TAG | market timing
17
Is Your Investment Advisor Capitalizing on Your Fear?
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Is Your Investment Advisor Capitalizing on Your Fear?
by Alexander Green, Investment U Chief Investment Strategist
Monday, January 16, 2012: Issue #1687
Make no mistake. Investors are petrified right now. And they’re telling their investment advisors about it.
The question is: “What is he or she doing in response?” If the answer is adjusting your asset allocation, focusing on your long-term investment goals, or doing a bit of handholding, you probably have a good one.
But if they’re preying on your emotional state with unsuitable investments or all-or-nothing advice, beware.
The story is as old as equity investing itself. When times are good, investors get complacent, take too much risk and generally regret it. When times are bad, investors become anxiety-ridden, take too little risk and generally regret it. Seasoned advisors know this and try to keep you on the right track. But less knowledgeable or less scrupulous advisors may try to take advantage of your worries.
For instance, your investment advisor may recommend that you load up on variable annuities in this uncertain environment. Not a good idea. Some annuities are right for some people. They offer tax-deferred compounding (like an IRA) and a principal guarantee. But the typical annuity is ridiculously expensive, offers mediocre insurance coverage, restricts your investment choices to so-so mutual funds, lacks liquidity and comes with enormous surrender penalties.
Too many investors learn these things about annuities after they’ve plunked for one. Hence, you’ll often hear investors complain that they are “stuck in an annuity” for several years. Investigate these insurance contracts before you invest. On the whole they are oversold, frequently misrepresented and completely inappropriate for many folks.
Another sign that you have a misguided (or unethical) investment advisor is if he suggests that you abandon proven investment principles. For example, if your investment plan is based on a broker’s economic forecast or market timing advice, good luck. You’re going to need it.
No one can accurately predict the economy with any consistency. And it wouldn’t really matter if they could. Stocks routinely rally during the bad times and sell-off during the good ones. If your investment advisor doesn’t know this, you shouldn’t be using her. If she does and is still trying to convince you to flee the market, that’s even worse.
Also beware investment advisors who are paid on a transaction basis and therefore have an incentive for you to trade more frequently. Some brokers today are telling their clients that the old rules no longer apply, that you need to jump in and out of the market and from stock to stock. For a commission-based broker, this can be entirely self-serving advice. And it is almost certain to end badly… at least for the client.
I know it’s tough to buy – or just hang in there – when the outlook is dark. But look back at history. The market was a screaming “Buy” after the crash of ’87, the bear market of 1990, the tech wreck of 1994, the Asian Contagion of 1997, the 2000 to 2002 bear market, and even during the depths of the financial crisis in 2008.
If you’re using an advisor who insists that “this time it’s different,” you might reasonably examine his experience, his ethics and his disciplinary history. And seek out more-qualified advice.
Good Investing,
Alexander Green
12
Why Burton G. Malkiel is More Right Than Wrong
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Why Burton G. Malkiel is More Right Than Wrong
by Alexander Green, Chief Investment Strategist
Monday, July 12, 2010: Issue #1299
At FreedomFest in Las Vegas last week, I debated Burton G. Malkiel, author of the investment classic A Random Walk Down Wall Street.
Malkiel is one of just a few men alive who has profoundly affected modern investment thinking. And his position is straightforward.
He believes that rational, self-interested investors take all public information and immediately incorporate it into the price of stocks. (This is where we get the term “efficient market.”)
He therefore concludes that market timing and security analysis is foolhardy… that it’s simply not possible to beat the market over the long term… and that you’d be well advised to give up that dream and just own a broad selection of index funds.
I actually agree with much of what Malkiel says. Much… but certainly not all.
Irrational Exuberance
For starters, you can count on investors to be self-interested. But rational? Not always. Just take a look at recent history…
- How rational were investors 10 years ago when they bid Internet and technology stocks to the skies, forgoing sales and earnings for financial metrics like “eyeballs” and “web hits?”
- How rational were investors five years ago when they put themselves deeply in hock to flip land, rental properties, vacation homes and condos because “real estate always goes up?”
- How rational were investors when they dumped stocks en masse 16 months ago – with the Dow at 6,500 – and plunked the proceeds into money market funds just as yields reached an all-time low?
It’s true that most investors behave rationally most of the time.
But it’s certainly not true that all (or even most) investors behave rationally all the time. And that creates opportunity.
Let’s take a look at another flaw in the “random walk” argument…
Get the Insider Advantage
Malkiel mentions that investors incorporate all “public information” into the price of stocks. But how about non-public information?
Most investors don’t have access to non-public information, that’s true. But that doesn’t mean no one has access to it.
Some of the best trades I’ve ever made have resulted from visiting a retailer and asking the manager how regional and national sales are going. Are they supposed to talk about these things? Absolutely not. But do they?
Sometimes they do. Gaining a bit of key information by talking to customers, suppliers, competitors and employees can give you an edge.
And how about company insiders? Officers and directors have access to all manner of material, non-public information. That gives them an enormous advantage over ordinary investors. And that’s also why Uncle Sam requires them to file a Form 4 with the SEC, divulging the details of their buys and sells.
If you watch what the insiders are doing, you won’t access the non-public information that they possess. But you’ll certainly know whether they think their companies’ shares are overvalued or undervalued. And that’s crucial information.
A 10-Year Market-Beating Performance
In short, Malkiel is right that it’s difficult to beat the market. But does that mean it’s futile to try?
Not only have men like Warren Buffett and Peter Lynch put the lie to that line of thinking, so has our own Oxford Club Trading Portfolio. The independent Hulbert Financial Digest confirms that we’ve beaten the market by a wide margin over the past decade.
But while Malkiel is wrong on some crucial points, he is absolutely right on several others. For example…
- He believes it’s a fool’s errand to try to time the market. I agree.
- He insists that an index fund will outperform the vast majority of actively managed funds over time. He’s right. They have and almost certainly will.
- He argues that index funds provide a big performance boost due to cost-efficiency and tax-efficiency. Right again – and this is far more important over the long haul than most investors realize.
In short, I agree with Malkiel far more than I disagree with him. His research – and similar work by John Bogle, William Bernstein and others – has had a profound impact on the development of my own investment philosophy. In fact, our Gone Fishin’ Portfolio is the very embodiment of much of what he espouses.
And Malkiel may be surprised to learn that this portfolio has beaten the S&P 500 – with far less risk than being fully invested in stocks – every year for over a decade.
I’d call that a non-random success.
Good investing,
Alexander Green
26
Timing the Market: If Only You Knew What Mark Hulbert Knows…
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Timing the Market: If Only You Knew What Mark Hulbert Knows…
by Alexander Green, Chief Investment Strategist
Monday, April 26, 2010: Issue #1246
For over a decade, I’ve been telling readers that timing the market isn’t just unhelpful… it actually hurts performance.
Now the evidence is even more definitive…
Sure, it’s easy to look back and see exactly when you could have been in or out of the market for maximum performance. That’s the beauty of hindsight.
But when you look ahead, things get a whole lot cloudier. So if you’re even thinking about jumping in or out based on some guru’s system or “market outlook,” listen up…
Trying to Time the Market? Don’t Do It!
The Journal of Financial Economics, an academic journal, recently published a new study – “Measuring Investor Sentiment With Mutual Fund Flows.”
Using easily available public information published by the Investment Company Institute, a mutual fund trade organization, the researchers focused on investor exchanges out of stock funds into bond funds and vice-versa.
This led to an interesting discovery…
- The research shows that market timers, as a group, have god-awful instincts. In fact, you could hardly find a better investment system than to do EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of what they’re doing.
- The researchers built a hypothetical portfolio going all the way back to 1984 and switched back-and-forth between the S&P 500 and 90-day T-bills. They did the mirror opposite of what mutual fund flow figures showed switchers were doing.
- Over the next 25 years, the portfolio produced an annual return of 12% – 1.6% a year better than merely buying and holding the S&P 500.
To put this in concrete terms, buy-and-holders turned a $10,000 initial investment (with dividends reinvested) into $118,639 over the period.
Those who did the opposite of mutual fund timers, however, turned the same $10,000 into more than $170,000. (Most fund switchers, on the other hand, did about as well as someone betting on black or red at the roulette wheel.)
That’s not the best part, however…
An Impressive Performance… For Serious Contrarians Only
What makes these numbers even more impressive is that the contrarian portfolio took on far less risk than being fully invested in stocks. After all, it was invested in riskless T-bills nearly half the time.
I’m not actually recommending that you follow this strategy, incidentally. For one thing, past performance – as every investment prospectus reminds you – does not guarantee future results.
Plus, 25 years as a portfolio manager and investment writer have proved to me that the overwhelming majority of investors lack the emotional discipline to invest contrary to the crowd. (So when the chips are down, you may still be out.)
As Mark Hulbert, editor of the independent Hulbert Financial Digest, concludes, the average investor “would be far better off if he never engaged in market timing.”
The Oxford Club doesn’t. And it shows in our results…
A Top Five Ranking for 10 Years Running
Of course, every newsletter editor brags that his investment letter gives superior returns. The industry bears an uncanny resemblance to Lake Wobegone, where “all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking and all the children are above average.”
It’s worth noting, however, that Hulbert ranks The Oxford Club Communiqué among the top five letters in the nation for risk-adjusted performance over the past 10 years.
That allows us to give entirely honest answers to the two most commonly asked questions:
- “How has your investment advice worked out?” – Beautifully.
- “What do you think the market will do next?” – We haven’t the foggiest notion.
Good investing,
Alexander Green
Editor’s Note: Are you trying to time the stock market? Don’t! There’s a better way to tackle the investing process: let some of the best, most successful analysts in the business do the work for you.
The Oxford Club’s pragmatic, “market neutral” approach has generated consistent, impressive results for many years, based on real facts, information and numbers that matter, not arbitrary stock market indicators or timing.
For more details on how you can profit from the stocks in The Oxford Club’s Communiqué portfolio, please visit this link. You’ll see why the Hulbert Financial Digest has ranked the Communiqué in the top five investment newsletters over the past 10 years and get the latest investing ideas, insights and recommendations that can make you money for the next year and beyond.
