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Now that Commissions on Stock Trades Are Zero, Should You Start Trading Stocks?
16 Wednesday Oct 2019
Posted in active investing, after tax returns, benchmarks, blended benchmark, finance, financial advice, financial markets, gross returns, historical returns, Income Taxes, Individual Investing, individual investors, investing, investing advice, investing tips, investment advice, investments, passive investing, portfolio, risks of stocks, S&P 500, S&P 500 historical returns, S&P 500 Index, speculation, stock market, Stock Market Valuation, stock prices, stocks
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after tax returns, benchmarks, blended benchmarks, geopolitics, gross returns, invest, investing, market sentiment, performance, relative returns, speculation, stock market, stock prices, stock returns, stocks, trading, uncertainty
Quite recently, Charles Schwab (an e-broker) announced that they would no longer be charging commissions on stock trades. Shortly thereafter, TD Ameritrade, E*TRADE, Interactive Brokers, and Fidelity Investments all followed suit. A financial technology (fintech) firm, Robinhood already offered commission-free trading. So essentially, anywhere you open up a brokerage account to trade stocks, you will not have to pay any commissions. The question is…….should you start trading stocks?
The aforementioned question is difficult to answer in relation to all the types of people that are reading this article. However, whether or not you decide to trade stocks, I simply want to ensure that you are using the proper benchmark to gauge your success in terms of the performance returns you achieve. Now I am assuming that, since you are trading stocks, the assets are held in a taxable brokerage account. Furthermore, an active trader is likely to have a holding period for those stocks that is less than 365 days. Therefore, the gains are fully taxable as ordinary income. With that groundwork laid, let’s move on to a further analysis.
Trading stocks and “beating the stock market” is an extraordinarily difficult task to do. Most of the professional asset managers fail to beat their respective benchmarks for performance returns. Additionally, trading stocks in the short term requires two things: gauging market sentiment correctly and the valuation of the stock based upon its fundamentals. You have to be right on both accounts. There are many times when a company has a ton of good announcements that should cause the stock price to increase, but other factors hinder the upward movement in the stock price. Examples include: negative sentiment about the stock market in general, negative sentiment about the industry the company is in, geopolitical uncertainty, poor economic data, central bank (Federal Reserve) policy, and many others. The bottom line is that you can be exactly correct on positive news for the stock you are buying, but, if there are negative overhangs in the stock market for any reason, the stock price may not go up.
Another word of caution is just to identify what it means to trade stocks in the short term. Trading stocks in the short term is speculation, plain and simple. Short-term trading is not investing at all. There are myriad reasons why, but I will not address that in this article. Just know that you are a trader who is speculating on stocks and market sentiment related to the stocks you choose to trade. Any holding period of a stock less than one year does not meet the bar of what investing means. As long as you know that going in, that is fine and I will not dissuade you in any way from trading.
The important thing to remember is that you need to gauge your performance in relation to the overall stock market based upon after-tax returns and not gross returns. Why? At the end of the day, you only care about the terminal value of the asset in your brokerage account. What do I mean by terminal value? Terminal value just means the amount of money you have after paying capital gains taxes as ordinary income. For example, if you have a 10% return in your stocks and the S&P 500 Index is only up 8%, you need to look at your taxes too. Just for illustrative purposes, let’s assume that your marginal rate for federal and state taxes is 25%. If we go back to the 10% amount, you will have a 7.5% (10% – 10% * 25%) after-tax gain from trading. Yes, you beat the stock market return on a gross basis, but you end up with 0.5% less after all is said and done.
I am going to use the historical returns of the S&P 500 Index from 1957 to 2018 as the benchmark that you should be referencing when examining your success (or failure) as a result of trading. As I have mentioned in many prior articles, I use 1957 as the starting year because the S&P 500 Index was created in that year. Prior to 1957, the S&P Index had less constituents so going back in history further than that year does not yield an apples-to-apples comparison. The long-term historical return of the S&P 500 Index over that period was approximately 9.8%. Therefore, I will use that historical return to reference the gross return versus after-tax return issues.
Here is a table to look at the performance return you need to equal just to be even with the S&P 500 Index after taxes:
As you can see, the gross return equivalents in relation to the historical return of the S&P 500 Index range from 12.3% to 16.3% for the various marginal tax rates shown. For instance, if you are in the 30% marginal tax bracket for federal and state income tax purposes, you will need to earn 14.0% returns just to break even. Most people add or remove monies to their brokerage accounts over the course of any given year, so you need to adjust for those cash flows. The computations are a little trickier and beyond the scope of this discussion.
Another important thing to take into account is the types of stocks you purchase. The stocks included in the S&P 500 Index are very large companies by market capitalization (large caps). Market capitalization is simply the number of shares outstanding times the stock price. If you invest in very small stocks that you deem to be good trading opportunities, you should not be using the S&P 500 Index table above to do your calculations for after-tax returns. For example, if you tend to invest in smaller companies, you would want to use the Russell 2000 Index or the S&P 600 Index. For any companies below $1 billion in market capitalization, you should seek out what are called microcap indexes. The best way to build your personal table is to use a “blended benchmark” for performance returns. A “blended benchmark” is what large institutions and high net worth individuals use, and it is the gold standard because you are truly comparing apples-to-apples.
If you want to learn more about how to create your personal “blended benchmark”, I addressed that topic five years or so ago and here is the link to that article:
In summary, if you decide to trade individual stocks because commissions are zero now or you have always done so in the past, you need to compare your after-tax return to what you would have earned if you had simply bought the S&P 500 Index via an index mutual fund or an Exchange Traded Fund (ETF). Why? Those performance returns would be available to you if you simply invested in one. Note that the fees on index mutual funds and ETFs are extremely low (0.05% or less and in some cases like Fidelity Investments are free). You always want to select your next best alternative to measure whether or not you are earning more than the stock market on an after-tax basis. Remember that all you really care about at the end of the day is how much money you have leftover in your brokerage account minus what you pay in federal and state income taxes.
How to Become a Successful Long-Term Investor – Part 2 of 3 – Understanding and Reducing Risk
25 Wednesday Sep 2019
Posted in asset allocation, behavioral finance, Consumer Finance, Education, finance, finance theory, financial advice, Financial Advisor, financial goals, financial markets, Financial Media, Financial News, financial planning, financial services industry, Geometric Returns, historical returns, Individual Investing, individual investors, investing, investing advice, investing tips, investment advice, investments, math, Modern Portfolio Theory, MPT, personal finance, portfolio, risk, risk tolerance, risks of stocks, S&P 500, S&P 500 historical returns, S&P 500 Index, standard deviation, statistics, stock market, Stock Market Returns, Stock Market Valuation, stock prices, stocks, volatility
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academia, academics, behavioral finance, finance, financial, historical stock returns, invest, investing, investments, math, mathematics, Modern Portfolio Theory, MPT, performance, portfolio, portfolio management, S&P 500, S&P 500 historical returns, S&P 500 Index, standard deviation, statistics, stock market, stock returns, stocks, success, uncertainty
Another extremely important part of being a long-term investor is to understand the concept of risk. Financial professionals define risk in a number of different ways, and we will examine some of those definitions. The overarching goal is to look at risk from the standpoint of the volatility or dispersion of stock market returns. Diversification of various investments in your portfolio is normally the way that most financial professionals discuss ways to manage the inevitable fluctuations in one’s investment portfolio. However, there is another more intuitive way to reduce risk which will be the topic of this second part of this examination into becoming a successful long-term investor.
The first part of this series on long-term investing was a look back at the historical returns of the S&P 500 Index (including the reinvestment of dividends). The S&P 500 Index will again be the proxy used to view the concept of risk. If you have not had a chance to read the first part of the series, I would urge you to follow the link provided below. Note that it is not a prerequisite to follow along with the discussion to come, but it would be helpful to better understand the exploration of risk in this article.
The link to part one of becoming a successful long-term investor is:
https://latticeworkwealth.com/2019/09/23/successful-long-term-investing/
But now we will turn our attention to risk. Risk can be a kind of difficult or opaque concept that is discussed by financial professionals. Most individual investors have a tough time following along. Sometimes there is a lot of math and statistics included with the overview. Although this information is helpful, we need to build up to that aspect. However, there will be no detailed calculations utilized in this article that might muddy the waters further. I believe it helps to take a graphical approach and then build up to what some individual investors consider the harder aspects of grasping risk.
Risk related to investing in stocks can be defined differently, but the general idea is that stocks do not go up or down in a straight line. As discussed in depth in part one, the annual return of the S&P 500 Index jumps around by a large margin. Most individual investors are surprised at seeing the wide variation. Ultimately, the long-term historical average of the S&P 500 Index from 1957 to 2018 is 9.8%. But rarely does the average annual return end up being anywhere near that number.
The first way I would like to look at risk within the context of long-term investing is to go back to our use of “buckets” of returns. If you have not already read part one, I used “buckets” with ranges of 5% to see where stock returns fit in. As it relates to risk, we are only going to look at the “bucket” that includes the historical average 7% to 12% and then either side of that “bucket” (2% to 7% and 12% to 17%). Additionally, we will look at yearly stock returns and then annualized stock returns for three years, five years, and ten years. Here is our first graph:
The main takeaway from viewing this graph is that, as the length of time increases, more stock market returns for the S&P 500 Index group around the historical average for the index of 9.8%. Remember that part one covered the useful information that, even though the historical average to be expected from investing in stocks is 9.8%, individual investors need to know that it can take long periods of time to see that historical average. In fact, if we look only at one-year increments, approximately 33.9% of stock returns will fall into the range of 2% to 17%. Or, if we use our yearly equivalent, stock market returns will only fall within that range 1 out of every 3 years. When individual investors see this graph for the first time, they are usually shocked and somewhat nervous about investing in stocks.
The important thing to keep in mind is that as the length of time examined increased many more stock returns fall into this range. The numbers are 65.0%, 67.1%, and 81.1%, for three years, five years, and ten years, respectively. Converting those numbers to yearly equivalents we have about 6-7 years out of ten for three years and five years. And, as one would intuitively suspect, the longest timeframe of ten years will have stock returns falling into the 2% to 17% range roughly 8 in every 10 years. Now that still means that 20% to 35% of long-term returns fall outside of that range when considering all those time periods. But I believe that it is certainly much more palatable for individual investors than looking at investing through the lens of only one-year increments.
Another aspect of risk is what would be termed downside protection. Most individual investors are considered to be risk averse. This term is just a fancy way of saying that the vast majority of investors need a lot more expected positive returns to compensate them for the prospect of losing large sums of money. Essentially an easier way to look at this term is that most individual investors have asymmetric risk tolerances. All that this means in general is that a 10% loss is much more painful than the pleasure of a 10% gain in the minds of most investors. Think about yourself in these terms. What would you consider the offset to be equal when it comes to losing and earning money in the stock market? Would you need the prospect of a 15% positive return (or 20%, 25% and so forth) to offset the possibility of losing 10% of your money in any one year? Let’s look at the breakdown of the number of years that investors will experience a loss. To be consistent with my first post, I am going to use the “bucket” of -3% to 2% and work down from there. Here is the graph:
There are 61 years of stock market returns from the S&P 500 Index for the period 1957 to 2018. If we look at the category of 1 year, stock market returns were 2% or less 38.7% of the time (17 years out of 61 years). However, if we move to five-year and ten-year annualized returns, there were no observations in the -3% to -8%, -8% to -13%, or less than -13% “buckets”. When looking at losing money by investing in the stock market, a long-term focus and investment strategy will balance out very negative return years and your portfolio is less likely to be worth significantly less after five or ten years. Of course, there are no guarantees and perfect foresight is something that we do not have. However, I believe that looking carefully at the historical data shows why it is important to not be so discouraged by years when the stock market goes down and even stays down for longer than just one year. Hopefully these figures do provide you with more fortitude to resist the instinct to sell stocks when the stock market takes a deep decline if your investment horizon and financial goals are many, many years out into the future.
The final concept I would like to cover is standard deviation. The term standard deviation comes up more often than not either in discussions with financial professionals during client meetings or is used a lot in the financial media. There are many times when even the professionals use the term and explain things incorrectly, but we will save that conversation for another post. Standard deviation is a statistical term that really is a measure of how far away stock market returns are from the mean (i.e. the average). It is a concept related to volatility or dispersion. So, the higher the number is, the more likely it is that stock market returns will have a wide range of returns in any given year. Let’s first take a look at a graph to put things into context. Here it is:
The chart is striking in terms of how much the standard deviation decreases as the time period increases. A couple things to note. First, I do not want to confuse you with a great deal of math or statistical jargon and calculations. My point is not to obscure the main idea. Second, the 25-year and 50-year numbers are just included only to cover the entire period of 1957 to 2018 for the S&P 500 Index. These periods of time are not of much use to individual investors to consider their tolerance for risk and the right investments to include in their portfolios. And, as one of the most famous economists of the 20th century, John Maynard Keynes, quipped: “In the long run, we are all dead”. My only point is that discussion of how the stock market has performed over 25 years or longer is just not relevant to how most individuals think. It is nice to know but not very useful from a practical perspective.
The main item of interest from the graph above of standard deviation is that you can “lower” the risk of your portfolio just by lengthening your time horizon to make investment decisions on buying or selling stock. For example, the standard deviation goes down 46.9% (to 8.95% from 16.87%) between one-year returns and three-year annualized returns. Why do I use “lower”? Well, the risk of your portfolio will stay constant over time and focusing on longer periods of time will not decrease the volatility per se. However, most financial professionals tell their clients to not worry about day-to-day fluctuations in the stock market. Plus, most Financial Advisors tell their clients to not get too upset when reviewing quarterly brokerage statements. This advice is very good indeed. However, I urge you to lengthen the period of your concern about volatility in further out into time. My general guideline to the individuals that I assist in building financial portfolios, setting a unique risk tolerance, and planning for financial goals is to view even one year as short term akin to examining your quarterly brokerage statement.
Why? If you are in what is termed the “wealth accumulation” stage of life (e.g. saving for retirement), what occurs on a yearly basis is of no concern in the grand scheme of things. The better investment strategy is to consider three years as short term, five years as medium term, and ten years as the long term. I think that even retirees can benefit with this type of shift. Now please do not get me wrong. I am not advising that anyone make absolutely no changes to his/her investment portfolio for one-year increments. Rather, annual returns in the stock market vary so widely that it can lead you astray from building a long-term investing strategy that you can stick to when stock market returns inevitably decline (sometimes precipitously and by a large margin). Note that all the academic theories, especially Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT), were built using an assumption of a one-year holding period for stocks (also bonds, cash, and other investments). Most individual investors do not fall into the one-year holding period. Therefore, it does not make much sense to overly focus on such a short time period.
Of course, the next thought and/or comment that comes up is “what if the stock market is too high and I should sell to avoid the downturn?”. I will not deny that this instinct is very real and will never go away for individual investors. In fact, a good deal of financial media television coverage and news publications are devoted to advising people on this very topic every single day. It is termed “market timing”. In the third and last article in this series on becoming a successful long-term investor, I am going to examine “market timing” with the same stock market data from the S&P 500 Index. You will clearly see why trying to time the market and buy/sell or sell/buy at the right time is extremely difficult to do (despite what the financial pundits might have you believe given the daily commentary).
How to Become a Successful Long-Term Investor – Part 1 of 3 – Understanding Stock Market Returns
23 Monday Sep 2019
Posted in asset allocation, Average Returns, behavioral finance, finance, financial advice, Financial Advisor, financial goals, financial markets, Financial Media, Financial News, financial planning, financial services industry, historical returns, Individual Investing, individual investors, investing, investing advice, investing information, investing tips, investment advice, investments, personal finance, portfolio, risk, risk tolerance, risks of stocks, S&P 500, S&P 500 historical returns, S&P 500 Index, statistics, stock market, Stock Market Returns, Stock Market Valuation, stock prices, stocks, volatility
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asset allocation, behavioral finance, finance, historical stock returns, investing, investments, long term investing, mathematics, performance, personal finance, portfolio, S&P 500, S&P 500 historical returns, S&P 500 Index, stock market, stock returns, stocks, uncertainty
All financial professionals providing advice urge individual investors to have a long-term plan and orientation. This advice is solid and has proven itself over the long term. However, no one really explains what it means to be a long-term investor. Most of the information dispensed is only a cursory review of the concept. The majority of new individual investors are then left without a full understanding and a comfortable feeling that a long-term investment strategy will work out in terms of allowing them to reach their financial goals. Since the importance of long-term investing is so integral to financial planning, I would like to delve very deeply into this topic. Therefore, I am going to cover this information as a three-part series of posts. This first post will discuss the nature of stock market returns. The second and third posts will address volatility in stock market returns and the perils of market timing, respectively.
Let’s get started on this journey and talk about stock market returns over the long term. Wherever possible I am going to use tables and graphs to better visually depict the concepts discussed in this post. But first, we must address one of my “pet peeves”. The proxy for this post for long-term investing will be the historical returns of the S&P 500 Index (including reinvestment of dividends). Why is this a “pet peeve” for me? I see too many articles in the financial press that look at historical returns for this index that go back to the 1920’s. You might want to know why this is a problem. Well, the S&P 500 Index was created back in March 1957. The S&P Index was started in 1926 but only included 90 stocks. Many articles in the financial press use the 1926 date as the starting point for analyzing historical stock market returns but that is really comparing “apples to oranges”. Additionally, as of September 2019, the S&P 500 Index includes 505 stocks grouped into 11 different sectors. Up until fairly recently, there were only 10 sectors but Standard & Poor’s made the decision to reclassify several of the stocks.
Now that we have dispensed with the preliminary comments, we can get back to the main discussion of part one. As you probably know already, the value of stocks fluctuates quite a bit over the course of a year. In fact, the financial media and financial professionals discuss these fluctuations on a daily basis. But even on an annual basis, stock market returns vary vastly over time. The long-term stock market return of the S&P 500 Index from 1957 through 2018 has been approximately 9.8%. Oftentimes Financial Advisors or Certified Financial Planners (CFPs) will tell their clients that they can expect to earn 8% to 10% by investing in stocks over the long term. While that information is true, it does not tell the entire story and subsequently leads individual investors to sell stocks during major market declines and buy stocks during periods of euphoria. Why is that the case when individual investors know up front that stocks will earn 8% to 10% over the long term but be volatile from year to year?
The main reason is that financial advisors mostly fail to fully explain how much stock market returns will fluctuate every year. In any given year, there will only be about 10% of stock market returns that fall into the bucket of being between 7% and 12%. To put that number into perspective, you can think of it as saying that only 1 in every 10 years can you expect to see stock market returns around the long-term average historical return of the S&P 500 Index. Now this information is very disheartening to both novice and more sophisticated individual investors alike. If you were told to expect that your yearly stock market returns would only be about average every 10 years, wouldn’t that be very helpful information to have in the beginning? My personal conjecture is that individual investors see that 90% of the time stock market returns are “abnormal” which causes them to react irrationally (or you might even say rationally since nobody told them it was likely to occur).
In order to “set the record straight”, I would like to show you a series of tables and graphs to depict what historical stock market returns of the S&P 500 Index have been over the last 61 years. My goal is not to dissuade you from investing for the long term; rather, I hope to persuade you why you should invest for the long term. After reviewing how stock market returns vary over different lengths of time, it is easier to understand what to expect and set more realistic expectations for your portfolio of investments. In order to accomplish this goal, I am going to show you a series of graphics regarding historical stock market returns. The information will show one-year, three-year, five-year, and ten-year data. The data with timeframes longer than one year will be annualized. “Annualized” is a fancy way of saying that the stock market returns are shown in a comparable way with yearly returns.
So, we will start off with an explanation of how I have grouped the data for stock market returns. I have broken up the returns for any period into “buckets” with a range of 5%. For example, there will be one “bucket” for any year where returns are between 7% and 12%. On either side of that main historical average bucket, I will extend the range in increments of 5%. For instance, there will be another “bucket” to capture returns between 2% and 7% and also another bucket to capture returns between 12% and 17%. Lastly, due to the fact that stock market returns have fluctuated so much over time, there will be two “buckets” to capture more extreme returns of less than -13% and greater than 22%. Showing how stock market returns for various periods fit into these “buckets” will be very instructive in deciding how to approach long-term investing.
The first way to view things is with a table of stock market returns. Note that these will be supplemented by graphs below for an even better visualization. Here are how stock market returns appear in each “bucket” as a percentage of time that they occur below:
There are two main takeaways after looking at the above table. First, the distribution of stock market returns over the course of one year are quite wide indeed. Plus, you can see how people can get very euphoric about buying stocks when the investment returns are higher than normal. The return of the S&P 500 Index has been greater than 22% about 29% of the time. Let’s put that percentage into a yearly equivalent which is, that in 1 out of every 4 years the stock market return will exceed 22%. It is hard not to get excited and want to buy more stocks when an individual investor sees that. Second, the distribution of stock returns for five years and ten years gradually shifts away from the extremes and toward the long-term historical average. Now this might be intuitive since the average must come about after longer periods of time are taken into account. More importantly, neither the 5-year returns or 10-year returns have fallen into the -3% and below “buckets”. If you have a long-term investment horizon, there will be more returns that appear within the “bucket” historical average for the S&P 500 Index. Using 10-year returns, they fall into the 7% to 12% “bucket” 32.1% of the time. And in our now familiar conversion to a yearly equivalent, you can expect to see any given 10-year annualized average return be just about inline with the historical average 1 out of every 3 years. Note that, even with such a long-term period, 2 out of 3 years will be outside of the expected historical average given the last 61 years of stock market returns.
In order to better absorb the information from the table above, here are four graphs that show the breakdown by period grouping in the various “buckets”:
The four graphs above show how the number of returns gradually centers more and more around the historical average for the S&P 500 Index as the time period is lengthened from one year to ten years. Moreover, the extreme outliers to the downside (returns less than -3%) are not present in the graphs for five years and ten years.
Now a historical side-by-side comparison makes it even easier to see that convergence to the historical average and removal of the outliers. I have left out the graph for three years only to reduce the amount of information shown on the following graph.
By carefully studying the table and various graphs depicted above, it becomes more palatable to become a long-term investor. I am a big believer in having realistic expectations prior to investing and building a portfolio of assets to buy and hold. Without knowing how much of a distribution there is in stock market returns from year to year, it becomes much harder to stick to that financial plan. Now do not get me wrong here, actually experiencing periods of extreme outliers (especially to the downside) when you have money at stake is nerve-racking to put it mildly. However, you have a much better understanding of what is “normal” in terms of annual returns. But, always keep in mind, that past performance in not indicative of future performance. With that being said though, it helps to have over 60 years’ worth of data to develop your investing strategy and determine your tolerance for risk (i.e. volatility of returns) going forward.
The topic of risk will be covered in the second part of this series on becoming a successful long-term investor. That topic and the last topic are covered by most financial professionals, but I would like to show the data in a somewhat different and unique way.
What is Confirmation Bias? Why is it Dangerous for Individual Investors?
26 Wednesday Apr 2017
Posted in active versus passive debate, behavioral finance, confirmation bias, Emotional Intelligence, EQ, finance, finance theory, financial advice, financial markets, Financial Media, Financial News, financial planning, Individual Investing, individual investors, investing, investing advice, investing information, investing tips, investment advice, investments, passive investing, personal finance, stock market, stocks
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behavioral finance, confirmation bias, Emotional Intelligence, financial advice, financial markets, financial planning, individual investors, investing, investing advice, investing information, investing tips, investments, stock market, stocks
There are many dangers for individual investors to be aware of when investing. More and more of these dangers and/or complications are being recognized in the field of behavioral finance. Behavioral finance looks at the psychological and emotional factors that influence the decision-making process of investors. Oftentimes researchers in this field try to figure out what causes normally rational people to act irrationally. Unfortunately, it has proven over and over again that, when money is involved, the vast majority of people let their emotions/feelings interfere with their investment decision either slightly or in profound ways. We do these things without even knowing it which makes it even harder to address and correct. Keep in mind that Warren Buffett says that having control of one’s emotions is just as important (or even more so) than having a superior intellect that can select excellent, long-term investments.
Confirmation bias belongs in the realm of behavioral finance, but, as many of these issues, it really first has been examined in terms of psychology. So, what is confirmation bias exactly? The definition of confirmation bias is “the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one’s preexisting beliefs or hypotheses” (Plous, Scott (1993). The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making. p. 233). Keeping in mind that confirmation bias applies to many other areas, the primary focus in the remainder of this article will be how it manifests itself in relation to investing. Now that we have the formal definition, let’s take a look deeper into this very real danger for individual investors.
Individual investors have the natural inclination to make a decision first and then look for information that supports that initial decision. It also applies at an even higher level than that. The way that individual investors think they should invest in general is almost predetermined. The easiest thing to do is to talk to people with the same thought process about investing, search through the same supporting financial media news publications and websites, and listen to the same experts. Over time, it gets very easy to just keep doing the same thing over and over again. Plus, it takes an incredible amount of effort to step outside of one’s comfort zone and try to prove that he/she might in fact be incorrect. Individual investors (and even professional investors, money managers and investment advisors) are not wired to attempt to confirm why they might be wrong. At first glance, it seems like a totally foreign and nonsensical concept.
So, what are the types of problems that can occur when individual investor does not acknowledge confirmation bias? There is a long list here are a few to ponder. First, a big mistake can be thinking that what has happened in the recent past will continue into the future indefinitely. This danger is especially evident during a bull market. It can be easy to get carried away and see how much money one made and then keep pouring money in (more than you can really risk). The converse is true when it comes to a bear market. After stocks have gone down for a number of months or longer, it is very easy to just give up on investing in the stock market because it seems like things will never turn around. Second, the danger creeps in when investing by not challenging one’s assumptions. Even if an individual investor knows at a subconscious level that an incorrect decision was made, there can be a desperate search for any shred of evidence that one can justify nonaction. Third, there are times when listening to the investment advice of a particular expert can be “addictive”. By this I mean that it is natural to continue to listen only to the views of that person, especially when he/she made a bold prediction about the stock market that came true. It can be simple to forget that market timing is extremely difficult and that person could be totally wrong in terms of his/her next prediction. Lastly, it can feel good to be part of the crowd and not think differently (or at least examine other issues). There is safety in numbers essentially and, if your investment decision does turn out to be wrong, you can at a minimum take solace in the fact that “everyone else was doing it”.
There are a number of steps that individual investors can take to counteract the dangers of confirmation bias. First and foremost, the fact that you are aware of the potential trap of confirmation bias is half the battle. Periodically ask yourself if you have looked for alternative viewpoints and evidence. Second, you can make a list of why you made a particular investment decision in the first place. But, more importantly, you should write down what types of events could occur to make you change your mind because your investment thesis was not correct. It is very powerful to have a written record to start with. This recommendation actually comes from a reporter at The Wall Street Journal named Jason Zweig. Mr. Zweig has been writing about the financial markets for decades now and still has a weekly article in the paper (usually in the weekend edition) called The Intelligent Investor. I really urge you to take a look at this interview with him back in 2009 about confirmation bias. Here is the link:
Third, you should make it a habit on a regular basis, maybe monthly, to go to various financial market and investing websites that do not mesh with your general investment philosophy. You can peruse through a few articles that you might find totally different than you interpret a situation. I urge you to read them with an open mind though and try to be objective. Lastly, you can bounce an idea off a close friend or advisor and see what they think about your rationale. It is far easier for them to be objective. If you do not have anyone to consult with, I would urge you to pose the question in an investing forum. However, you need to phrase the question in the manner that will address your possible confirmation bias. It is very common to ask question in a positive manner like “Why should you invest in technology companies?”. The better way to phrase it at the outset is to use language like “What are some of the reasons why you should not buy gold?”.
Now keep in mind that the advice on confirmation bias also applies to the articles I have posted on my website. You will note that two of the main themes are using a passive investing approach to invest and striving to keep investment fees as low as possible. I urge you to go and seek out information about why you may want to choose an active investing strategy as an individual investor. Look for the reasons why and situations where you might have to pay additional investment fees depending on your particular circumstances. It is very healthy and beneficial to seek out other information, and I always encourage individual investors to do so. The one thing that I firmly hold onto is that I would avoid financial websites or sources that say I am right and the other guys are all wrong. Things are rarely ever so “black and white”, especially in the world of financial markets and investing.
Four Important Lessons for Individual Investors from the Brexit Vote
10 Sunday Jul 2016
Posted 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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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:
- 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:
- 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:
- 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;
- Investors should focus on valuation of financial assets (no emotions here), traders/speculators worry about market sentiment (emotions) and valuation (no emotions here);
- The benefit of diversification can disappear or be greatly reduced during periods of extreme market volatility and financial market stress over the short term;
- 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.
Are Stocks Currently Overvalued, Undervalued, or Fairly Valued? Answer: Yes.
10 Tuesday May 2016
Posted in academia, academics, asset allocation, Average Returns, business, CAPE, CAPE P/E Ratio, Consumer Finance, Cyclically Adjusted Price Earnings Ratio, Education, finance, finance theory, financial advice, financial goals, financial markets, Financial Media, Financial News, financial planning, financial services industry, Forward P/E Ratio, Individual Investing, individual investors, interest rates, investing, investing advice, investing information, investing tips, investment advice, investments, Nobel Prize, Nobel Prize in Economics, P/E Ratio, passive investing, personal finance, portfolio, risk, Robert Shiller, Schiller, Shiller P/E Ratio, statistics, stock market, Stock Market Returns, Stock Market Valuation, stock prices, stocks, Valuation, volatility
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Confusing and frustrating as it may be, the answer about the current valuation of stocks will always be different depending on who you ask. Various economists, mutual fund portfolio managers, research analysts, financial news print and TV personalities, and other parties seem to disagree on this very important question. Financial professionals will offer a wide range of financial and economic statistics in support of these opinions on the current valuation of stocks. One of the most often cited statistics in support of a person’s opinion is the P/E ratio of the stock market at any given point in time. Many financial professionals use it as one of the easiest numbers to be able to formulate a viewpoint on stock valuation. However, when it comes to any statistic, one must always be skeptical in terms of both the way the number is calculated and its predictive value. Any time one number is used to describe the financial markets one must always be leery. A closer examination of the P/E ratio is necessary to show why its usage alone is a poor way to make a judgement in regard to the proper valuation of stocks.
The P/E ratio is short for Price/Earnings ratio. The value is calculated by taking the current stock price divided by the annual earnings of the company. When it is applied to an entire stock market index like the S&P 500 index, the value is calculated by taking the current value of the index divided by the sum of the annual earnings of the 500 companies included in the index. One of the very important things to be aware of is that the denominator of the equation may actually be different depending on who is using the P/E ratio. Some people will refer to the P/E ratio in terms of the last reported annual earnings for the company (index). Other people will refer to the P/E ratio in terms of the expected earnings for the company (index) over the next year. In this particular case, the P/E ratio is referred to as the Forward P/E ratio. Both ratios have a purpose. The traditional P/E ratio measures the reported accounting earnings of the firm (index). It is a known value. The Forward P/E ratio measures the profits that the firm (index) will create in the future. However, the future profits are only a forecast. Many analysts prefer to use the Forward P/E ratio because the value of any firm (or index of companies) is determined by its future ability to generate profits for its owners. The historical earnings are of lesser significance.
The P/E ratio is essentially a measure of how much investors value $1 worth of earnings and what they are willing to pay for it. For example, a firm might have a P/E ratio of 10, 20, 45, or even 100. In the case of a firm that is losing money, the P/E ratio does not apply. In general, investors are willing to pay more per each $1 in earnings if the company has the potential to grow a great deal in the future. Examples of this would be companies like Amazon (Ticker Symbol: AMZN) or Netflix (Ticker Symbol: NFLX) that have P/E ratios well over 100. Some companies are further along in their life cycle and offer less growth opportunities and tend to have lower P/E ratios. Examples of this would be General Motors or IBM that have P/E ratios in the single digits or low teens, respectively. Investors tend to pay more for companies that offer the promise of future growth than for companies that are in mature or declining industries.
When it comes to the entire stock market, the P/E ratio applied to a stock market index (such as the S&P 500 index) measures how much investors are willing to pay for the earnings of all the companies in that particular index. For purposes of discussion and illustration, I will refer to the S&P 500 index while discussing the P/E ratio. The average P/E ratio for the S&P 500 index over the last 40 years (1966-2015) was 18.77. When delivering an opinion on the valuation of the S&P 500 index, many financial professionals will cite this number and state that stocks are overvalued (undervalued) if the current P/E ratio of the S&P 500 index is above (below) that historical average. If the current P/E ratio of the S&P 500 index is roughly in line with that historical average, the term fairly valued will usually be used in relation to stocks. The rationale is that stocks are only worth what their earnings/profits are over time. There is evidence that the stock market can become far too highly priced (as in March 2000 or December 2007) or far too lowly priced (as in 1982) based upon the P/E ratio observed at that time. Unfortunately, the relative correlation between looking at the difference between the current P/E ratio of the stock market and the historical P/E ratio does not work perfectly. In fact, it is only under very extreme circumstances and with perfect hindsight that investors can see that stocks were overvalued or undervalued in relation to the P/E ratio at that time.
Here are the historical P/E ratios for the S&P 500 index from 1966-2015 as measured by the P/E ratio at the end of the year. Additionally, the annual return of the S&P index for that year is also shown.
| Year | P/E Ratio | Annual Return |
| 2015 | 22.17 | 1.30% |
| 2014 | 20.02 | 13.81% |
| 2013 | 18.15 | 32.43% |
| 2012 | 17.03 | 15.88% |
| 2011 | 14.87 | 2.07% |
| 2010 | 16.30 | 14.87% |
| 2009 | 20.70 | 27.11% |
| 2008 | 70.91 | -37.22% |
| 2007 | 21.46 | 5.46% |
| 2006 | 17.36 | 15.74% |
| 2005 | 18.07 | 4.79% |
| 2004 | 19.99 | 10.82% |
| 2003 | 22.73 | 28.72% |
| 2002 | 31.43 | -22.27% |
| 2001 | 46.17 | -11.98% |
| 2000 | 27.55 | -9.11% |
| 1999 | 29.04 | 21.11% |
| 1998 | 32.92 | 28.73% |
| 1997 | 24.29 | 33.67% |
| 1996 | 19.53 | 23.06% |
| 1995 | 18.08 | 38.02% |
| 1994 | 14.89 | 1.19% |
| 1993 | 21.34 | 10.17% |
| 1992 | 22.50 | 7.60% |
| 1991 | 25.93 | 30.95% |
| 1990 | 15.35 | -3.42% |
| 1989 | 15.13 | 32.00% |
| 1988 | 11.82 | 16.64% |
| 1987 | 14.03 | 5.69% |
| 1986 | 18.01 | 19.06% |
| 1985 | 14.28 | 32.24% |
| 1984 | 10.36 | 5.96% |
| 1983 | 11.52 | 23.13% |
| 1982 | 11.48 | 21.22% |
| 1981 | 7.73 | -5.33% |
| 1980 | 9.02 | 32.76% |
| 1979 | 7.39 | 18.69% |
| 1978 | 7.88 | 6.41% |
| 1977 | 8.28 | -7.78% |
| 1976 | 10.41 | 24.20% |
| 1975 | 11.83 | 38.46% |
| 1974 | 8.30 | -26.95% |
| 1973 | 11.68 | -15.03% |
| 1972 | 18.08 | 19.15% |
| 1971 | 18.00 | 14.54% |
| 1970 | 18.12 | 3.60% |
| 1969 | 15.76 | -8.63% |
| 1968 | 17.65 | 11.03% |
| 1967 | 17.70 | 24.45% |
| 1966 | 15.30 | -10.36% |
Average 18.77
The P/E ratio for the S&P 500 index has varied widely from the single digits to values of 40 or above. The important thing to observe is that very high P/E ratios are not always followed by low or negative returns, nor are very low P/E ratios followed by very high returns. In terms of a baseline, the S&P 500 index returned approximately 9.5% over this 40-year period. As is immediately evident, the returns of stocks are quite varied which is what one would expect given the fact that stocks are known as assets that exhibit volatility (meaning that they fluctuate a lot because the future is never known with certainty). Thus, whenever a financial professional says that stocks are overvalued, undervalued, or fairly valued at any given point in time, that statement has very little significance. Whenever only one data point is utilized to give a forecast about the future direction of stocks, an individual investor needs to be extremely skeptical of that statement. The P/E ratio does hold a very important key for the future returns of stocks but only over long periods of time and certainly not over a short timeframe like a month, quarter, or even a year.
An improvement on the P/E ratio was developed by Dr. Robert J. Shiller, the Nobel Prize winner in Economics and current professor of Economics at Yale University. The P/E ratio that Dr. Shiller developed is referred to as the Shiller P/E ratio or the CAPE (Cyclically Adjusted Price Earnings) P/E ratio. This P/E ratio takes the current value of a stock or stock index and divides it by the average earnings of a firm or index components for a period of 10 years and also takes into account the level of inflation over that period. The general idea is that the long-term earnings of a firm or index determine its relative valuation. Thus, it does a far better job of measuring whether or not the stock market is fairly valued or not at any given point in time. However, another very important piece of the puzzle has to do with interest rates. Investors are generally willing to pay more for stocks when interest rates are low than when interest rates are high. Why? If it is assumed that the future earnings stream of the company remains the same, an investor would be willing to take more risk and invest in stocks over the safety of bonds. A quick example from everyday life is instructive. Imagine that your friend wants to borrow $500 for one year. How much interest will you charge your friend on the loan? Let’s say you want to earn 5% more than what you could earn by simply buying US Treasury Bills for one year. A one-year US Treasury Bill is risk free and, as of May 10, 2016 yields interest of 0.50%. Therefore, you might charge your friend 5.5% on the loan. Now back in the early 1980’s, one-year US Treasury Bills (and even savings accounts at banks) were 10% or higher. If you were to have provided the loan to your friend then, you would not charge 5.5% because you could simply deposit the $500 in the bank. You might charge your friend 15.5% on the loan assuming that the relative risk of your friend not paying you back is the same in both time periods. It is very similar when it comes to investing in stocks. Due to the fact that stocks are volatile and future profits are unknown, investors tend to prefer bonds over stocks as interest rates rise. This phenomenon causes the value of stocks to fall. Conversely, as interest rates fall, the preference for bonds decreases and investors will choose stocks more and prices go up. Now this assumes that the future earnings of the company or index constituents stay the same in either scenario.
With that information in mind, a better way to gauge the relative valuation of stocks in terms of being overvalued, undervalued, or fairly valued, would be to look at the Shiller P/E ratio in combination with interest rates. It is most common for investors to utilize the 10-year US Treasury note as a proxy for interest rates. Here are the historical values for the Shiller P/E ratio and the 10-year US Treasury note over the same 40-year period (1966-2015) as before:
| Year | CAPE Ratio | 10-Year Yield |
| 2015 | 24.21 | 2.27% |
| 2014 | 26.49 | 2.17% |
| 2013 | 24.86 | 3.04% |
| 2012 | 21.90 | 1.78% |
| 2011 | 21.21 | 1.89% |
| 2010 | 22.98 | 3.30% |
| 2009 | 20.53 | 3.85% |
| 2008 | 15.17 | 2.25% |
| 2007 | 24.02 | 4.04% |
| 2006 | 27.21 | 4.71% |
| 2005 | 26.47 | 4.39% |
| 2004 | 26.59 | 4.24% |
| 2003 | 27.66 | 4.27% |
| 2002 | 22.90 | 3.83% |
| 2001 | 30.28 | 5.07% |
| 2000 | 36.98 | 5.12% |
| 1999 | 43.77 | 6.45% |
| 1998 | 40.57 | 4.65% |
| 1997 | 32.86 | 5.75% |
| 1996 | 28.33 | 6.43% |
| 1995 | 24.76 | 5.58% |
| 1994 | 20.22 | 7.84% |
| 1993 | 21.41 | 5.83% |
| 1992 | 20.32 | 6.70% |
| 1991 | 19.77 | 6.71% |
| 1990 | 15.61 | 8.08% |
| 1989 | 17.05 | 7.93% |
| 1988 | 15.09 | 9.14% |
| 1987 | 13.90 | 8.83% |
| 1986 | 14.92 | 7.23% |
| 1985 | 11.72 | 9.00% |
| 1984 | 10.00 | 11.55% |
| 1983 | 9.89 | 11.82% |
| 1982 | 8.76 | 10.36% |
| 1981 | 7.39 | 13.98% |
| 1980 | 9.26 | 12.43% |
| 1979 | 8.85 | 10.33% |
| 1978 | 9.26 | 9.15% |
| 1977 | 9.24 | 7.78% |
| 1976 | 11.44 | 6.81% |
| 1975 | 11.19 | 7.76% |
| 1974 | 8.92 | 7.40% |
| 1973 | 13.53 | 6.90% |
| 1972 | 18.71 | 6.41% |
| 1971 | 17.26 | 5.89% |
| 1970 | 16.46 | 6.50% |
| 1969 | 17.09 | 7.88% |
| 1968 | 21.19 | 6.16% |
| 1967 | 21.51 | 5.70% |
| 1966 | 20.43 | 4.64% |
Average 19.80 6.44%
These two data points provide a much better gauge of whether or not stocks are currently overvalued or undervalued. For example, take a look at the Shiller P/E ratio in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. The value of the Shiller ratio is in the single digits during this time period because interest rates were higher than 10%. Lately interest rates have been right around 2.0%-2.5% for the past several years. Therefore, one would expect that the Shiller P/E ratio would be higher. Now the historical average for the Shiller P/E ratio was 19.80 over this period. The Shiller P/E ratio was in the neighborhood of 40 during 1998-2000 which preceded the bursting of the Internet Bubble in March 2000. The Shiller P/E ratio was at its two lowest levels of 7 and 8 in 1981 and 1982, respectively which is when the great bull market began. However, while this Shiller P/E and interest rates are better than simply the traditional P/E ratio, there are flaws. The Shiller P/E in 2007 was 24.02 right (and interest rates were around 4.0% which is on the low side historically) before the huge market drop of the Great Recession between September 2008 and March 2009. In fact, the S&P 500 index was down over 37% in 2008, and the Shiller P/E did not provide an imminent warning of any such severe downturn. Therefore, even looking at these two measures is imperfect but better than the normal P/E ratio in isolation.
To summarize the discussion, individual investors will always be told on a daily basis by various sources that the stock market is currently overvalued, undervalued, and fairly valued at the same time. One of the most commonly used rationales is a reference to the current P/E ratio in relation to the historical P/E ratio. As we have seen, this one data point is a very poor indicator of the future direction and relative value of stocks at any given period of time, especially for short periods of time (one year or less). The commentary and opinions provided by financial “experts” to individual investors when the P/E ratio is mentioned normally relates to the short term. By looking back at the historical data, it is clear that this one data point is really only relevant over very long periods of time. The Shiller P/E ratio in combination with current interest rates is a great improvement over the traditional P/E ratio, but it is even imperfect when it comes to forecasting the future returns of the stock market. There are two general rules for individual investors to take away from this discussion. Whenever a comment is made about the current value of stocks and only one statistic is provided, the opinion should be taken with a “grain of salt” and weighed only as one piece of information in determining investment decisions that individual investors may or may not make. Additionally, and equally as important, if a financial professional cites a statistic about stock valuation that you do not understand (even after doing some research of your own), you should always discard that opinion in most every case. Individual investors should not make major investment decisions in terms of altering large portions of their investment portfolios of stocks, bonds, and other financial assets utilizing information that they do not understand. It sounds like common sense, but, in the sometimes irrational world of investing, this occurrence is far more common than you imagine.
The First Key to Successful Stock Investing is Understanding and Accepting Reality – Updated
16 Wednesday Mar 2016
Posted in asset allocation, Average Returns, bonds, business, college finance, Consumer Finance, Education, Emotional Intelligence, finance, finance theory, financial advice, financial goals, financial markets, financial planning, financial services industry, Geometric Returns, Individual Investing, individual investors, investing, investing advice, investing information, investing tips, investment advice, investments, math, personal finance, portfolio, risk, risk tolerance, statistics, stock market, Stock Market Returns, stock prices, stocks, Uncategorized, volatility
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This particular topic is so important that I decided to revisit it again. The discussion below adds further refinements and creates an even stronger tie to behavioral finance (i.e. how emotions affect investment decisions). Additionally, for those of you who desire more in-depth coverage of the math and statistics presented, I have included that at the very end of this article. Let’s delve deeper into this topic and what is meant by “reality”.
The first key to successful stock investing has more to do with your emotions than a fundamental understanding of what causes stocks to move up or down. Emotions about money can be a powerful thing and cause people to behave in irrational ways. One of the most common phrases passed on to investors as a piece of wisdom is to “buy low and sell high”. However, study after study has shown that most individual investors fail to heed that advice. Why does this happen? Well, I would submit the real cause is behavioral and based upon incomplete information.
Most individual investors are told when they start investing in stocks via mutual funds and/or ETFs to expect an annual return of 8% to 9% per year. You will find that many financial calculators to help you plan for retirement on the Internet have that as one of the inputs to calculate the growth of your portfolio over time. While that information is not too far off the mark based upon historical returns of the S&P 500 stock index, the actual annual returns of stocks do not cooperate to the constant frustration and consternation of so many investors.
That brings us to the first key to successful stock investing: The actual yearly returns of stocks very rarely equal the average expected. The most common term for this phenomenon is referred to as volatility. Stocks tend to bounce around quite a bit from year to year. Volatility combines with the natural instinct of people to extrapolate from the recent past, and investing becomes a very difficult task. I will get deeper into the numbers at the very end of the post for those readers who like to more fully understand the concepts I discuss. I do need talk in general about annual stock returns at this point to expand upon the first key.
Below I have provided a chart of the annual returns of the S&P 500 index for every year in the 21st century:
| Year | % Return |
| 2001 | -11.90% |
| 2002 | -22.10% |
| 2003 | 28.70% |
| 2004 | 10.90% |
| 2005 | 4.90% |
| 2006 | 15.80% |
| 2007 | 5.50% |
| 2008 | -37.00% |
| 2009 | 26.50% |
| 2010 | 15.10% |
| 2011 | 2.10% |
| 2012 | 16.00% |
| 2013 | 32.40% |
| 2014 | 13.70% |
| 2015 | 1.40% |
What is the first thing you notice when looking at the yearly returns in the table? First, you might notice that they really jump around a lot. More importantly, none of the years has a return that is between 8% and 9%. The closest year is 2004 with a return of 10.9%. If the only piece of information you have is to expect the historical average over time, the lack of consistency can be extraordinarily frustrating and scary. In fact, individual investors (and sometimes professional investors too) commonly look back at the last couple of years and expect those actual returns to continue into the future. Therein lies the problem. Investors tend to be gleeful when returns have been really good and very fearful when returns have been very low. Since the average never comes around very often, investors will forget what returns to expect over the long run and will “buy high and sell low”. It is common to sell stocks after a prolonged downturn and wait until it is “safe” to buy stocks again which is how the sound advice gets turned around.
I will not get too heavy into math and statistics, but I wanted to provide you will some useful information to at least be prepared when you venture out to invest by yourself or by using a financial professional. I looked back at all the returns of the S&P 500 index since 1928 (note the index had lesser numbers of stocks in the past until 1957). The actual annual return of the index was between 7% and 11% only 5 out of the 88 years or 5.7%. That statistic means that your annual return in stocks will be around the average once every 17 years. The 50-year average annual return for the S&P 500 index (1966-2015) was approximately 9.8%. Actual returns were negative 24 out of 88 years (27.9% of the time) and greater than 15% 42 out of 88 years (48.8% of the time). How does relate to the first key of stock investing that I mentioned earlier (“The actual yearly returns of stocks very rarely equal the average expected”)?
Well, it should be much easier to see at this point. If you are investing in stocks to achieve the average return quoted in so many sources of 8% to 9%, it is definitely a long-term proposition and can be a bumpy ride. The average return works out in the end, but you need to have a solid plan, either by yourself or with the guidance financial professional, to ensure that you stick to the long-term financial plan to reach the financial goals that you have set. Knowing beforehand should greatly assist you in controlling your emotions. I recommend trying to anticipate what you do when the actual return you achieve by investing in stocks is well below or quite high above the average in your portfolio. Having this information provides a much better way to truly understand and your risk tolerance when it comes to deciding what percentage of your monies to allocate to stocks in my opinion.
When you look back at the performance returns for stocks, it makes more sense why investors do what they do from the standpoint of behavioral finance. That is how emotions affect (all too often negatively) investment decisions. If an individual investor is told at the outset that he or she can expect returns of 8% or 9% per year, the actual annual returns of stocks can be quite troubling. Having that information only leads to a general disadvantage. When stock returns are negative and nowhere near the average, individual investors tend to panic and sell stocks. When stock returns are quite higher than the average, individual investors tend to be more euphoric and buy even more stocks. This affect is magnified when there are a number of consecutive years with one of those two trends. If stock returns are essentially unchanged, most individual investors become disengaged and really do not even see the point of investing in stocks at all.
I believe it is extremely important to know upfront that stocks are likely to hit the average return once every 17 years. That statistic alone is a real shocker! It lets individual investors truly see how “unusual” the average return really is. Plus, there is a better explanation for fear and greed. Stock market returns will be negative once every 4 years. Keep in mind this does not even include stock returns that are below the average yet still positive. Lastly, every other year the stock market returns will be above the average (in my case I was measuring above the average with the definition of that being a stock market return greater than 11%). It is no wonder why individual investors get greedy when it looks like investing in the stock market is so easy after seeing such great returns. Conversely, the occurrence of negative returns is so regular that it is only natural for individual investors to panic. Since the average only comes around approximately once every two decades, that is why confusion abounds and investors abandon their long-term financial plans.
I will readily admit sticking to a long-term financial plan is not easy to do in practice during powerful bull or bear markets, but I think it helps to know upfront what actual stock returns look like and prepare yourself emotionally in additional to the intellectual side of investing. Now I always mention that statistics can be misleading, conveniently picked to make a point, or not indicative of the future. Nevertheless, I have tried to present the information fairly and in general terms.
Additional Information on Stock Market Returns (Discussion of Math and Statistics):
Please note that this information may be skipped by individual investors that are scared off by math in general or have no desire to dive deeper into the minutiae. One of the first things to be aware of is what expected returns for stocks are. An expected return is what the most likely outcome would be in any particular year. Expected returns provide misleading results when there is a high degree of variability in the entire dataset. In the case of stock market returns, there is an incredible amount of variability. The industry term for variability, which is the statistical term, is volatility. Due to the fact that the expected return almost never happens, it would be wise for the financial services industry to truly and better define volatility. Most individual investors do not know that there is far more of a range of possible outcomes for stock market returns. Individual investors associate hearing average returns with some volatility from Financial Advisors or financial media in the same way as the classic “bell curve”. As discussed in further detail above, the outcomes do not even come close to approximating the “bell curve”.
One important thing to be aware of when it comes to actual performance returns of an individual’s investment portfolio is that average/expected values are not very important. In fact, they really lead to a distorted way of looking at investing. Average/expected values are based on arithmetic returns, where the overall growth in one’s investment portfolio is tied to geometric returns. The concept of geometric returns is overlooked or not fully explained to individual investors. Here is the perfect example of how it comes into play. Let’s say you own one share of a $100 stock. It goes down 50% in the first year and then up 50% in the second year. How much money do you have at the end of the second year? You have the original $100, right?
Not even close. You end up with $75. Why? At the end of the first year, your stock is worth $50 ($100 + $100*-50%) after decreasing 50%. Since you begin the second year with only that $50, that is why you end up having $75 ($50 + $50 * 50%). The average annual return is 0% ((-50% + 50%) divided by 2)) for the two-year period. Whereas your geometric return is negative 13.4%. Essentially that number shows what happened to the value of your portfolio over the entire timeframe and incorporates the ending value. Think of it as having $100 + $100 * -13.4% or $86.60 at the end of year one and then $86.60 + $86.60 * -13.4%) or $75. Note that you never actually have $86.60 as the portfolio’s value at any time, but the geometric return tells you how much money you actually earned (or lost) over the entire period and how much money you end up with, otherwise known as the terminal value of your portfolio. The geometric return will ALWAYS differ from the arithmetic return when a negative return is introduced as one of the outcomes. As an individual investor, your primary concern is the terminal value of your portfolio. That is the dollar value you see on your brokerage statement and is the actual amount of money you have.
Financial professionals forget to focus on geometric returns or even bring them up to clients. This omission is important to individual investors because negative returns have an outsized effect on the terminal value of an investment portfolio. For example, in the example above, it is quite clear that losing 50% and then gaining 50% do not “cancel each other out”. The negative percent weighs down the final value of the portfolio. That is why it is extremely important to use the geometric return of the portfolio. This result is due to the fact that the compounding of interest is not linear. It is a geometric equation which is why the geometric mean comes into play. Without going fully into the explanation of those equations, the main takeaway for investors when it comes to annual returns is that negative returns have more of an effect than positive returns.
Taken together, it is important to utilize the concept of multi-year geometric averages. Individual investors never want to simply add up the annual returns of a series of years and then divided by the number of years. That result will overstate the amount of money in the investment portfolio at the end of the period. The preferred approach is to use the geometric average which is referred to as the annualized average return. That percentage is the number most relevant to investors. Additionally, longer timeframes of these returns are best to look at given the extreme amount of volatility in yearly stock market returns. It gives a better picture of how the stock market has moved.
When looking at the stock market returns for the S&P 500 index over five-year periods using the period 2001-2015, they yield surprising yet informative results. The five-year returns from 2001-2005, 2006-2010, and 2011-2015 were 0.54%, 2.30%, and 12.57%, respectively. Valuable information comes from looking at extended periods of time using the same time increment. The overall return during 2001-2015 was 5.01%. The effect of these longer timeframes smooths the stock market return data, but even then the stock market returns vary quite a bit. Note that the overall return from the entire historical period of the S&P 500 index is roughly 9.50%. These three selected chunks show two periods of underperformance and one year of outperformance. The reason stock market returns tend to hover around the historical average is due to the fact that these returns are tied to the overall growth the economy (most commonly Gross Domestic Product – GDP) and corporate profits. In the meantime though, stock market returns can vary a lot from this expected return. However, they are unlikely to do so for incredibly long periods of time.
By incorporating the understanding of volatility and geometric returns into your understanding of the “reality” of stock market returns, you will be able to better refine your own risk tolerance and how to craft your long-term financial plan. A better grasp of these concepts makes one far less likely to react emotionally to the market, either with too much fear or too much greed.
The Top 5 Most Read Articles in my Investing Blog During 2015
29 Tuesday Dec 2015
Posted 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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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.
- 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!
How to Rebalance Your Investment Portfolio – Part 3 of 3
21 Saturday Nov 2015
Posted in asset allocation, finance, financial advice, financial goals, financial markets, financial planning, Individual Investing, individual investors, investing, investing advice, investing information, investing tips, investment advice, investments, passive investing, personal finance, portfolio, rebalancing, rebalancing investment portfolio, risk, risk tolerance, stock market
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This rebalancing discussion is the last installment of a three-part series. The first discussion defined what is commonly referred to as rebalancing one’s investment portfolio. Rebalancing is in simplest form is realigning an investment portfolio to a desired asset allocation after time inevitably changes its composition due to the normal fluctuations in the financial markets. Rebalancing is normally done at set intervals of time of which once a year is the most common. The link to the full discussion of part one can be found here:
https://latticeworkwealth.com/2015/07/16/how-to-rebalance-your-investment-portfolio-part-1-of-3/
The second discussion outlined a relatively easy way to come up with an allocation for an investment portfolio and how it is rebalanced. This particular method is to rely on what are commonly referred to as target date or life cycle mutual funds. These mutual funds offered by some of the largest asset managers in the financial services industry recommend a given asset allocation for an investment portfolio based upon the year one is retiring. The mutual funds are carefully crafted to take into account risk levels in addition to reaching financial goals. Additionally, these mutual funds are periodically adjusted over time to keep the investment portfolio aligned with a desired asset allocation. Bottom line, the asset manager does all the work for you and can be a nice way for novice investors to get their “feet wet” when it comes to investing. Note that the discussion also outlines how to increase or decrease one’s risk profile (meaning take on more risk to capture possibly higher investment returns or take on less risk to possibly lower the amount one’s investment portfolio might go down by) while still using this approach. The link to the full discussion of part one can be found here:
https://latticeworkwealth.com/2015/07/29/how-to-rebalance-your-investment-portfolio-part-2-of-3/
The third and final part of the rebalancing discussion will focus on what I define as dynamic rebalancing. Dynamic rebalancing may be called by different names depending on the investment professional, but the concept is generally the same. Dynamic rebalancing is reserved for more advanced individual investors. An individual investor needs to be comfortable with understanding the different investment options available and follow the financial markets more closely. Dynamic rebalancing still has the basic definition of rebalancing at its core. However, there is a bit more flexibility involved when realigning one’s investment portfolio.
Let’s dig a bit deeper into dynamic rebalancing and why it is an option for a subset of more advanced individual investors. In order to start we need to go back to the original definition of rebalancing. Rebalancing is looking at one’s investment portfolio at set intervals (usually coincides with the end of the year) and moving monies between asset classes. For instance, stocks may perform better than bonds in a certain year so the investment portfolio has a higher exposure to stocks at the end of the period. In order to realign the investment portfolio back to its original composition, the investor would need to sell stocks and buy bonds. The amounts to sell and buy are calculated such that the end result is that the percentages invested in stocks and bonds are at their original levels of the beginning of the period. As long as one’s financial goals and risk tolerance have not changed, the original percentages are used. It is a hard rule meaning that there are no exceptions for the final asset allocation to stocks, bonds, and cash. The percentages are set in stone such that the individual investor does not get emotional by any short-term financial market volatility and drift away from his/her desired financial plan.
Dynamic rebalancing still has percentages for the investment in certain asset classes, investment styles, or industry sectors but a band of acceptable percentages is utilized. For example, an individual investor would rebalance the investment portfolio at the end of the year, but he/she might decide whether to have anywhere between 65% – 70% invested in stocks. Why would any individual investor want to use such an approach? Well, if one looks back on financial market history, the ebbs and flows of asset classes rarely line up with calendar years. For instance, small cap stocks might outperform other domestic stocks for two years instead of just one. What usually ends up happening in the financial markets is that financial assets become overvalued or undervalued relative to each other as time passes. Other investors will bid up certain stocks or bonds and sell other stocks and bonds because of the perceived likelihood of investment performance returns. However, at a certain point in time, the scales of value tip and it becomes better to invest in the “unloved” stocks and bonds that were being sold so much in the past. This phenomenon will hardly ever occur exactly in one-year increments.
The most important thing to remember about dynamic rebalancing is that the individual investor has financial flexibility in the asset allocation percentages, but he/she is not allowed to engage in “market timing”. “Market timing” is when any investor believes he/she knows exactly the right time to buy or sell financial assets. In fact, the financial media will always have financial pundits being interviewed or write investment articles predicting when the stock market will peak or when the market is at the lowest level it can go so investors just have to buy. Professional investors might predict one or two tops or bottoms of the financial markets, but there are only a handful of them that can make a living at this approach. If it is too hard for the professional, institutional investors to do so, individual investors should not have the hubris to think that they can.
Here is an illustration of dynamic rebalancing to make things much clearer. An individual investor will have defined percentages to invest in certain asset classes for the investment portfolio, but he/she will also have a band of acceptable percentages. The following is a hypothetical investment portfolio of $1,000,000 using dynamic rebalancing:
| 1) Investment Portfolio at the Beginning of the Year | |||
| Type of Asset | Dollar Amount | % in Port | Overall |
| Large Cap Stocks | $300,000 | 30.0% | |
| Mid Cap Stocks | 125,000 | 12.5% | |
| Small Cap Stocks | 100,000 | 10.0% | |
| International Stocks | 200,000 | 20.0% | |
| Emerging Market Stocks | 25,000 | 2.5% | 75.0% |
| Domestic Bonds | 150,000 | 15.0% | |
| International Bonds | 50,000 | 5.0% | 20.0% |
| Cash | 50,000 | 5.0% | 5.0% |
| Total | $1,000,000 | 100.0% | 100.0% |
| Type of Asset | Low – Band | High – Band | |
| Large Cap Stocks | 30.0% | 40.0% | |
| Mid Cap Stocks | 10.0% | 20.0% | |
| Small Cap Stocks | 10.0% | 15.0% | |
| International Stocks | 15.0% | 25.0% | |
| Emerging Market Stocks | 0.0% | 5.0% | |
| Domestic Bonds | 15.0% | 30.0% | |
| International Bonds | 5.0% | 15.0% | |
| Cash | 5.0% | 25.0% | |
| 2) Investment Portfolio at the End of the Year after Assumed Market Fluctuations | |||
| Type of Asset | Dollar Amount | % in Port | Overall |
| Large Cap Stocks | $275,000 | 26.6% | |
| Mid Cap Stocks | 150,000 | 14.5% | |
| Small Cap Stocks | 160,000 | 15.5% | |
| International Stocks | 175,000 | 16.9% | |
| Emerging Market Stocks | 10,000 | 1.0% | 74.4% |
| Domestic Bonds | 175,000 | 16.9% | |
| International Bonds | 40,000 | 3.9% | 20.8% |
| Cash | 50,000 | 4.8% | 4.8% |
| Total | $1,035,000 | 100.0% | 100.0% |
| Type of Asset | Low – Band | High – Band | |
| Large Cap Stocks | 30.0% | 40.0% | |
| Mid Cap Stocks | 10.0% | 20.0% | |
| Small Cap Stocks | 10.0% | 15.0% | |
| International Stocks | 15.0% | 25.0% | |
| Emerging Market Stocks | 0.0% | 5.0% | |
| Domestic Bonds | 15.0% | 30.0% | |
| International Bonds | 5.0% | 15.0% | |
| Cash | 5.0% | 25.0% | |
| 3) Steps Taken to Dynamically Rebalance the Investment Portfolio | |||
| Type of Asset | Dollar Amount | Buy or Sell | |
| Large Cap Stocks | $35,000 | Buy | |
| Mid Cap Stocks | 0 | No Action | |
| Small Cap Stocks | (40,000) | Sell | |
| International Stocks | 5,000 | Buy | |
| Emerging Market Stocks | (10,000) | Sell | |
| Domestic Bonds | (20,000) | Sell | |
| International Bonds | 25,000 | Buy | |
| Cash | 5,000 | Buy | |
| Total | $0 | ||
| 4) Investment Portfolio After Dynamic Rebalancing | |||
| Type of Asset | Dollar Amount | % in Port | Overall |
| Large Cap Stocks | $310,000 | 30.0% | |
| Mid Cap Stocks | 150,000 | 14.5% | |
| Small Cap Stocks | 120,000 | 11.6% | |
| International Stocks | 180,000 | 17.4% | |
| Emerging Market Stocks | – | 0.0% | 73.4% |
| Domestic Bonds | 155,000 | 15.0% | |
| International Bonds | 65,000 | 6.3% | 21.3% |
| Cash | 55,000 | 5.3% | 5.3% |
| Total | $1,035,000 | 100.0% | 100.0% |
| Type of Asset | Low – Band | High – Band | |
| Large Cap Stocks | 30.0% | 40.0% | |
| Mid Cap Stocks | 10.0% | 20.0% | |
| Small Cap Stocks | 10.0% | 15.0% | |
| International Stocks | 15.0% | 25.0% | |
| Emerging Market Stocks | 0.0% | 5.0% | |
| Domestic Bonds | 15.0% | 30.0% | |
| International Bonds | 5.0% | 15.0% | |
| Cash | 5.0% | 25.0% | |
Here are the salient pieces of information to note when reviewing the hypothetical scenario above. At the beginning of the year, the individual investor allocates the investment portfolio amongst a number of options. The options are large cap stocks, mid cap stocks, small cap stocks, international stocks, emerging markets stocks, domestic bonds, international bonds, and cash. Note that the individual investor has opted to define bands for acceptable percentage exposures to these investment options. The investment amount of the asset allocation in each category is within the band. Additionally, assume the individual investor has established acceptable and desired percentage exposures to the overall asset class. The percentage allocation to stocks is between 70.0% – 80.0%, to bonds is between 20.0% – 30.0%, and to cash is between 0.0% – 15.0%. Note that the sum of the bands will not equal 100.0%; however, the investment portfolio at any given time will always add up to 100.0%. In the third part of the hypothetical scenario, there are changes to the investment portfolio in terms of buying, selling, or doing nothing because of the dynamic rebalancing process (in part because some of the bands are violated). When reviewing the fourth part, the balances and percentage allocations reflect those changes and the percentages do not match the percentage allocations from the first part. They do not need to as long as the rules for the bands are followed at an overall level and specific-component level.
The hypothetical scenario can be adapted to any investment portfolio size and number of components in the investment portfolio. Furthermore, the bands of acceptable exposure to asset classes overall or more specific investments can be lower or wider. The main point of the bands is that the individual investor has more control over the asset allocation of the investment portfolio. With that being said, the individual investor is not allowed to become too greedy or too fearful. There are times when a certain type of investment performs extraordinarily well and becomes an ever larger portion of the investment portfolio. If the percentage allocation exceeds the band though, the amount invested must be reduced to limit risk. On the other hand, there are times when a certain type of investment performs quite poorly and becomes a rather low portion of the investment portfolio. It might be tempting to sell the entire portion of the investment portfolio. Generally speaking though, an individual investor should have exposure to a number of investment components and not try to determine when it is right to avoid one altogether to remain diversified.
In summary, one will note that dynamic rebalancing is much more complicated than using hard and fast rules for the absolute value of percentages allocated to each investment component. It should really only be used by more advanced individual investors. Thus, I would urge caution before deciding to implement the dynamic rebalancing approach to your investment process. I would mention that it is very important to shy away from any investing strategy in general that is too complex to understand. It is easy to be confused even more as time passes and make critical investing errors in the future. As it relates to rebalancing, an individual investor may want to start with the standard usage of rebalancing discussed in parts one and/or two of this three-part series. Dynamic rebalancing might be an option for the future, or you may even start your own hypothetical paper portfolio with this method to learn more. Lastly, dynamic rebalancing does not need to be used. I only offer it as a tool that is appropriate for a subset of individual investors. Therefore, you should not view dynamic rebalancing as an investment strategy that must be utilized in the future once rebalancing is fully understood. It is perfectly acceptable to stick with normal rebalancing and never even begin using dynamic rebalance as an investment strategy. Moreover, some individual investors using dynamic rebalancing get carried away and start trying to “time the market” which would be a far worse result.
