Monday, April 21, 2014

A Look At Sloppy Nonsensical Mutual Fund / ETF Analysis

I read a lot of stuff online so I should be used to sloppy-stupid nonsensical things written online. However, this one titled "Why ETFs Are Better than Mutual Funds, in Two Charts" hits it on every base of stupidity. Now usually ETF Database is a decent source of some good information but clearly the editors were asleep at the wheel on this one. Let the article speak for itself.

It starts off fine enough
"Though some may disagree, exchange-traded funds have certainly proved their worth over the years. With more than 1,500 products to choose from, more and more investors have turned to the ETF wrapper, embracing the vehicles’ low-costs, efficiency, and many other advantages."
All is good there. And so she continues
"Some investors and industry professionals, however, have not yet come to embrace these products, preferring mutual funds instead. For those who need some convincing, we’ll try to show you why ETFs are better than mutual funds, in two charts."
Great, let's see it.
"For this exercise, we take a look at the popular Emerging Markets ETF (VWO, A), comparing it to the GS Emerging Markets Equity Fund (GEMCX). First, a comparison of expenses:"

Whoa Whoa, wait a second, WHAT? First of all what made her decide to use Goldman Sachs Emerging Markets Fund? Furthermore, why would she use a C share? The fund also comes in other share classes including IR share class which comes in at 1.48% (we will also overlook the small fact that net expense ratios for those funds are 0.15% and 2.47% not what she has listed). The only people who might be using a C share are people working with an adviser and the advisers fee is being included into the expense ratio (but that is a discussion for another day). This is nowhere NEAR an apples to apples comparison showing why ETFs are better than Mutual Funds.

She goes on to point out the performance gap that this inevitably leads to 


And she concludes:
The Bottom Line
This is just one of many examples of how ETFs are often better than mutual funds. Not only are exchange-traded funds usually cheaper, but they are often more efficient than mutual funds. If we’ve managed to convince you, use our free Mutual Fund to ETF Converter Tool to find an alternative to your current mutual fund.
Sorry, you have not managed to convince me and hopefully you didn't convince anybody with your ridiculous comparison. I hope your "converter tool" has a little more logic then is displayed here. So what is a PROPER comparison of the ETF VWO if you are trying to see the difference between mutual fund and ETF structures? Well the very simple and logical comparison would be Vanguard's Emerging Markets ETF (VWO) to Vanguard's Emerging Market Index Mutual Fund (VEMAX).

Only problem is that when you show a REAL comparison, your point is pretty much lost . As you can see, looking at the complete common period between the two funds, there return is essentially identical.

Not only does a proper comparison make her performance point invalid, her point about cost is as well, as both carry an expense ratio of 0.15%. But just for giggles lets throw in Vanguard's Active version of emerging markets which is a little more expensive with an expense ratio of 0.94%. Unfortunately, their active emerging markets strategy hasn't been around as long (A little shy of 3 years) but as you can see it has managed to handily outperform. You may also notice that over this timeframe the index MUTUAL FUND slightly outperformed the supposedly superior ETF.


Monday, October 14, 2013

Are Index Investors Unknowingly Increasing Interest Rate Risk?

Here in an interestingly look at the Barclay's US Aggregate Bond Index from Lord Abbett  The below Chart shows how the duration of the Index has changed over the last ten years.

As you can see, up until late 2010 the duration of the Aggregate Bond Index tended to hover around 4.5 years. That has increased to approximately 5.5 years today. I think it is important that "passive" index investors be aware that they are currently making an "active" decision to increase their interest rate risk.

Friday, August 9, 2013

Emerging Markets Price-to-Book Ratio & Forward Returns

Here is an interesting look from J.P Morgan regarding the Price-to-Book ratio on Emerging Markets.

They then look at how those various Price-to-Book ratios relate to forward 1-year returns....In short, it looks good.

Although I don't like that the 1-year forward returns only use 1999 to today. Why not use the same data as the first graph back to 1993? Also, I don't tend to think any valuation metric is a reliable short-term (1 year) timing indicator. However, Rob Arnott has also been pointing out that longer-term forward returns (10 years) are also looking pretty tempting using a Shiller PE ratio. All I know is, anything looks good 'relative' to the US right now.

Monday, July 29, 2013

Foolish Fed Forecaster Rankings

The Wall Street Journal recently published a piece Ranking Fed Forecasters (you can read their methodology following that link). Let's see if you notice anything "convenient" about the sample period.

Does this "analysis" smell of sampling period bias to anyone else? June 2009 - Dec 2012? Who really cares about someones accuracy during exactly HALF a market cycle? If you were analyzing investment managers using this same type of sampling period bias you would be many times more likely to find managers that would under-perform going forward not outperform. I think the "analysis" here runs the same risk.

Unfortunately, this is being used by the WSJ to support the case for Janet Yellen. And gullible audiences everywhere are likely taking it hook, line and sinker.

What would it look like if they went back further? I'm not sure, but I do know that Janet Yellen was just as foolish as most everyone else currently at the Fed as demonstrated in this article from Feb 21, 2007 
"Janet Yellen, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, is sleeping better than she was a year ago, thanks to signs of stabilization in the housing market."
 "Last year, when it looked like the housing downturn could turn into a bust that risked tipping the broader economy into recession, Yellen said she found it more difficult to sleep."
 "But Yellen said she has noted recent signs of stabilization in the housing market and slim evidence that housing's slowdown has spilled into other parts of the economy."
Yes, in 2006 she had some worries about housing but apparently those went away after housing prices fell a whopping 1.5% before "stabilizing" in early 2007.

And how about the next year? What did she think then? This is from Reuters Feb 8, 2008

"San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank President Janet Yellen said on Thursday that the United States faces several quarters of "anemic" economic growth but will probably not fall into an outright recession."
Yes, that is in February 2008......2 months after the recession already started. And according to the WSJ that is the best forecaster of all Fed members. We have so much to look forward to........

Saturday, July 20, 2013

Valuations of Emerging Markets vs US Stocks

As the US Stock market continues to sing it's own tone, I thought this look at valuations of US Stocks vs Emerging Market stocks was interesting. This is from a conference call presentation from Rob Arnott at PIMCO (all slides here)

Really hard to be tempted by US stocks at these levels, especially with both emerging & even developed international as alternatives considering valuations. Below is another chart from the slides, showing the shorter & longer term returns from various Shiller PEs. Clearly it's a longer-term gauge historically.


Sunday, March 17, 2013

Is This Bull Market Fundamentally Driven? (A Look at PE Expansion)

This post over at The Big Picture Blog which had a listing of Bull markets of 20% or more without a 20% correction got me thinking about Bull Market fundamentals. Some people talk about this bull market being driven by the Fed and not fundamentals (me included). I can easily point at a Shiller PE of 23 to highlight overvaluation but I wanted to look at it another way, so I focused on PE expansion.

Fundamentally driven bull markets should rely more on cyclically adjusted earnings growth and less on investors willingness to pay ever increasing multiples on those earnings. To look into this I decided to focus only on bull markets of 100% or more. I looked at the Starting and Ending Shiller PE using Robert Shiller's online data and updated it with daily pricing data for the important dates (as he only has monthly prices). Then I divided the Bull Market gains by the amount of PE expansion to see how much gains investors were receiving per unit of PE expansion. The results are below, sorted by most fundamentally driven to least fundamentally driven. The results are quite interesting.

Take a look at the 1974-1980 Bull Market compared to today....The magnitude of the advance is similar between the two but the 1974-1980 advance only relied on a PE expansion of 2.2 vs 11.1 today. You will also notice that those that relied least on PE expansion tended to experience smaller subsequent bear markets. The top 5 averaged a bear market loss of 30.4% vs the bottom 4 which averaged a 48.5% loss. If history is any guide people should expect that the next bear market will be deeper then average because this bull market is lacking a fundamental underpinning.

UPDATED: 3/19/2013 - Corrected chart to reflect the proper starting PE of 8.8 for the bull market starting 6/13/1949. However, this did not change the overall ranking of any of the bull markets.

Friday, March 15, 2013

Rally Continues to Reduce GMO's Asset Class Return Forecasts

Investment Management firm GMO is well know for it's Asset Class forecasts it puts out. The continued strong rally in the market has officially moved their 7-year forecast for Large-Cap stocks (S&P 500) into negative territory, joining their negative forecast for Small-Cap stocks, US Bonds, Intl Bonds (hedged), and Inflation Linked Bonds.

You can see below the history of their forecasts. Through time it has shown to be a good general guide.

With so little looking attractive how are they investing their Benchmark Free Allocation Strategy I discussed here?
While this is from 12/31/12 not much has changed except a slight increase to their Equity Risk Premium Strategy (which is a put selling strategy) they are using as a substitute for some equity exposure.

Sunday, February 17, 2013

Performance of Morningstar's New Analyst Ratings For Mutual Funds in 2012

Last year I wrote about Morningstar's new analyst ratings for mutual funds (here as well). These are different from their Star Ratings in the fact that these are meant to be "forward looking". From Morningstar (bold added by me)
"The Analyst Rating is based on the analyst's conviction in the fund's ability to outperform its peer group and/or relevant benchmark on a risk-adjusted basis over the long term. If a fund receives a positive rating of Gold, Silver, or Bronze, it means Morningstar analysts think highly of the fund and expect it to outperform over a full market cycle of at least five years."
Now it should be clear that these ratings are longer-term in nature so take the following breakdown with a grain of salt but I said I would follow-up on these so I am.

First lets start with a review of what the distribution of Morningstar's Analyst Ratings looked like at the start of 2012
While the distribution of ratings has gotten a little better it remains a mystery why Morningstar has an allergic reaction to assigning negative ratings. As of the start of 2013 they have now rated 1069 funds but only 52 (or less then 5%) have negative ratings. Although the neutral ratings have increased to 28%, Bronze to 25%, Silver is down to 24% and Gold down to about 18%.

Without further ado, below is how the rated funds performed in 2012. These only include funds rated at the start of 2012.

Not much really stands out after the first year. While their was a slight positive result for Gold and Silver rated funds, Neutral rated funds did even better. As for Bronze and Negative rated funds, outperformance was pretty much a coin flip.

Below is the Average Rank for each, as you can see Neutral rated funds performed the best and Negatively rated funds performed the worst.


Take this for what it's worth, which at this point is not much because full market cycles are indeed a better measuring stick. For instance, in 1999 and 2006/2007 a lot of bad managers did good thinking the unsustainable was in fact sustainable while a lot of good managers did bad as they realized irrationality when they saw it. However, this is at least a starting point for looking at the performance of these Analyst Ratings.

Monday, November 5, 2012

The Election Results According to Real Money Oddsmakers

Finally the election will come to a close tomorrow with all votes submitted. While we are constantly told who is favored by this poll or that poll you often have to question the sampling methods. That's why I tend to favor the real money oddsmakers because MONEY TALKS!

So what are the oddsmakers saying? While odds may vary slightly place to place, the message seems to be the same......Obama is a MAJOR favorite. Over at Sportsbook.ag you'll see the moneyline odds for an Obama victory is -300 or an implied probability of 75%.

You can see a snapshot of their swing state odds below.  (for those not familiar with moneyline odds you can convert them here). Oddsmakers are only giving Romney Florida and North Carolina.



So what will the final Electoral Map look like according to the oddsmakers?

Looks like a landslide for Obama. Don't agree? Maybe you should put your money where your mouth is and profit (or not)! Personally, I would not throw my money away on Ronmey and actually put money on Obama at -200. He got my bet but neither of them got my vote!

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Survey Highlights Investors Misguided Beliefs About Republicans

Barclays Research recently released a survey which was highlighted over at Zero Hedge. Apparently, investors in the survey seem to think that an Obama victory will more likely result in a stocks selling off, while a Romney win would result in an increasing stock market (as seen in the chart below from zero hedge).
The most interesting part of the above graph is how FEW see a sell-off under Romney. There seems to be this odd belief, despite the facts, that Republican policies are better for markets. However, history would say otherwise as the chart below shows from CMC Markets going back to 1900.

The stock markets have returned an average annual return of 15.31% with Democrats vs 5.43% with Republicans. Now some may correctly point out that Republican policies have changed over this long time-frame. However, the trend holds over the last 50 years as well as this chart from Janus Funds highlights (link is to their white paper: Market Performance and the Party in Power).

Furthermore, the Barclays survey also highlights how investors think the BOND markets would initially react to a Romney win.....yep they think bonds would sell-off.
Granted the question only refers to the "knee-jerk" reaction, but again, why would the market react this way when history has shown that the BOND markets are what actually has done better during Republican presidencies?  This is also illustrated by the Janus Funds paper as seen below.

Clearly it is bonds NOT stocks that have done better under Republicans. I think Jeremy Grantham may have addressed investors misguided belief best in a recent interview with Charlie Rose.
"These capitalists who are desperate to elect Republicans should study their history books."         ---Jeremy Grantham
Now, having said all this, I do not actually think it actually matters whether the president is Republican or Democrat. The powers of secular market cycles, valuations and events outside of any presidents control is what truly drives the market. For instance, the S&P 500 was up 26% in 2009, a gain which is attributed to Obama despite the fact that he just took over office. The reality is the market would have bounced off it's lows in 2009 even if McCain was president.....Besides, Democrats and Republicans?? They both push the same agenda in reality......