The FundLogik Application continues to point towards a risk weighting. For most portfolios, that means a shift towards equities and away from fixed income.
Last week, we looked at one of the main currents of money flow which drives global financial markets. This week, we look at the factors which drive the money flows into one of the key asset classes available to investors: Equities.
How Wall Street views Equities
According to the collective judgement of investors on Wall Street, a dollar of earnings this year will cost $15 if you select the average Blue Chip stock from the S&P 500. And, for the optimists in the room, that $15 dollar figure for stocks falls to $12.30 if one looks forward to 2014 earnings rather than backwards to 2012 numbers. That same dollar of earnings will cost you $50 if your tastes run to 10 Year US Treasury Bonds. As bond interest is fixed, there is no need to calculate a rosy scenario.
To Wall Street strategists, this big price difference between equities and fixed income suggests an imminent “Great Rotation” from bonds to stocks as rational investors rebalance between relatively expensive bonds and cheaper equities.
Three Factors
Are they right? The answer is yes but probably not for the reason usually pushed to the front of the research report (stocks are cheap, bonds are expensive). There are three factors which drive stocks and stock markets: Earnings, Interest Rates and Risk.
Earnings: Supportive of Equities
If you limit your focus to quarterly earnings and consensus forecasts, you will see an exciting jump in expectations at the beginning of this year. The numbers that go into the overall S&P 500 estimate are important because most institutional money is benchmarked to the index or a close derivative thereof. If you are interested in some of the key biases which drive the consensus forecast process, ZeroHedge has an insightful article on the subject.
Source: Bloomberg
Before one gets too excited, let’s step back and view a couple of years at once. The phenomenon highlighted with the small red arrows is known as “earnings roll.” Analysts, who are employed by brokerage firms in the business of selling stocks to clients, push their numbers up in the beginning of the year and then adjust them as quarterly reports come out.
Source: Bloomberg
So, if you look at the red line on the second chart (which charts the running 12 month forward forecast), earnings are moving in a positive direction but not dramatically. This is supportive of the market but not enough to make the case for a “Great Rotation” on its own.
Interest Rates: Neutral for Equities
This is an easy call because all the Central Banks are working in concert to keep a lid on interest rates. These generational lows in US dollar interest rates have hardly spurred the borrowing and investment boom that some Keynesians had expected. But with debt levels reaching what some consider dangerous levels relative to GDP, few G-20 countries want to think about servicing their debts at high single digit interest rate levels. Rising rates are bad for stocks, falling rates are good. Interestingly, there are new studies suggesting that low and steady levels of interest rates do not correspond to above average stock market returns while high and steady do not necessarily mean poor performance. With no movement expected up or down, this part of the equation is neutral.
Risk: Positive for Equities
The Chicago Board of Options Exchange has an excellent index for measuring the level of risk in the short term (ie. a matter of a month or two) called the VIX. Although this is often cited as The Fear Index in the market, it is important to remember what it is actually used for on a day-to-day basis: pricing options. A high reading certainly does reveal high anxiety in the market and a low reading, relative calm but the measure is by design a short term one.
The risk we are trying to measure is the certainty of forecasts. To give a simple example, the range of expectations for a consumer products company like Proctor and Gamble are much narrower than they might be for United Continental. While the former may stumble in an emerging market or be subject to margin squeeze, the latter can see profits quickly turn to losses with an adverse move in jet fuel prices. Broadly speaking, the tighter range of expectations command higher Price/Earnings ratios (P/E) while the broader range means the company (or the market) is accorded a lower P/E.
Macro factors can also be measured in a similar fashion. When the range of possibilities are uncertain (think some of the hyperbolic commentary ahead of the “Fiscal Cliff”), investors respond with caution and P/E ratios tend to fall. When uncertainties drop away, investors are willing to bid up asset prices and P/E multiples expand.
With the European Central Bank commitment to support the Euro at almost all costs, the passing of the “Fiscal Cliff” and the realization that the trajectory of US Government Debt issuance is likely to pursue a more sedate upward trajectory while the underlying economy continues to grow at a lower but sustained pace, some of the big worries in the market are being calmed.
If one wants a proxy (rather than anecdotal assurances), a reasonable measure of longer term anxiety is the spot gold price. With the arrivals of ETFs, gold is certainly cheaper to hold but the shiny metal still provides no income. Investors buy gold because they are willing to forego income to hedge against the risks they perceive in other asset classes. The FundLogik application and just a cursory look at the charts show that the upward trajectory of gold has cooled dramatically.
Conclusion
The FundLogik application has been flashing “Buy Riskier Assets” since November last year. Now we are starting to see that the market has been a good leading indicator as the conditions for better earnings and a less volatile environment shape up.
Keep holding onto the riskier end of your watch lists…and as they say on the airplane, “sit back, relax and enjoy the ride.”
