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Four Important Lessons for Individual Investors from the Brexit Vote

10 Sunday Jul 2016

Posted by wmosconi in Alan Greenspan, Black Swan, bond market, Brexit, Brexit Vote, Emotional Intelligence, EQ, EU, European Union, Fed, Federal Reserve, finance, finance theory, financial advice, Financial Advisor, financial goals, financial markets, Financial Media, Financial News, financial planning, financial services industry, Greenspan, Individual Investing, individual investors, Internet Bubble, investing, investing advice, investing information, investing tips, investment advice, investments, Irrational Exuberance, Nassim Taleb, personal finance, portfolio, Post Brexit, PostBrexit, rebalancing, rebalancing investment portfolio, risk, risk tolerance, stock market, Stock Market Returns, Stock Market Valuation, Taleb, Uncategorized, Valuation, volatility, Warren Buffett

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Alan Greenspan, asset allocation, Black Swan, bonds, Brexit, BrexitVote, EU, European Union, Fed, Federal Reserve, finance, financial advice, Financial Advisor, Financial Advisors, Financial Market History, financial markets, financial planning, financial services, financial services industry, Greenspan, individual investing, investing, InvestingLessons, investment advice, investments, Nassim Taleb, portfolio, portfolio allocation, portfolio management, Post Brexit, PostBrexit, stock market, stocks, Taleb, UK, uncertainty, volatility, volatiltiy, Warren Buffett

The vote by the United Kingdom (UK) to leave the European Union (EU) caught the majority of individual investors by surprise.  In fact, the so-called Brexit was not foreseen by many of the most sophisticated professional investors and money managers all around the world.  The election results sent shockwaves through the financial markets on the Friday and Monday following the Brexit vote.  The most notable effect was the devaluation of the pound to its lowest level since 1985.  Over the course of Tuesday through Friday, the US and European stock markets gained back nearly all their losses from the two days after the Brexit vote.  This fast-moving volatility has left individual investors feeling confused, frustrated, bewildered, and a bit scared.  However, the Brexit vote results offer individual investors a unique set of key lessons to learn and understand.

The four important lessons for individual investors from the Brexit vote are as follows:

  • 1)  There are very few seminal events in financial market history that affect the future path of stocks, bonds, and other assets.

 

The difficult thing to realize about the financial markets is that there are very few consequential events that make an inflection point or major change in the direction of the financial markets.  Even more frustrating than that, these consequential events are only known with the benefit of hindsight.  In other words, what seems like a monumental event today may or may not be considered one of those major events.  Given the fact that there are so few, there is a high probability that the seemingly major events of today will not fall into the seminal event category of financial market history.

What are some of the seminal events in financial market history?  Here is a list of some of the seminal events in chronological order:  the stock market crash in October 1987, the bursting of the bond bubble in 1994, the Asian contagion of 1997-1998, the bursting of the Internet bubble in March 2000, and the Great Recession of the financial crisis starting in September 2008.  There are many more examples previous to 1987, but these are events from recent financial market history that many individual investors will remember.  Keep in mind that in between all of these events are a string of other major events that turned out to be minor blips that caused only fleeting financial market volatility or none at all.

Furthermore, these seminal events are confusing to financial market participants in and of themselves.  For example, let’s take a closer look at the stock market crash of October 1987.  The US stock market dropped over 20% in one day, and things looked very dire.  If an individual investor with a portfolio of $100,000 had sold his/her stock mutual funds (primary investment vehicle used by individuals on the day of the crash, he/she would have a portfolio worth $80,000 approximately.  That type of individual investor was likely to be very fearful and stay out the of stock market for the remainder of 1987.  If an individual investor with a similar portfolio of $100,000 had keep his/her money in stocks on the day of the crash and for the rest of 1987, he/she would actually have roughly $102,000 at the end of 1987.  Why?  Well, there are not too many investors these days that remember how 1987 really turned out for the US stock market.  The S&P 500 index ended up about 2% for the year, so US stocks recovered all of the losses from the crash and a bit more.  Here’s a little fun exercise:  Ask your Financial Advisor or Financial Planner what the return of stocks was in 1987.  The vast majority will assume it was a horrible down year for performance returns.

Another excellent example is the bursting of the Internet bubble in March 2000.  The reason it is so interesting is that individual (and even professional) investors forget the history.  Alan Greenspan, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve during that time period, gave a famous speech where he coined the term, “irrational exuberance”.  Greenspan warned investors that the Internet and technology stocks were getting to valuations that were way out of line with historical norms for valuation of stocks.  What do individual investors forget?  Well, that famous speech was actually given in December 1996.  Yes, that is correct.  Greenspan warned of the Internet bubble, but it took nearly 3 ½ years before financial markets took a nosedive.  The main point here is that smart, rationale professional money managers and economists can know that financial market valuations are out of whack in terms of valuation at any given point in time.  (Note that this can also be stock market valuations that are too low).  However, these conditions can persist for far longer than anyone can imagine.  That is why individual investors should not be so quick to sell (or buy) major portions of their portfolio of stocks and bonds when these predictions or observations are make.

For a more in depth look at this concept, you can refer to a blog post I wrote three years ago on this very subject.  The link to that blog post is as follows:

https://latticeworkwealth.com/2013/08/04/todays-news-should-prompt-you-to-adjust-your-entire-investment-portfolio/

  • 2)  Investors focus on valuations (no emotions) while traders and speculators focus on market sentiment (emotions) and valuation (no emotions).

The majority of professionals who talk to individual investors and provide advice will explain how important it is to keep emotions out of the equation when dealing with elevated market volatility.  When the financial markets are bouncing up and down by large amounts in the short term, it can be very difficult to keep a cool head and resist the urge to buy or sell stocks, bonds, or other assets.  The frenetic pace of market movements makes it seems as though an individual investor needs to do something, anything in response.  The standard advice is to keep one’s emotions in check focus on the long term, and stick to the financial plan.  What is usually missing from that advice is a more complete explanation why.

There are two general types of financial market participants:  investors and traders/speculators.  These two groups have vastly different goals and approaches to the financial markets.  Investors are focused on investing in stocks, bonds, and other assets in order to obtain returns over time from their investments.  The long term might be defined as five years.  Thus, day-to-day fluctuations in the financial markets mean very little to them.  On the flipside, traders/speculators are focused on making gains in stocks, bonds, and other assets in the short term in order to obtain returns.  The short term for this group might be hourly, the medium term might be daily, and the long term might be weekly.  With this particular group, they need to determine both the likely direction of the financial markets due to both market sentiment and valuation.

As you might imagine, the traders/speculators have to analyze emotions or the psychology of financial market participants.  Gauging market sentiment (general short term positioning of traders/speculators in stocks, bonds, and other assets in terms of their trend to buy or sell) is all about emotions.  Additionally, they must be able to combine that with proper valuations for stocks, bonds, and other assets.  Essentially they need to be correct twice.  On the other hand, investors are focused on the long term which corresponds to valuation.  Valuation over the long term is not driven by emotions.  There is a very famous saying by Ben Graham who taught one of the most well-known investors of all time, Warren Buffett.  Graham said, “In the short term the market is a voting machine, in the long term the market is a weighing machine.”  The takeaway from Graham’s quotation is that market sentiment (i.e. emotions) can drive the financial markets wildly over the short term.  However, after a period of years, financial markets always seem to follow the path back to what their true valuations are.  Since emotions are not part of that equation, individual investors should feel more comfortable ignoring or at least subduing their emotions whenever the financial markets exhibit high levels of volatility.

A related part of the story is the financial media (both TV and print) almost always provide information for traders/speculators.  To be perfectly honest, the financial media would not have much to talk about if long-term investing was the topic.  Essentially they would recommend analyzing one’s risk tolerance, define one’s financial goals, and then build a portfolio of financial assets to reach those goals over the long term.  Yes, true investing is very boring actually.  The financial media needs to have something more “exciting” to talk about in order to have viewers (readers) and the corresponding advertising dollars that come from that.  Therefore, the stories and article appearing in the financial media are geared toward traders/speculators.  Now if you are an investor, you can either ignore this bombardment of information or take it with the proverbial “grain of salt”.  Thus, you can keep your emotions in check when all the traders/speculators are wondering how to react to the market volatility right now each and every trading day or week.

For a more in depth discussion of managing one’s emotions as it relates to investors, you can refer to one of my older blog posts.  The link to that blog post is as follows:

https://latticeworkwealth.com/2015/06/11/two-steps-to-help-individual-investors-become-more-successful-at-investing/

  • 3)  The benefit of diversification can disappear or be reduced greatly whenever there are periods are elevated volatility.

The benefit of diversification is one of the hallmarks of the proper construction of an investment portfolio for individual investors.  The basic premise (which has been proven over very long periods of time) is that investing in different asset classes (e.g. stocks, bonds, real estate, precious metals, etc.) reduces the volatility in the value of an investment portfolio.  A closer look at diversification is necessary before relating the discussion back to the Brexit vote.  The benefit of diversification stems from correlations between asset classes.  What is correlation?  To keep things simple, a correlation of 1 means that two different assets are perfectly correlated.  So a correlation of 1 means that when one asset goes up, the other asset goes up too.  A correlation of -1 means that two assets are negatively correlated.  So a correlation of -1 means that when one asset goes up, the other asset goes down (exactly the opposite).  A correlation of 0 means that the two assets are not correlated at all.  So a correlation of 0 means that when one asset goes up, the other asset might go up, go down, or stay the same.  Having an investment portfolio that is properly diversified means that the investments in that portfolio have a combination of assets that have an array of correlations which dampens volatility.  Essentially the positively correlated assets can be balanced out by the negatively correlated assets over time which reduces the volatility of the balance in one’s brokerage statement or 401(k) plan.

What does all this correlation stuff have to do with the Brexit vote?  Surprisingly, it has quite a bit to do with the Brexit vote.  Note that this discussion also applies to any situation/event that causes the financial markets to exhibit high levels of volatility.  During extreme volatility like investors witnessed after the Brexit vote, the correlations of most asset classes started to increase to 1.  Unfortunately for individual investors, that meant that diversification broke down in the short term.  Most all domestic and international stock markets went down dramatically over the course of the two trading days following the Brexit vote.  Therefore, individuals who had their stock investments allocated to various different domestic and international stocks or value and growth stocks all lost money.  When correlations converge upon 1 during extreme market shocks, there is really nowhere to “hide” over the short term.  In fact, the only two asset classes that did very well during this period were gold and government bonds.

What is the key takeaway for individual investors?  Individual investors need to realize that there is an enormous benefit to having a diversified portfolio.  However, diversification is associated with investing over the long term and thereby harnessing its benefit.  There are times of market stress, like the Brexit vote and aftermath, where diversification will not be present or helpful.  When those times come around, individual investors need to keep emotions out of the picture and stick to their long-term financial plans and investment portfolios.

  • 4)  The surprise Brexit vote provides the perfect opportunity for individual investors to evaluate their risk tolerances for exposure to various risky assets.

The two trading days after the surprise vote by the UK to leave the EU (Brexit) were very volatile and very tough to keep emotionally calm.  Individual investors were faced with a very unusual situation, and the urge to sell many, if not all of their investments was very real.  That reaction is perfectly understandable.  Now for the bad news, there will be another time when volatility is as great as or larger than the volatility that the Brexit vote just caused.  In fact, there will be many such periods over the coming years and decades for individual investors.  In spite of that bad news, the Brexit vote should be looked at as a learning experience and opportunity.  Since individual investors know that there will be another period of elevated volatility, they can revisit their personal risk tolerances.

It is extremely difficult to try to determine or capture one’s risk tolerance for downturns in the financial markets in the abstract or through hypothetical situations.  You or with the assistance of your financial professional normally asks the question of whether or not you would likely sell all of your stocks if the market went down 10%, 15%, 20%, or more.  How does an individual investor answer that question?  What is the right answer?  There is no right or wrong answer to that type of question.  Each individual investor is unique and has his/her own risk tolerance for fluctuations in his/her investment portfolio.  A better way to answer the question is to convert those percentages to actual dollar amounts.  For example, if an individual investor starts with $100,000, would he/she be okay with the investment portfolio decreasing to $90,000, $85,000, or $80,000 over the short term.  Note that the aforementioned dollar amounts sync up with the 10%, 15%, and 20% declines illustrated previously.

The opportunity from the Brexit vote is that individual investors have concrete examples of the volatility experienced in their investment portfolios.  It is far easier to analyze and determine one’s risk tolerance by looking at actual periods of market stress.  Depending on your stock investments, the total two-day losses might have been anywhere between 5% to 10%.  Let’s use a 10% decline for purposes of relating this actual volatility to one’s risk tolerance.  If an individual investor was invested 100% in stocks prior to the Brexit vote, he/she would have lost 10% in this scenario.  Let’s use hypothetical dollar amounts:  if the starting investment portfolio was $100,000, the ending investment portfolio was $90,000.  Now the vast majority of individuals do not have all of their money invested in stocks.  So let’s modify the example above to an individual investor who has 50% in stocks and 50% in cash.  In that particular scenario, the individual investor has $50,000 invested in stocks and $50,000 invested in cash.  If stocks go down by 10%, this individual investor will have an ending investment portfolio of $95,000.  Why?  The individual investor only losses 10% on $50,000 which is $5,000 not the full $10,000 loss experienced by the individual investor with a hypothetical portfolio of 100% in stocks.

The importance of the illustrations above and its relation to the Brexit vote is that one can quickly calculate the actual losses from a market decline with a good degree of accuracy.  So let’s say that you had 60% of your money invested in stocks prior to the Brexit vote.  If the overall stock market declines by 10%, your stock investments will only decline by 6% (60% * 10%) assuming the other 40% of your investment portfolio remained unchanged.  So let’s put this all together now.  If you look back at the stock market volatility caused by the Brexit vote, you need to adjust the overall stock market decline by the percentage amount you have invested in stocks.  That adjusted percentage loss will be close to the decline in your overall investment portfolio.  Now whatever that adjusted percentage amount is, ask yourself if you are comfortable with that percentage loss over the short term.  Or is that way too risky?  If the adjusted percentage is way too risky for you and makes you uncomfortable, that is perfectly fine.  The important piece of knowledge to learn is that you need to work with your financial professional or reexamine your investment portfolio yourself to reduce your exposure to stocks such that the adjusted percentage loss is reasonable for you to withstand.  Why?  Because there will be another market volatility event on the order of magnitude of the Brexit aftermath or even worse.

Keep in mind that I am not making a financial market prediction over the short term.  The important point is that the history of financial markets has shown that periods of elevated market volatility (i.e. lots of fluctuations up and down) keep occurring over time.  The Brexit vote provides a real-life example to determine if your risk tolerance is actually lower than you first imagined.  The next cause of market volatility may be a known market event similar to how the UK vote to leave the EU was.  The harder things to deal with are market volatility stemming from the unknown and unforeseeable.  These market volatility events are called “black swans” which is the term coined by Nassim Taleb in his book by the same name several years back.  A “black swan” can be a positive event for the market or a negative event for the market.  As it relates to individual investors and risk tolerance, the negative “black swan” is applicable.  Now the term “black swan” is improperly used today by many investment professionals.  A “black swan” is an event that by definition is unknown and cannot be predicted.  When it does occur though, there is a period of extreme market volatility afterward.  Thus, you can adjust your risk tolerance to be better prepared for future events that will cause market volatility, either known events like the Brexit vote or unforeseen events.  The Brexit vote aftermath should be embraced by individual investors as a golden opportunity to ensure that they are properly (or more precisely) measuring their risk tolerances.

Summary of Important Lessons for Individual Investor from the Brexit Vote:

  1.  There are very few monumental financial market events that should cause individual investors to feel inclined to immediately change their investment portfolios. Plus, they can only truly be identified by hindsight;
  2. Investors should focus on valuation of financial assets (no emotions here), traders/speculators worry about market sentiment (emotions) and valuation (no emotions here);
  3. The benefit of diversification can disappear or be greatly reduced during periods of extreme market volatility and financial market stress over the short term;
  4. The surprise Brexit vote offers individual investors a valuable opportunity to see if their risk tolerances are aligned with the possibilities of short-term market declines.  This real-life event can be used to redefine one’s risk tolerance to better withstand similar periods of market volatility that will inevitably occur in the future.

The Top 5 Most Read Articles in my Investing Blog During 2015

29 Tuesday Dec 2015

Posted by wmosconi in asset allocation, bond market, bonds, Consumer Finance, Fed, Federal Reserve, finance, finance theory, financial advice, Financial Advisor, financial advisor fees, financial advisory fees, financial goals, financial markets, financial planning, financial services industry, Individual Investing, individual investors, interest rates, investing, investing advice, investing information, investing tips, investment advice, investment advisory fees, investments, passive investing, personal finance, portfolio, reasonable fees, reasonable fees for financial advisor, reasonable fees for investment advice, reasonable financial advisor fees, rebalancing, rebalancing investment portfolio, rising interest rate environment, rising interest rates, risk, risk tolerance, statistics, stock market, stock prices, stocks, Yellen

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asset allocation, bond market, bonds, Federal Reserve, finance, financial advisor fees, individual investors, interest rates, investing, investing advice, investing blogs, investing tips, investment costs, portfolio rebalancing, reasonable fees for financial advisor, reasonable fees for investing, rebalancing, rising interest rate environment, rising interest rates, stock market, stocks

The most popular articles read over the past year included some writings from a couple of years ago and were also on a myriad of topics. The listing of articles below represents the most frequent viewings working downward.

  1. Are Your Financial Advisor’s Fees Reasonable? Are You Actually Adding More Risk to Your Ability to Reach Your Long-Term Financial Goals? Here is a Unique Way to Look at What Clients Pay For.

 This article has consistently drawn the most attention from readers of my investing blog. Individual investors have learned from me and many others that one of the most important components of being successful long-term investors is by keeping investment costs as low as possible.  This particular writing examines investing costs from a different perspective.  In general, the higher the investment costs an individual investor incurs, the higher the allocation to riskier investments he/she must have to reach his/her financial goals.

Link to the complete article: https://latticeworkwealth.com/2013/10/26/are-your-financial-advisors-fees-reasonable-are-you-actually-adding-more-risk-to-your-ability-to-reach-your-long-term-financial-goals-here-is-a-unique-way-to-look-at-what-clients-pay-for/

2. Are Your Financial Advisor’s Fees Reasonable? Here is a Unique Way to Look at What Clients Pay For.

 This article is closely followed by the previous one in terms of popularity and forms the basis for that discussion actually. The general concept contained in this writing is that most asset managers now charge investors a fee for managing their investments based upon Assets under Management (AUM).  The fee is typically 1% but can be 2% or higher.  The investment costs to the individual investor per year are the total balance in his/her brokerage account multiplied by the fee which is commonly 1%.  However, the 1% grossly misrepresents the actual investment costs because the individual investor starts off with the total balance in his/her brokerage account.  The better way to express the fees charged per year is to divide the AUM percentage by the growth in the portfolio over the year.  That percentage answer will be quite a bit higher.

Link to the complete article: https://latticeworkwealth.com/2013/08/07/are-your-financial-advisors-fees-reasonable-here-is-a-unique-way-to-look-at-what-clients-pay-for/

3)  Rebalancing Your Investment Portfolio – Summary

 Earlier in the year, I compiled a three-part series that examined the concept of rebalancing one’s investment portfolio. Rebalancing is an excellent investing strategy to learn about and apply at the end of the year.  Rebalancing in its simplest definition is the periodic reallocation of the investment percentages in one’s investment portfolio back to an original model after a passage of time.  This summary of rebalancing provides a look at rebalancing that is helpful for novice individual investors through more advanced folks.

Link to the complete article: https://latticeworkwealth.com/2015/11/25/rebalancing-your-investment-portfolio-summary/

4)  How to Create an Investment Portfolio and Properly Measure your Performance: Part 2 of 2

 While this article is the second part of a discussion on the creation of an investment portfolio, it is arguably the more important of the two because it looks at a topic too often not relayed to individual investors. This writing talks about the importance of measuring the performance of your investment portfolio’s investment returns.  The financial media tends to focus solely on comparing your portfolio to the performance of the S&P 500 Index.  That comparison is “apples to oranges” the vast majority of the time because most individual investors have many different types of investments in their portfolios.  Therefore, I show you how institutional investors measure the performance of their investment portfolios.  The concept is broken down into smaller parts so it is very understandable and usable for individual investors.

Link to the complete article: https://latticeworkwealth.com/2013/07/19/how-to-create-an-investment-portfolio-and-properly-measure-your-performance-part-2-of-2/

5)  How Can Investors Survive in a Rising Interest Rate Environment? – Updated

 Although this particular article was first published a couple of years ago, the content is even more valuable today. The Federal Reserve increased the target range for the Federal Funds Rate by 0.25% on December 16, 2015 and has indicated that more interest rate increases are likely in the future.  Thus, we have entered a period in which interest rates are generally headed higher over the next several of years.  Most financial pundits will bemoan this type of environment because higher interest rates mean that the prices of most bonds go down.   It makes it harder to earn any investment returns from bonds.  However, there are a number of investments and investment strategies that benefit from an increasing interest rate environment.  This article examines six different things individual investors can do.

Link to the complete article: https://latticeworkwealth.com/2013/11/30/how-can-investors-survive-in-a-rising-interest-rate-environment-updated/

 

I hope you enjoy these popular articles from my investing blog. My goal is to keep on releasing more information in 2016 to assist individual investors in navigating the world of investing.  Thank you to all my readers in the United States and internationally!

A New Paradigm for Investing on 50 year-old Investment Advice Available on Amazon.com

03 Tuesday Dec 2013

Posted by wmosconi in alpha, asset allocation, Bernanke, beta, bonds, business, Consumer Finance, Education, Fama, Fed, Fed Taper, Fed Tapering, Federal Reserve, finance, financial advisor fees, financial planning, Individual Investing, investing, investing, investments, stocks, bonds, asset allocation, portfolio, investment advisory fees, investments, Markowitz, math, Modern Portfolio Theory, MPT, Nobel Prize, Nobel Prize in Economics, portfolio, rising interest rate environment, rising interest rates, risk, Schiller, Sharpe, sigma, statistics, stock prices, stocks, volatility, Yellen

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alpha, asset allocation, Bernanke, beta, bonds, business, consumer finance, economics, education, Fama, Fed, Fed taper, Fed Tapering, Federal Reserve, finance, investing, investments, math, Modern Portfolio Theory, MPT, Nobel Prize, Nobel Prize in Economics, personal finance, portfolio, portfolio management, Schiller, Shiller, statistics, stocks, volatility, Yellen

I am happy to announce that I have published another book on Amazon.com.  I have decided to make it FREE for the rest of the week through Saturday, December 7th (it normally retails for $4.99).  The book is another installment in my A New Paradigm for Investing series.  In this particular book, I focus on the use of Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) as the primary tool by Financial Advisors to recommend portfolio allocations.  The theory is over 50 years old, and most of its assumptions have been shown to be less and less useful.  I explore the reasons why in my text.  I have tried to write in such a manner that you do not need a degree in mathematics or statistics to understand its contents.  Futhermore, you do not need to know about the intricacies of MPT in order to follow my logic.  You would find the same information in a college textbook but in a condensed format.

Note that this book is available for download onto a Kindle.  Additionally, there is a Kindle app for iPhones and Android devices which is free to download.  Amazon.com prime members can borrow the book for FREE. I have provided a link below to make it easier.   My email address is latticeworkwealth@gmail.com should you have any questions/comments/feedback.

The book is:

1)      A New Paradigm for Investing:  Is Your Financial Advisor Creating Your Portfolio with a 50 Year-Old Theory?:

http://www.amazon.com/New-Paradigm-Investing-Financial-ebook/dp/B00FQQ0CKG/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1381520643&sr=1-1&keywords=a+New+paradigm+for+investing+by+William+Nelson

I would like to thank my international viewers as well.  I also wanted to especially thank some selected followers of my @NelsonThought and @LatticeworkWlth Twitter accounts (each of whom I would recommend following for the content and insight):

Followers on @NelsonThought:

The Wealth Report @wsjexperts – Wall Street Journal #wsjexperts

The Royce Funds @RoyceFunds

Research Magazine @Research_Mag

Barron’s Online @BarronsOnline

Vanguard FA @Vanguard_FA

Cleveland Fed Research @ClevFedResearch

Pedro da Costa @pdacosta

Muriel Siebert & Co. @SiebertCo

Roger Wohlner, CFP® @rwohlner

Ed Moldaver @emoldaver

Sylvia Maxfield @sylviamaxfield

The Shut Up Show @theshutupshow

Berni Xiong (shUNG) @BerniXiong

Followers on @LatticeworkWlth:

Euro-banks @EuroBanks

Direxion Alts @DirexionAlts

Charlie Wells @charliewwells

AbsoluteVerification @GIPStips

Investment Advisor @InvestAdvMag

Gary Oneil @GaryONeil2

MJ Gottlieb @MJGottlieb

Bob Burg @BobBurg

Melody Campbell @SmBizGuru

TheMichaelBrown @TheMichaelBrown

Phil Gerbyshak @PhilGerbyshak

MuniCredit @MuniCredit

D.J. Rob-Ski @DJRobSki

How Can Investors Survive in a Rising Interest Rate Environment? – Updated

30 Saturday Nov 2013

Posted by wmosconi in asset allocation, bank loans, Bernanke, bonds, business, Consumer Finance, Education, Fed, Fed Taper, Federal Reserve, finance, financial advisor fees, financial planning, Individual Investing, interest rates, investing, investing, investments, stocks, bonds, asset allocation, portfolio, investment advisory fees, investments, LIBOR, math, MBS, personal finance, portfolio, rising interest rate environment, rising interest rates, risk, statistics, stock prices, stocks, Suitability, volatility, Yellen

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asset allocation, bank loans, Bernanke, bonds, Fed, Fed taper, Fed Tapering, Federal Reserve, fixed income, fixed income securities, interest rate swaps, interest rates, investing strategies, investments, LIBOR, MBS, portfolio management, retirement, rising interest rate environment, rising interest rates, syndicated bank loans, volatility, Yellen

I probably get this question asked of me more than any other these days, especially by retirees.  Investors were once able to place money into bank certificate of deposits (CDs) or into money market funds and easily earn more interest than the rate of inflation.  Unfortunately, the financial crisis of 2008 changed all that in a major way.  While the events surrounding the dark days of the close of Lehman Brothers, the bailout of AIG, and the nearly $800 billion TARP program, were not the sole cause of this phenomenon, they certainly did not help.  The Federal Reserve (Fed) led by the chairman, Ben Bernanke, had to lower interest rates to avoid the credit and liquidity crisis of that time period.  The Fed brilliantly avoided a meltdown and depression.  The side effect is that financial market participants have gotten used to low interest rates.  You will hear the term “taper” thrown about now.  The Fed is not going to raise interest rates yet; rather, they are going to slow their purchase of Treasury instruments and mortgages on the open market.  They are not raising the Fed Funds rate (do not worry about what that is exactly), but, since they were buying approximately 70% of all US Treasuries issued, bond market investors are worried that this demand/supply imbalance will naturally cause interest rates to rise (interest rates have already gone up).  Well, if interest rates will be higher, shouldn’t that be better for bond investors?

An urgent side note to all investors is as follows:  “Beware of financial professionals that recommend dividend stocks or other equities as replacements for your fixed income allocation”.  What I mean by this is that the volatility of stocks is far greater than bonds historically.  Yields may be very low in money market funds, US Treasuries, and in bond mutual funds now.  However, your risk tolerance must be taken into account at all times.  While it is true that many dividend-paying stocks offer yields of 3% or more with the possibility of capital appreciation, there also is significant downside risk.  For example, as most people are aware, the S&P 500 (which represents most of the biggest companies in America) was down over 35% in 2008.  Many of those stocks are included in the push to have individual investors buy dividend payers.  With that being said, stock market declines of 10%-20% in a single quarter are not that uncommon.  If you handle the volatility of the stock market, there is no need to be concerned.  However, a decline of 10% for a stock paying a 3% dividend will wipe out a little more than 3 years of yield.  Individual investors need to realize that swapping traditional bonds or bond mutual funds is not a “riskless” transaction, meaning a one-for-one swap.  The volatility and riskiness of your portfolio will go up commensurately with your added exposure to equities.  Sometimes financial professionals portray the search for yield by jumping into stocks as the only option given the low interest rate environment.  While your situation might warrant that movement in your portfolio allocation, you need to be able to accept that the value of those stocks is likely to drop by 10% or more in the future.  Are you able to handle that volatility when looking at your risk tolerance, financial goals, and age?

The short answer is no to the question posed at the end of the first paragraph.  Before we can answer that question and look at some investment strategies and potential purchases, we need to review how a bond works.  Any bond is simply an agreement between two parties in which one party agrees to pay back money to the other party at a later date with interest.  All bonds have what is referred to as credit risk.  Credit risk is simply the risk one runs that the party who owes you the money will not pay you back (i.e. default).  What is lesser know is interest rate risk and inflation risk.  These two risks are usually missed because investors tend to think that bonds are “safe”.  Interest rate risk relates to the fact that interest rates may rise, while you hold the bonds.  Inflation risk means that inflation may increase to a level higher than your interest rate on the bond.  Thus, if the interest rate on your bond is less than inflation, your purchasing power goes down.  The prices of goods and services go up faster than the interest you earn on the bond.

How do bonds work in terms of prices?  Most bonds are issued at a price of 100 which is referred to as par.  Corporate bonds and Treasury notes/bonds are usually sold in increments of $1,000, and municipal bonds are sold in increments of $5,000.  The value of a bond is calculated by taking the current price divided by 100 and then multiplied by the number of bonds you own.  Bonds are sold in the primary market (when first sold to retail and institutional investors) such that the coupon (interest rate) is equal to the current interest rate prevailing in the marketplace at that time (sold at par which is 100).  Bonds can be bought and sold after that issue date though.  If interest rates rise or fall after issuance, how does the price of a bond adjust?  If interest rates go up, bond prices will go down.  If interest rates go down, bond prices will go up.  Why?  It is referred to as an inverse relationship.  Think about it this way.  If you own a bond that has a 6% coupon and interest rates rise to 8%, will you be able to see that bond to other investors?  The answer is no if you decide to hold firm to a price of 100.  Why should another bond investor buy a 6% bond when he/she can just buy a bond with very similar characteristics as yours and earn 8%?  The only way that you can sell your bond is to lower the price such that the bond investor will earn 8% over the course of that bond’s life until maturity which is when the company or other entity has to pay the money back in full).  Luckily for you, the process works in reverse as well though.  If interest rates go down to 4%, you have the advantage.  If you hold a bond with a 6% coupon as in the aforementioned example, bond investors will pay more than 100 in order to get that higher interest payment.  How much more?  Bond investors will bid the price up until the bond earns an equivalent of 4% until maturity.  Why is this important to you as an investor today?

Let’s take a quick look at history.  Most financial professionals are not old enough to remember or have been in business long enough to remember the interest rate environment back in the early 1980s.  In the early 1980s, interest rates on bonds were incredibly high compared to today.  The economy was stuck in a rut of higher inflation and low or no growth which was called “stagflation”.  How high were interest rates?  The interest rate on a 3-month Treasury bill was 16.3% back in May 1981, and the prime rate topped out around 20.5% soon after.  For more information on the interest rates of this time period, please refer to this link:  http://www.mbaa.org/ResearchandForecasts/MarketEnvironment/TreasuryYields&BankRates,1980-83.htm. The Federal Reserve chairman back then, Paul Volcker (Fed chairman prior to Alan Greenspan and the same gentleman as the so-called “Volcker rule” of today), instituted a monetary policy based upon the teachings of the famous economist, Milton Friedman, from  the University of Chicago.  Friedman was really the start of monetarism.  Monetarism is simply the effect of the money supply in any economy on interest rates.  In general, as more money in the economy is available, interest rates will go down.  As less money is available, interest rates will go up.  Why?  Think about it in this manner.  If you have to get a loan from a family member and you are the only person asking for a loan, chances are your interest rate will be lower than if that same family member is asked by 15 different individuals.  So the Fed of that time period began buying all types of bonds on the open market.  The hope was that, as the money supply grew, interest rates would fall.  As interest rates fell, it would give more incentive to companies to take out loans to buy equipment and build plants and also to incent consumers to take out mortgages and buy homes or purchase consumer goods with credit cards.  Needless to say, the policy eventually worked.  It started what most refer to as the great bull market in bonds in roughly 1982.

There are only two ways you can make money when you own a normal bond.  First, you earn money from the coupon paid over the life of the bond.  Second, in a falling interest rate environment, you earn money by selling your bonds at a higher price.  Therefore, you can earn money from interest and capital gains.  In a rising interest rate environment, you can only earn money from the coupon.  What individual investors, and some money managers even, fail to realize is this simple fact of finance.  The yield on a 3-month US Treasury bill today is roughly 0.06%.  No, that is not a misprint!  The yield on these bills has gone down over 16% over the past 30 years or so.  The bond market has never seen such an extended period of falling interest rates.  Now interest rates did not fall in a straight line, but the trend has been toward lower interest rates for decades now.  That anomalous occurrence is coming (has come) to an end.  What can individual investors do then?

There are a number of things you can do to deal with the specter of rising interest rates.  I do not recommend any specific securities to purchase.  However, these investment strategies are something to consider.  They are as follows:

1)       Purchase an ETF that invests in floating rate fixed income securities

Investors are accustomed to bonds issued with a fixed coupon.  Yes, that is the most common.  However, there are other bonds that have an interest rate which is variable over the life of that bond.  Why would a company want to consider this?  There are two reasons why.  The first reason is that some companies need to borrow money from financial market participants constantly and for short periods of time.  The second reason is that certain companies that have liabilities which float over time.  Why?  They may have revenues that float over time as well.  It is much more complicated than that, but I do not want to get too bogged down into the details.  The most commonplace is a financial instrument known as commercial paper (CP) which is an example of the first reason.  CP is any financial instrument with a maturity of up to 270 days.  Firms, such as General Electric or Goldman Sachs, will sell CP to institutional investors for purposes of raising working capital.  It might be to pay short-term bills, or it might be to fund operations until money comes from previous sales at a later date.  Whenever CP is issued, the current interest rate prevails.  There are ETFs out there (only a few right now though, such as the iShares Floating Rate Note ETF – Ticker Symbol:  FLOT) that invest in CPs or other variations thereof.  The ETF will hold these fixed income securities with very short maturities.

2)      Purchase a target maturity bond ETF

 

When you purchase a bond mutual fund, you are pooling your money with other investors.  You do NOT own the bonds that the mutual fund invests in.  The mutual fund firm will calculate the value of their bond holdings each day and divide it by the number of shares outstanding to arrive at the net asset value (NAV) of the mutual fund.  The mutual fund will allow mutual fund investors to buy additional shares at that price or sell shares at that price.  Isn’t that just semantics and really is the same thing?  Absolutely not!  When you own a bond mutual fund, the holdings of the mutual fund are constantly changing.  You will see an SEC yield quoted and a weighted average maturity (WAM) of the bond mutual fund show in years.  If interest rates rise and you need to sell, the NAV of the bond mutual fund will go down.  Since the bond mutual fund needs to earn as much interest for its bond investors as possible, they will constantly take new inflows from investors, interest payments, and principal payments to invest in bonds issued today.  Therefore, the NAV of the bond mutual fund has to go down.  Since you are never holding the actual bonds to maturity, in a rising rate interest environment, you will receive interest payments from the bond mutual fund, but the value of the bonds held by the bond mutual fund will fall gradually, ceteris paribus.

 

Since interest rates have been falling for so long, most individual investors do not know this.  How do you combat that?  Well, BlackRock and other ETF providers have developed a new type of ETF which is based upon a target maturity.  How do they work?  You can purchase an ETF that might be in existence for five years, for example.  The ETF will invest in bonds with five years to maturity and then disband the ETF after five years.  Thus, as a bond investor, you are only subject to default risk.  As you will recall, default risk is the risk that an entity will not pay back the principal and interest on the bond.

 

3)      Purchase a floating rate instrument directly with a credit enhancement

There are fixed income securities sold which have interest rates that are set very frequently.  One of these instruments is known as a put bond or floater.  Put bonds or floaters are fixed income securities that are sold with an interest rate that is “reset” (i.e. adjusted to reflect current interest rates) on a periodic basis.  For example, they might be reset daily, weekly, or monthly.  Therefore, if you own a floater and interest rates go up, you will earn that new interest rate.  If interest rates go down, you will earn that interest rate.  You do not lose your original principal.  The interest rate is always chosen such that the floaters will sell at par.  Now owning a floater that is tied directly to a company, non-profit, charter school, municipality or other entity is a risky proposition.  You are subject to the credit risk of that entity, and they might default.  However, you can get around being exposed to the credit risk of that entity.  It is possible to purchase floaters (most are actually issued this way) which have a credit enhancement.  A credit enhancement is something that the obligor (i.e. the entity that issues the bonds and needs the money) purchases.  The types of credit enhancements are not that important; the concept is more significant for individual investors.  A floater with a credit enhancement means that, if the obligor defaults, the entity providing the credit enhancement will pay the principal and interest then.  Banks and bond insurers offer credit enhancements.  Therefore, when you purchase a floater with a credit enhancement, you are essentially exposed to the credit risk of the entity providing the credit enhancement and not the issuer (i.e. obligor).  Yes, you still have credit risk.

With that being said, there are floaters out there which have a credit enhancement from Bank of America, JP Morgan, US Bank, Wells Fargo, or Assured Guaranty.  The interest rate will be lower than the interest rate that the company itself would be able to get by accessing the bond market directly.  However, it will save you the time of trying to do a credit analysis of a small manufacturing firm with $50 million in annual revenues.  You can contact a middle market or larger full service brokerage firm to see if they offer put bonds or floaters for sale.  If they say no, but they offer Auction Rate Securities (ARS), it is not the same thing at all.  ARS have very different characteristics which rear their ugly head during liquidity crises like the financial crisis of 2008.

4)      Purchase mortgage back securities (MBS)

 

MBS may have a bad name from the financial crisis of 2008.  I am not referring to MBS that invest in subprime loans.  Subprime loans are speculative in nature.  I am talking about mortgages issued to individuals with good credit scores.  You can purchase an MBS issued by GNMA (Ginnie Mae), FNMA (Fannie Mae), or the FHLB (Freddie Mac).  The GNMA is a government sponsored enterprise (GSE), and FNMA and FHLB are sometimes referred to as “quasi” in nature.  These MBS essentially purchase thousands of mortgages that meet certain requirements in terms of size of the loan and credit of the borrower.  The mortgages are pooled together and sold to investors.

These securities are essentially pass through instruments.  Pass through instruments mean that the principal and interest payments flow through to the owners of the MBS.  Why might you want to own these?  In a rising interest rate environment, people with mortgages will not refinance their mortgages.  Why would you get rid of your 4% 30-year fixed rate mortgage and change to a 5% 30-year fixed rate mortgage?  As interest have been falling over the past several decades, it has been advantageous to refinance ones mortgage to a lower rate.  There are bond mutual funds that invest in MBS.  However, they fall subject to the same phenomenon that I mentioned above.  You are investing in a pool and do not own the MBS directly.  If interest rates go up and you need to sell that bond mutual fund, the NAV on the bond mutual fund will go down.  You can inquire at your local brokerage firm about MBS.  Now if your broker or Financial Advisor talks to you about collateralized mortgage obligations (CMOs) being the same thing basically, that is not the case.  CMOs do offer different characteristics which may be attractive, but they are much harder to analyze.

 

5)      Purchase bank loan ETFs with a floating rate

Most corporations borrow money from banks with a floating interest rate.  The interest rate adjusts at certain points and is calculated as a spread over some benchmark interest rate.  The most common benchmark is LIBOR and specifically 3-month LIBOR since many bonds reset quarterly.  Banks will package these loans together and sell them as syndicated loans to various interested institutional investors.  The advantage of these securities is that the interest rate will move up in a rising interest rate environment.  Additionally, most corporate treasurers will enter into an agreement, called an interest rate swap, to change the corporation’s payments into essentially a fixed interest rate.  The complexity of the interest rate swap is not important to discuss in great detail.  The point is that the corporation will then have a fixed interest payment and knows how much they will have to pay over time.  Thus, there will be no surprises if interest rates spike.  Therefore, you are exposed to the credit risk of the corporation for each bank loan.  Remember though that there is diversification in each of these syndicated bank loans because the ETF’s investment advisor will buy many bank loans to diversify the default risk of any one corporation.  One example of an ETF is offered by PowerShares and is called the PowerShares Senior Loan Portfolio ETF (BKLN).  A number of closed-end mutual funds offer similar products.  However, you should always be aware of the management fee assessed by the advisor overseeing the investments.  The expense ratio for many of these closed-end mutual funds is significantly above 1% which tends to offset the benefit of owning such a security because your investment returns will be lower as a result.

6)      Consider purchasing bonds issued by international firms or different countries

 

International firms and different countries have bonds that sell at different interest rates.  The nice thing about these bonds is that they are affected by different factors or the economy may be in a different stage than the US.  It is akin to the multiverse concept of Mohammed El-Erian of PIMCO.  El-Erian tells investors that the global economy is not simply something that is changing in one direction or in one way.  Rather, he states that different countries or regions can be moving in the same or opposite directions at any given time.  Furthermore, bonds issued outside of the US provide diversification to your investment portfolio.  It is the concept of not “having all your eggs in one basket”.  It is one other option for you.  There are countries which are in the process of lowering interest rates, so you can benefit from the interest rate payment and capital gains then.

 

One other thing you can do is to just reduce your duration.  Duration is simply the time it takes for your bonds to mature.  Under normal market conditions, bonds with shorter maturities have lower interest rates than bonds will longer maturities.  Believe it or not, that is not always the case though.  When short-term interest rates are lower than long-term interest rates, bonds with shorter maturities are less sensitive in terms of price movement than longer maturities.  I do not consider this an investment strategy really.  It is just a way of lowering risk.  As previously mentioned, when you hear financial professionals speak about searching for yield in other ways like investing in dividend stocks or MLPs (master limited partnerships), that is not investing in fixed income securities.  Given your risk tolerance, you should have a set allocation to fixed income securities.  You might decide to replace some of that allocation with a higher level of other stocks or other instruments.  However, that is a choice, and you are normally increasing the risk of your portfolio.  I am not saying that is good or bad.  I am simply saying that implementing this strategy comes with tradeoffs.

When It Comes to Your Investments, Are You Smarter than a 14 year-old?

12 Saturday Oct 2013

Posted by wmosconi in asset allocation, Bernanke, bonds, business, Charlie Munger, Consumer Finance, Education, Fed, Fed Taper, Fed Tapering, Federal Reserve, finance, financial planning, GIPS, GIPS2013, Individual Investing, interest rates, investing, investing, investments, stocks, bonds, asset allocation, portfolio, investments, math, Modern Portfolio Theory, MPT, NASDAQ, personal finance, portfolio, risk, statistics, stock prices, stocks, volatility, Warren Buffett, Yellen

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That is a great question.  I will save you the suspense and give you the answer.  You are as smart as a 14 year-old when it comes to your knowledge of your investments.  What 14 year-old teenager am I referring to?  I am referring to myself.  I started investing when I was 13 back in November 1987.  (If you do the math, you can figure out how old I am).  After spending a year studying the financial markets, I had amassed quite a bit of understanding.  How does this relate to you?  Well, if you have been following my blog, I have not revealed any information that I did not already know by then.  Now my writing style has improved and I have incorporated innovations introduced after 1988, the topics I have written about are not that complicated.  Before you continue reading, I would like to state at the outset that I was not some sort of child prodigy when it came to finance.  I was good at math and retained what I learned.  I am no genius and have no delusions of grandeur.  As I sometimes tell my friends, “If I really knew what I was talking about, I would be running a $10 billion hedge fund”.

With that being said, you also have the good fortune of learning from approximately 25 years of mistakes in investing and misunderstanding about the financial markets and the impacts of exogenous and endogenous events.  I could go on and on about my mistakes; however, I will mention a few here.  First, I had the opportunity to invest in two shares of Berskshire Hathaway Class A (BRK.A) stock back in 1991 when it traded a little above $8,700 per share.  Of course, Berkshire Hathaway is the company run by the famous investor Warren Buffett.  As of August 5, 2013, BRK.A’s closing stock price was $177,300 or a bit over $350,000 if I would have purchased those two shares back in 1991.  Why did I miss out on this opportunity?  I did learn everything I could about Warren Buffett once my economics teacher talked about him and his investing paradigm.  It really made sense to me from the start.  Unfortunately, I pass up on purchasing the shares because I would only be able to own those two shares and one other mutual fund.  As a young man, I was hyped and yearning to pick a number of different investment choices.  Best Buy is one of the best performing stocks in the financial markets and trades over $30 now.  I purchased Best Buy about 7 years ago and paid $42.  I did sell quite some time ago, but I took a huge capital loss.     Second, I wrote a paper during my MBA program that talked about the risk management procedures of Citigroup.  As I look back on that paper written in 2005, it is curious to note that, besides AIG, Citigroup went through the pain of learning the limits of risk management and it had a bailout of epic proportions.  I guess my paper was not the best in retrospect.  Finally, I had a terrible habit of picking the current “hot hand”.  I tended to switch my mutual fund holding way too often when I was in my teens.  It was really attractive to calculate how much money I could earn in a mutual fund that made 20% per year.  Wow, I could double my money in less than four years!  As you always see now, past performance is not indicative of future returns.  I really ignored that statement and invested many times based upon hopes and extrapolation instead of rational thought.  My emotions got the best of me.

I did have quite a few wins along the way.  For example, I was invested in the famous Fidelity Magellan mutual fund when it was run by Peter Lynch.  Peter Lynch is a legend among mutual fund managers.  At one point in time, Fidelity Magellan had more assets than any other mutual fund in the country.  Oddly enough, that was its eventual downfall.  Another example would be that I was able to learn how to successfully manage my father’s 401(k) portfolio from 1988 to the present.  I have seen many bull and bear markets and never had his eventual retirement portfolio take a significant hit in terms of poor returns.  My experience investing over the last 25 years has shown me that there will be many times when the financial pundits say this time is different, new industries are going to blow away the Old Economy, or that news events should cause investors to reallocate investment portfolios dramatically.  Even though I have been investing for 25 years, there have been very few seminal financial market events, the global economy may be different but the laws of finance and economics still hold (or they eventually bring prices back to earth), and new industries tend to bring more innovation and tools for existing, mature industries.  An illustration would be the early Internet companies lost money and burned through enormous amounts of cash.  However, the technologies they introduced allowed existing businesses to use the Internet in unique ways to either generate additional revenue or improve productivity.  A direct example would be how airplanes revolutionized leisure and business travel, but the airlines have been a wealth-destroying industry.  On the other hand, there are a myriad of business that used the services of airlines.

My overall point is that if you take one hour per week for about four months, you will be able to get through the five books I recommended on investing.  Additionally, you can spend another 30 minutes looking at a few financial websites just to increase your knowledge of investment products, finance terms, and keep abreast of news in general.  As a reminder, the list of five books can be found here:  https://latticeworkwealth.com/2013/07/23/spend-20-hours-learning-about-investments-to-prepare-20-years-of-retirement-2/ .  As another reminder, some recommended financial websites can be found here:  https://latticeworkwealth.com/2013/08/04/todays-news-should-prompt-you-to-adjust-your-entire-investment-portfolio/ .

My entire goal with this blog is to save you lots of time.  Rather than being bombarded by disparate information regarding the financial markets and how to approach investing, I am trying to give you a shortcut.  I am hopeful that, if you have a roadmap that is clear, you will be more motivated to learn about investments and eventually become more comfortable with the process of building an investment portfolio to meet your financial goals, while ensuring that your emotions do not get the best of you.  At the end of the day, many individual investors pay fees to financial professionals to save themselves from enemy #1.  Who?  I mean that sometimes individual investors act rashly and keep buying and selling stocks and bonds at inopportune times just because a bad news event comes along or via peer pressure.  Remember that, if you have read all my previous posts, you are more than likely in the 90th percentile of individuals understanding of how the financial markets work.  Keep in mind there have not been that many posts to my blog, so I hope you realize that it is not as painful as you might have once thought learning about managing your investment portfolio and the financial markets is.

As an aside, please feel free to reach out to me if you have a recommendation for a topic I can discuss.  Please remember that this is a website geared toward individual investors who are novices or have not been investing for too long.   Thus, I am not looking to discuss how one might use ARIMA modeling to understand how macroeconomic variables affect the financial markets or individual stocks/bonds.  I appreciate you keeping it relatively simple.  With that being said, if enough people contact me in regard to one specific topic, I will definitely take a closer look.  Thank you in advance for your participation and time thinking about what would be more useful to you.  Furthermore, I am hoping that I cover topics that apply to everyone.  If the collective investment intelligence of the group steps up a few notches, I will cover the topic.  Please send me an email:  latticeworkwealth@gmail.com

A New Paradigm for Investing Available on Amazon.com

11 Friday Oct 2013

Posted by wmosconi in asset allocation, Bernanke, bonds, business, Charlie Munger, Consumer Finance, Education, Fed, Fed Taper, Fed Tapering, Federal Reserve, finance, financial planning, GIPS, GIPS2013, Individual Investing, interest rates, investing, investing, investments, stocks, bonds, asset allocation, portfolio, investments, math, Modern Portfolio Theory, MPT, NailedIt, NASDAQ, personal finance, portfolio, risk, statistics, stock prices, stocks, volatility, Warren Buffett, Yellen

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academia, academics, asset allocation, Ben Graham, Bernanke, bloomberg, bonds, BRK, BRK.A, BRK.B, BRK/A, BRK/B, Buffett, cnbc, cnbcfastmoney, cnbcworld, consumer finance, David Dodd, economics, economy, Fed, Fed taper, Federal Reserve, finance, financial advice, Govtshutdown, individual investing, investing, investments, Jim Cramer, madmoney, math, mathematics, MBT, Modern Portfolio Theory, personal finance, portfolio, retirement, Shutdown, statistics, stocks, value investing, Warren Buffett, Yellen

I am happy to announce that I have published another book on Amazon.com.  The book is another installment in my A New Paradigm for Investing series.  In this particular book, I focus on the use of Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) as the primary tool by Financial Advisors to recommend portfolio allocations.  The theory is over 50 years old, and most of its assumptions have been shown to be less and less useful.  I explore the reasons why in my text.  I have tried to write in such a manner that you do not need a degree in mathematics or statistics to understand its contents.  Futhermore, you do not need to know about the intricacies of MPT in order to follow my logic.  You would find the same information in a college textbook but in a condensed format.

Note that this book is available for download onto a Kindle.  Additionally, there is a Kindle app for iPhones and Android devices which is free to download.  Amazon.com prime members can borrow the book for FREE. I have provided a link below to make it easier.   My email address is latticeworkwealth@gmail.com should you have any questions/comments/feedback.

The book is:

1)      A New Paradigm for Investing:  Is Your Financial Advisor Creating Your Portfolio with a 50 Year-Old Theory?:

http://www.amazon.com/New-Paradigm-Investing-Financial-ebook/dp/B00FQQ0CKG/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1381520643&sr=1-1&keywords=a+New+paradigm+for+investing+by+William+Nelson

I would like to thank my international viewers as well.  I also wanted to especially thank some selected followers of my @NelsonThought and @LatticeworkWlth Twitter accounts (each of whom I would recommend following for the content and insight):

Followers on @NelsonThought:

The Wealth Report @wsjexperts – #wsjexperts

The Royce Funds @RoyceFunds

Research Magazine @Research_Mag

Barron’s Online @BarronsOnline

Vanguard FA @Vanguard_FA

Cleveland Fed Research @ClevFedResearch

Pedro da Costa @pdacosta

Muriel Siebert & Co. @SiebertCo

Roger Wohlner, CFP® @rwohlner

Ed Moldaver @emoldaver

Sylvia Maxfield @sylviamaxfield

The Shut Up Show @theshutupshow

Berni Xiong (shUNG) @BerniXiong

Followers on @LatticeworkWlth:

Euro-banks @EuroBanks

Direxion Alts @DirexionAlts

Charlie Wells @charliewwells

AbsoluteVerification @GIPStips

Investment Advisor @InvestAdvMag

Gary Oneil @GaryONeil2

MJ Gottlieb @MJGottlieb

Bob Burg @BobBurg

Melody Campbell @SmBizGuru

TheMichaelBrown @TheMichaelBrown

Phil Gerbyshak @PhilGerbyshak

MuniCredit @MuniCredit

D.J. Rob-Ski @DJRobSki

A New Paradigm for Investing Available on Amazon.com

06 Sunday Oct 2013

Posted by wmosconi in asset allocation, Bernanke, bonds, business, Charlie Munger, Consumer Finance, Education, Fed, Fed Taper, Fed Tapering, Federal Reserve, finance, financial planning, GIPS, GIPS2013, Individual Investing, interest rates, investing, investing, investments, stocks, bonds, asset allocation, portfolio, investments, math, NailedIt, NASDAQ, personal finance, portfolio, risk, statistics, stock prices, stocks, volatility, Warren Buffett, Yellen

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I am happy to announce that I have published two books on Amazon.com that are available for download onto a Kindle.  Additionally, there is a Kindle app for iPhones and Android devices which is free to download.  Please feel free to check out the titles below.  I have provided links to make it easier.   The books explain how to select a Financial Advisor, and I provide a list of five books which can help you learn more about investing, respectively. I explain issues about investing as an individual in plain language and without the jargon normally associated with the financial markets. Please feel free to contact me should you have any questions/comments/feedback. My email address is latticeworkwealth@gmail.com.

The books are as follows:

1)      A New Paradigm for Investing:  Can Your Financial Advisor Answer These Questions?:

http://www.amazon.com/New-Paradigm-Investing-Financial-ebook/dp/B00F3BDTHW/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1381107823&sr=1-1&keywords=A+New+Paradigm+for+Investing+by+William+Nelson

2)       Spend 20 Hours Learning About Investing to Prepare for 20+ Years in Retirement

http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Investments-Prepare-Retirement-ebook/dp/B00F3KW9T2/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1379183661&sr=1-1&keywords=William+Nelson+Spend+20+Hours

The first book listed is normally $9.99 but available for a limited time at $7.99.  The other book is normally $2.99, but I dropped it down to $0.99 for the rest of October 2013.

I would like to thank my international viewers as well.  I also wanted to especially thank some selected followers of my @NelsonThought and @LatticeworkWlth Twitter accounts (each of whom I would recommend following for the content and insight):

Followers on @NelsonThought:

The Wealth Report @wsjexperts

The Royce Funds @RoyceFunds

Research Magazine @Research_Mag

Barron’s Online @BarronsOnline

Vanguard FA @Vanguard_FA

Cleveland Fed Research @ClevFedResearch

Pedro da Costa @pdacosta

Muriel Siebert & Co. @SiebertCo

Roger Wohlner, CFP® @rwohlner

Ed Moldaver @emoldaver

Sylvia Maxfield @sylviamaxfield

The Shut Up Show @theshutupshow

Berni Xiong (shUNG) @BerniXiong

Followers on @LatticeworkWlth:

Euro-banks @EuroBanks

Direxion Alts @DirexionAlts

Charlie Wells @charliewwells

AbsoluteVerification @GIPStips

Investment Advisor @InvestAdvMag

Gary Oneil @GaryONeil2

MJ Gottlieb @MJGottlieb

Bob Burg @BobBurg

Melody Campbell @SmBizGuru

TheMichaelBrown @TheMichaelBrown

Phil Gerbyshak @PhilGerbyshak

MuniCredit @MuniCredit

D.J. Rob-Ski @DJRobSki

Should you fear the Fed “taper”? How are the financial markets being affected by this discussion?

27 Tuesday Aug 2013

Posted by wmosconi in bonds, business, finance, interest rates, investing, investing, investments, stocks, bonds, asset allocation, portfolio, investments, stocks

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

bonds, business, Fed taper, Federal Reserve, finance, investing, investments, stocks, Syria

 As I have mentioned before, I dislike offering comments on current activity in the financial markets.  However, a number of readers of my blog have asked about this topic, and there appears to be quite a bit of disinformation and misunderstanding about what the Fed taper actually is.  Thus, I thought it would be valuable to take some time to discuss this subject.

Before I dive into my commentary on the Fed taper, I wanted to set the stage.  What exactly is the Fed taper?  Well, the Federal Reserve has a policy called quantitative easing (QE) which is now in its third form via QE3.  The Federal Reserve is trying to inject more dollars into the monetary base to keep interest rates at historically low levels in the US economy.  The most effective way to do this on a large scale is to buy US Treasuries and mortgage backed securities (MBS).  In fact, the Federal Reserve is buying $85 billion worth of these securities each month.  If this sounds kind of odd, it is in certain respects.  The Department of the Treasury issues US Treasury bills, notes, and the long bond, and then the Federal Reserve purchases some of those securities at auction.  Some estimates have been that the Federal Reserve purchases some 70% of the new supply.  Yes, it is a very interesting phenomenon.

If you have been watching the financial media or reading financial news publications, you are inundated with information of how the Fed taper will have dire consequences for the stock and bond markets.  The Fed taper is simply that the Fed will buy less than $85 billion worth of securities per month.  Now no one knows if that will happen next month or by how much the Fed will reduce its purchases.  The taper does NOT mean that the Fed will be raising interest rates.  Interest rates are going up on their own.  Market participants are figuring that there will not be enough demand to soak up the excess supply when the Fed reduces its purchases.  The target rate on the Federal Funds is still 0%, and the effective rate for Federal Funds is still around 0.10-0.15%.

The more interesting thing is that the S&P 500 has not gone down since interest rates on the US 10-year Treasury have started on its “meteoric” rise.  The 10-year bottomed out at a closing yield of 1.62% on May 2, 2013.  The S&P 500 closed slightly above 1,597 on that same day.  Even with today’s (August 27, 2013 to 1630.48) selloff in the stock market, the S&P 500 remains above that level.  Therefore, when you hear guests on financial media shows talk about the taper destroying stock values, you need to take that with a grain of salt.  What will happen in the future?  That is the real question.

The US economy has been operating with negative real interest rates for the past five years.  What are negative real interest rates?  Negative real interest rates occur anytime the nominal (actual) interest rate on a security is less that the rate of CPI (inflation).  You are receiving interest, but the purchasing power of your dollars is less.  Even though interest rates are going up now, financial pundits are forgetting that this is not a typical increase in interest rates.  An increase in interest rates, when real rates are positive, tends to slow down the economy.  We have not seen an environment where real rates were negative and now they will be flat or positive.  You should want real interest rates to be positive.  It is the sign of a growing and healthy economy.  When I used to work structuring bond deals, the head of our trading desk would always comment on economic data.  If GDP growth was higher than expected, interest rates went up.  If more jobs were added, interest rates went up.  Why?  Good news about the economy meant that there would be more demand from businesses for borrowing.  Now this was happening over six years ago; however, economic data normally affects the bond market in this manner.

Here is what you need to worry about?  If the Federal Reserve decides that it is time to raise the target rate for Federal Funds that is actual tightening of monetary policy.  The real “black swan” is the Fed’s balance sheet.  After buying all kinds of securities over the course of QE and during the 2008 financial crisis, the Fed’s balance sheet has ballooned.  The Federal Reserve now holds over $4 trillion in securities.  If the Fed ever decides to shrink its balance sheet, they will have to flood the bond market with supply.   Offloading hundreds of billions of dollars or more of bonds will certainly wreak havoc on the financial markets as a whole.  Until the Federal Reserve actually raises interest rates and/or reduces its balance sheet, there is no reason to panic and sell all your stocks.  It just does not make much sense.  The Fed taper will lead to a rise in interest rates.  It is normal.

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