the German, Italian and French banking sectors), and the deterioration in fiscal positions in Italy (since Summer 2018) and France (following November-December events). The European Central Bank’s pivot toward unwinding excessively accommodating monetary policies of the recent past, signaled in Summer 2018, and re-confirmed in December, is adding volatility to structural worries amongst the investors.

Other long-term worries that are playing out in the investment markets relate to the ongoing investors’ unease about the nature of economic expansion during 2010-2018 period. As evident in longer term financial markets dynamics, the current growth cycle has been dominated by one driver: loose monetary policies of quantitative easing. This driver fuelled unprecedented bubbles across a range of financial assets, from real estate to equities, from corporate debt to Government bonds, as noted earlier.

However, the same driver also weakened corporate balance sheets in Europe and the U.S. As the result, key corporate risk metrics, such as the degree of total leverage, the cyclically-adjusted price to earnings ratios, and the ratio of credit growth to value added growth in the private economy have been flashing red for a good part of two decades. Not surprisingly, U.S. velocity of money has been on a continuous downward trend from 1998, with Eurozone velocity falling since 2007. Year on year monetary base in China, Euro Area, Japan and United States grew at 2.8 percent in October 2018, second lowest reading since January 2016, according to the data from Yardeni Research.

Meanwhile, monetary, fiscal and economic policies of the first two decades of this century have failed to support to the upside both the labour and technological capital productivity growth. In other words, the much-feared spectre of the broad secular stagnation (the hypothesis that long-term changes in both demand and supply factors are leading to a structural long-term slowdown in global economic growth) remains a serious concern for investors. The key leading indicator that investors should be watching with respect to this risk is the aggregate rate of investment growth in non-financial private sector, net of M&As and shares repurchases – the rate that virtually collapsed in post-2008 period and have not recovered to its 1990s levels since.

The second half of 2018 has been the antithesis to the so-called ‘Goldolocks markets’ of 2014-2017, when all investment asset classes across the Advanced Economies were rising in valuations. At the end of 3Q 2018, U.S. stock markets valuations relative to GDP have topped the levels previously seen only in 1929 and 2000. Since the start of October, however, we have entered a harmonised ‘Humpty-Dumpty market’, characterised by spiking volatility, rising uncertainty surrounding the key drivers of markets dynamics. Adding to this high degree of coupling across various asset classes, the recent developments in global markets suggest a more structural rebalancing in investors’ attitudes to risk that is likely to persist into 2019.

Thursday, October 4, 2018

3/10/18: Dumping Ice bags into Overheating Reactor: Bonds & Stocks Bubbles


Wading through the ever-excellent Yardeni Research notes of recent, I have stumbled on a handful of charts worth highlighting and a related blog post from my friends at the Global Macro Monitor that I want to share with you all.

Let's start with the stark warning regarding the U.S. Treasuries market from the Global Macro Monitor, accessible here: https://macromon.wordpress.com/2018/10/03/alea-iacta-est/.  To give you my sense from reading this, two quotes with my quick takes:

"Supply shortages, induced mainly by central bank quantitative easing have been a major factor driving asset markets, in our opinion.  Not all, but a big part." So forget the 'not all' and think about risks pairings in a complex financial system of today: equities and bonds are linked through demand for yield (gains) and demand for safety. If both are underpricing true risks (and bond markets are underpricing risks, as the quote implies), it takes one to scratch for the other to blow. Systems couplings get more fragile the tighter they become.

"The float of total U.S. equities has shrunk dramatically, in part, due to cheap financing to fund share buybacks.   The technical shortage of stocks have helped boost U.S. equity markets and killed off most bears and short sellers." In other words, as I have warned repeatedly for years now, U.S. equity markets are now dangerously concentrated (see this blog for posts involving concentration risks). This concentration is driven by three factors: M&As and shares buy-backs, plus declined IPOs activity. The former two are additional links to monetary policies and, thus to the bond markets (coupling is getting even tighter), the latter is structural decline in enterprise formation and acceleration rates (secular stagnation). This adds complexity to tight coupling of risk systems. Bad, very bad combination if you are running a nuclear power plant or a major dam, or any other system prone to catastrophic risk exposures.

How bad the things are?
Since 1Q 2009, total cumulative shares buy-backs for S&P500 amounted (through 2Q 2018) to USD 4.2769 trillion.

Now, those charts.

Chart 1, via Yardeni Research's "Stock Market Indicators: S&P 500 Buybacks & Dividends" book from October 3rd (https://www.yardeni.com/pub/buybackdiv.pdf)


What am I looking at here? The signals revealing flow of corporate earnings toward investment, or, the signs of the build up in the future economic capacity of the private sector. The red line in the lower panel puts this into proportional terms, the gap between the yellow line and the green line in the top panel puts it into absolute terms. And both are frightening. Corporate earnings are on a healthy trend and at healthy levels. But corporate investment is not and has not been since 1Q 2014. This chart under-reports the extent of corporate under-investment through two things not included in the red line: (1) M&As - high risk 'investment' strategies by corporates that, if adjusted for that risk, would have pushed the actual investment growth even lower than it is implied by the red line; and (2) Risk-adjustments to the organic investments by companies. In simple terms, there is no meaningful translation from higher earnings into new investment in the U.S. economy so far in 2018 and there has not been one since 2014. Put differently, U.S. economy has been starved of organic investment for a good part of the 'boom' years.

Chart 2, via the same note:

Spot something new in the charts? That's right: buybacks are accelerating in 1H 2018, with 2Q 2018 marking an absolute historical high at USD 1.0803 trillion (annualized rate) of buybacks. Guess what does this mean for the markets? Well, this:
And what causes the latest spike in buybacks? No, not growing earnings (which are appreciating, but moderately). The fiscal policy under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act 2017, or Trump Tax Cuts.

Let's circle back: monetary policy madness of the past has been holding court in bond markets and stock markets, pushing mispricing of risks to absolutely astronomical highs. We have just added to that already risky equation fiscal policy push for more mispricing of risks in equity markets.

This is like dumping picnic-sized bags of ice into the cooling system to run the reactor hotter. And no one seems to care that the bags of ice are running low in the delivery truck... You can light a smoke and watch ice melt. Or you can run for the parking lot to drive away. As an investor, you always have a right choice to make. Until you no longer have any choices left.