Commentary

I have written before about my concerns over the optimism that is required to justify the valuations of many popular “growth” stocks. The analysis that follows will further explain why I have these concerns.

The chart below shows the total market capitalisation of the ten largest “growth” stocks, as defined by the MSCI World Growth index. Their total value is expressed as a percentage of the regular MSCI World index. Hence, if you were to purchase a MSCI World tracker fund you would currently have around 17% of your money invested into these ten large businesses (as an aside this compares to UK stocks having a circa 4% weight in the index).

The second, black, line on the chart shows the percentage of earnings that these ten companies represent. Hence, their earnings, or profits, currently represent around 10.5% of the total earnings of all the companies in the MSCI World index.

How should we interpret this disparity between the current market value of these companies and their earnings?

The share price of a company, in theory, represents expectations about its future cashflows to shareholders. Hence, the disparity between the two measure tells us that the consensus view of market participants is that these ten large businesses will grow their earnings at a much faster rate than the other 1,590 companies in the index. This is possible, but given that they are the largest growth companies, it is surely a tall order?

For the curious reader, the table below shows the ten largest constituents of the MSCI World Growth index that were used to produce the chart. Together with their total market capitalisations, the table also includes the total value of shares sold by company insiders in the last 12 months.

Although the value of shares sold by company Directors appear small relative to the companies’ market capitalisations, the proceeds are concentrated in the hands of a very small number of beneficiaries. This represents a transfer of money between purchasers, who will have included retail investors and pension savers, and the people who have an intimate knowledge of these businesses. This leaves me thinking that the empowerment of retail investors could, in fact, be stealing from the poor to give to the rich, rather than the other way around!

As long-term investors, company valuations matter to us, as a great business will only make for a great investment at the “right” price. We cannot know that these businesses will not live up to current lofty expectations, but our approach is to avoid investing when we think the price paid requires undue optimism. Our core objective is to make sure that our portfolio is robust in a range of future scenarios. By managing the risk of financial loss in this way, we believe we can increase our chances of delivering superior long-term compound returns.

In response to the global pandemic central banks and governments have delivered record amounts of economic stimulus. Much of this has taken the form of increasing money supply via buying financial assets, following which asset prices look high relative to their history.

As observed by famed investor Howard Marks, a world with high asset prices is a world of low future returns. This is most easily understood by a traditional bond investment that pays a fixed coupon; higher prices clearly equate to lower income yields. The same argument applies elsewhere when asset prices increase by more than their underlying economics or earning power.

What we do not know is if asset prices are now at a permanently higher plateau, and lower investment returns are the new norm, or if we are witnessing a spectacular “everything bubble” that will create financial pain when prices “normalise”.

Where does this leave investors?

The easiest response is to do nothing and knowingly, or otherwise, accept that future returns will be lower. I believe this is the path of least resistance, and thus the one that most investors will take.

To try and avoid lower future returns, I see only three credible options:

1. Take less risk in the hope that asset prices are cheaper in the future.
2. Take more risk in the hope that the status quo holds, and you earn a higher return.
3. Try to do something “clever” to make a higher return with no additional risk.

Doing Nothing

In investing, doing nothing, is often a good strategy. It allows you to side-step the latest fads, avoid acting on emotions and helps ensure that returns are not eaten up by transactions costs.

In the last decade I believe many investors have navigated towards owning a portfolio dominated by “growth” stocks and government bonds. These have both been the “gifts that keep giving”, however I believe they are destined to produce lower returns in the future.

In the case of government bonds, and fixed income investments more generally, we have experienced 40 years of falling interest rates. This provided a tail wind that helped increase bond prices (since they move inversely to interest rates). In the last decade UK 10-year Gilt yields have fallen from around 3% to 0.5%. I calculate that for investors to receive a similar return in the next decade, as in the last, 10-year UK interest rates would have to fall from 0.5% to around -4%. I think this is possible, but unlikely.

So called “growth” stocks have also benefited from a tail wind in the last decade, with their prices moving to be much higher multiples of their underlying earnings. The price to average 10-year earnings ratio for the MSCI world growth index almost doubled in the last decade, moving from 25x in June 2011 to 48x in June 2021. I do not think that such a doubling is likely to happen again in the coming decade.

The chart above is an updated version of our analysis from my September 2020 quarterly letter and shows our estimate of the performance drivers of the MSCI world growth and value indices in the last 10 years. This makes clear the impact that earnings-multiple expansion has had on the performance of “growth” stocks.

Taking less risk

Taking less risk is most easily achieved by holding more cash or other short-dated “safe” investments. If asset prices fall, then you can swoop in and buy at prices lower than today, locking in a higher return. If asset prices do not fall then, you will clearly have forgone the returns that holding “riskier” assets would have provided.

I suspect that some investors will proceed on a “do nothing” basis, expecting that they can quickly switch to a “take less risk” strategy as and when they think asset prices are falling. This strategy sounds appealing but is hard to achieve as major turning points in markets are rarely well signposted.

Taking more risk

Taking more risk is most easily understood in fixed income markets, where the interest rate you earn is set according to the perceived risk of the borrower not meeting their payment obligations. Orthodox theory in financial markets builds on this to say that more generally the rate of return you earn is dictated by the risk you are willing to take.

One clear mechanism for the risk/return trade off in equity markets is that when a company increases its leverage via borrowings it increases the upside for shareholders, but also the probability of them being “wiped out” if there is a bump in the road.

Doing something “clever”

What most investors would ideally like, is to find a way of side-stepping the orthodox relationship between risk and returns, to make a higher return without a corresponding increase in risk. The financial services industry is always keen to meet this desire and so there is never any shortage of products making such claims.

Given that there is no unique way to define risk it is often the case that doing something “clever” will result in swapping one risk for another. For example, the private equity industry touts the prospect of higher returns than public equity markets, but it comes with the risks of lower liquidity and higher leverage.

I am front of the scepticism queue when it comes to “clever” financial products. However, I believe that owning “high quality value” stocks is currently presenting investors with an opportunity to earn higher future returns with less risk.

I see evidence of this from a “top-down” perspective because as shown above “value” stocks have not experienced the earnings-multiple expansion of “growth” stocks, and so I see them at less risk of a corresponding multiples contraction. More importantly I continue to see evidence from a “bottom-up” view, where our research leads us to companies that we judge as high quality, having longevity of earnings power and being available to purchase at a more reasonable price than many more popularly owned companies.

Put differently, I believe that in the current market environment there is still merit to being selective about which companies you own. Whilst, equity prices are high on average, I believe that their increase relative to underlying earnings has been concentrated far more in some corners of the markets than others. Relative to many other “clever” investment products on offer, I find the argument for a “value” strategy to be reassuringly straightforward.

Investing in a low return world.

The above reasoning leads to my mental model for investing in a low return world, that I set out in the 2-by-2 matrix below.

I have mapped the four possible actions for investors to two simple questions about their outlook. The strength of an investor’s convictions in the above two questions should dictate their behaviour. Very few investors, myself included, will hold convictions so strong that they pursue only one of these four options to the exclusion of the others.

At Havelock, we have relatively low conviction that asset prices will remain permanently high and a low but not at-all-costs tolerance of low returns. This means that our approach should be skewed towards the top-left part of this matrix if we hope to achieve our goals.

The cornerstone of our approach is to hold assets that we think are reasonably priced and do not require too much optimism about the future. This requires us to understand and value each business we invest in, and I put this in the “doing something clever” category. We do assume general equity market risk and allow ourselves to hold some cash “dry powder”, so there are also elements of “do nothing” and “take less risk” in our approach. More specifically we attempt to limit the losses we will make during a large fall in general equity markets to be less than most broad market indices.

Why am I telling you all this? I believe successful investors find ways of reducing the complexity of markets to allow logical reasoning about where they think they are and where they want to be. There is no unique way to do this, but I thought I would lay out my stall for how I think about the challenges of investing in a low return world.

During a recent Zoom meeting with a team of highly-regarded industry experts, I was asked about our approach to “top slicing” – the practice of selling down part of your original investment in a company as its share price increases. The question put to me was that if we were “top slicing” were we, in the words of Warren Buffett, “cutting the flowers and watering the weeds”? Were we taking money out of the “winners” we had identified and funnelling it towards the “losers”?

I found myself later ruminating on this question and my initial answer.

It transpires that Buffett had asked to borrow the quote from the famed money manager Peter Lynch[1]. Might I be contradicting the sage advice of, not one, but two of history’s great investors?

Locking in a profit by selling an investment that has gone up provides psychological comfort and makes an investor feel that they are “doing something”. This psychological bias can draw an investor into making bad decisions. Good investment ideas are few and far between and you need to be confident that you have a better alternative before rushing to the exit.

Buffett’s early career as a value investor had a big focus on buying “cigar butts” – part shares of weak companies that were out of favour but that could deliver “one last puff” of financial reward to those who invested in them. He has evolved as an investor to focus on buying great businesses, where their ability to successfully reinvest their profits provides patient investors with a long-term financial reward. The common thread is an analytical focus on paying less than you think an opportunity is worth, whilst the difference is in how reactive you are to market prices.

With all else being equal, we would much rather be investing in great companies for the long-term than scouring the streets for used cigar butts to puff on. However, I believe that the enthusiasm for companies with stable and rising earnings has made owning many of them less attractive at current prices. I think this risks some investors committing an alternative psychological mistake of paying a hefty premium for the perceived comfort of avoiding uncertainty.

Where does this then leave us?

There are two types of alternative opportunity that I currently see.

Firstly, I see opportunity in companies where their earnings are not smooth, but where we believe they will be reliable over the course of an entire business cycle. To again quote Buffett – “I’d much rather earn a lumpy 15% over time than a smooth 12%”. I believe that such companies are often viewed with unreasonable pessimism in the bad years, coupled with unrealistic optimism in the good ones. If we believe that such a company is subject to a bout of extreme optimism, then we will sell our investment if we see better opportunity elsewhere.

Secondly, I see opportunity in low growth companies that have long track records of returning capital back to shareholders via dividends and buybacks. Such opportunities are often associated with mundane industries and provide us with an income stream that we can invest elsewhere. Again, we will move towards the exit if we think that the share price of such a company is implying a level of growth that is ahead of a realistic view of the future.

The share price of a company can rise because its underlying business has improved or because there has been a mood change amongst investors who are rushing to own it. It is hard to untangle the two, but our approach is to attempt to do so. We regularly update our valuation of every business that we own, and for a growing business our valuation will rise over time as that growth is realised. We would be happy to be a long-term shareholder in every business that we invest in but will exit if we feel confident that there is a wide disparity between our analysis and the market consensus.

We will not always get these decisions right, but by having a strong process, we aim to avoid bad psychological habits at all costs. Ultimately, we are trying to balance the risk of selling great investments too soon against the risk of getting drawn into wishful thinking.

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[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/17/how-warren-buffett-taught-peter-lynch-the-value-of-making-mistakes.html

Have you ever found yourself standing in a field surrounded by cows? I learned that it is a situation made more stressful when accompanied by two children and a partner who does not share your philosophy of bovine encounters. Just as my wife started reading our last rites an apparition appeared, in the form of a jovial dairy farmer. He explained that the cows were curious, that we should stand our ground and that as they drew closer one of them would scare the herd into submission. Sure, enough one twitched and they all beat a hasty retreat.

This experience stuck with me as a lesson in the behaviour of crowds. The ebullient young cows egged each other on, until for no good reason they all decided to leg it.

The current euphoria in financial markets looks increasingly driven by animal spirits. The commitment of central banks to support markets seems to have removed all fear of losing money and get-rich-quick stories are being transmitted through social media, drawing in newcomers who want a share of the action. As a value investor I am sceptical of “this time it’s different” narratives. We are living through an era of extreme change, but history suggests that this is no reason for complacency.

It seems that financial markets are being increasingly dominated by price insensitive buyers. This label applies equally to the passive index investor who implicitly accepts current prices as the best guide to true value, the speculator who hopes to flip their purchase to a “greater fool” and the optimist who believes a company is so destined for success that there is no price at which it is too expensive.

Investing based on the perceived value of what you are buying requires analysis that links financial markets to the real economy. It is time consuming and offers few high-octane thrills. The growth in passive investment products is a good thing – but rests on the premise that everyone else is doing their homework to tether prices to a pragmatic view of what the future holds. In a world where prices are set on a whim it makes less sense, especially given the increased concentration of many indices into a narrow group of companies.

It is concerning that capital markets are increasingly detached from the economic activity that underpins them. Being a business owner and getting to share in its profits is a good way to build wealth and the stock market provides a convenient mechanism to democratise access to this. However, a speculative bubble will risk perpetuating the view that markets are a form of legalised gambling set up to serve the interests of those who work in them.

This brings me back to the cows.

When you study market history the end of a speculative mania rarely has a clear explanation for the herd’s retreat. The cows, it turned out, did not have much conviction in their need to get close and so it did not take much to frighten them. To this end when the current market euphoria breaks, I suspect it will be for a seemingly inexplicable reason. History suggests that the same animal spirits that lift markets will also work in reverse, with a small twitch rapidly turning into a mass exodus.

It is the corners of the market where prices appear most detached from real economic activity that present this risk – the same parts of the market that will draw in new participants hoping to get rich quick.

The desire for a comfortable retirement is an almost universal goal and the investment industry exists, in a large part, to serve this need. I am deeply sceptical that democratising leveraged derivatives speculation will prove to be a good way to help an aging workforce retire in comfort. At worse today’s euphoric markets have the potential to turn an entire generation away from responsible pension saving and I think it is in the interests of the financial services industry to make sure that this does not happen.

Perhaps this requires a shift of mindset with a redoubled focus on the true role of capital markets? At their heart they are democratic – because they allow all of us to own a slice of the real economy. Much like a farmer watching over his herd, we need to act as responsible stewards of other people’s money.