Has our society gone bipolar? As I understand it, people who suffer from manic depression, now called bipolar disorder, experience episodes of extreme mood swings from clinical depression to extreme elation. In the most serious cases it is all extremes, there is nothing in the middle.

I think this describes our societal situation pretty well. It certainly seems true in politics; it even seems true in sports. Rory McIlroy makes history winning the U.S. Open with a record-low score, and immediately the golf pundits ask whether he will be the next Tiger or a flash-in-the-pan flop. Evidently those are the only choices. Why can’t we just enjoy the moment for what it is?

Of course it is most true in the financial markets. It starts with economic forecasts. In my twenty years in this profession I have never seen forecasts change so often and so dramatically. Release two good pieces of data and suddenly the recovery is right around the corner and the market is up – the S&P rose over 6.68 percent in the last eight business days of June. One bad report and we are headed for a double-dip; we have lost over two percent already in July. What has actually occurred is that our economy is sluggishly growing at around two percent. This is what two percent growth looks like: mixed economic reports with the only constant being no real jobs growth.

What is really maddening about this market bipolar disorder is that, just like the real disorder, reason has gone out the window. Let’s look at the last two days: the big economic story on the Sunday news shows was the debt ceiling debate in Washington. Our Treasury secretary was making the rounds, letting everyone know that the U.S. will default on its debt on August 2 if a deal is not reached. Many believe this itself is an exaggeration, but for the sake of argument let’s take Mr. Geithner at his word. How should the market react if the U.S. is going to default on its debt?

I would assume that there would be a massive sell-off in Treasuries and interest rates would go through the roof. I would assume a short-term panic in the stock market because that is what people do, but no real long-term impact, since people would continue to drink Coca-Cola, shop at Wal-Mart, and get on the iPad to keep track of the government meltdown, and ultimately realize investing in some of these companies makes sense. This is because I seem to be suffering from this attack of reality:  I still believe that Treasuries are the debt obligation of the U.S. Government – the guys who are going to default on August 2 – and that stock represents partial ownership in privately run corporations, who are not going into default on August 2.

So what did happen Monday? Stocks were down around two percent and Treasuries were up. That is correct, they were up.

This may because our friends on the other side of the pond are actually headed for default, while no one seems to believe Mr. Geithner. Therefore, threats aside, the investing world still trusts U.S. Treasuries, at least more than they trust European debt. However, that leads us to yesterday. The big fear now is that Italy is going to follow Greece into default. It makes sense for anyone who studied Western Civilization. The Roman Empire followed the Greek Empire; certainly they would follow each other in the never-ending debt crisis. The world markets were down dramatically because of the fear of Italy’s default. Then, Italy announced that they had a “successful” auction of one-year notes. The interest rate at which they finally sold was 3.67 percent, up from 2.147 percent in June, and they barely got them all sold. This “good” news sent the Italian market, which was down 4.8 percent at the time, on a tear. Their market closed up 1.17 percent – an almost six percent jump because interest rates had only gone up 1.5 percent in a matter of three weeks? Bipolar is the only explanation.

The primary symptom in the market bipolar syndrome is that there is only one trade to make. It is the “risk-on, risk-off” trade. When the bad news comes we pile into Treasuries, even if the bad news is that Treasuries are going to default. When the good news comes we pile into the same stocks that have been doing well over the past year – small caps, energy and materials – even if the P/E on small caps is 30 and the commodity bubble shows signs of collapsing. One of the things I love about my job is that every time I think I have finally seen it all, they come up with some brand new kind of insanity.

The silver lining in all of this is that volatility does bring about opportunities for those of us who are investing for time horizons measured in years and not minutes. The S&P 500 is selling at 13 times forward earnings, and certain sectors, such as large-cap technology, look very attractive. There may be some short-term pain, but when companies like Cisco are selling at 8.67 times earnings when adjusted for their net cash position, it is hard to see how you won’t make money in the next year or two.

Reality is usually in the middle. Unless there is a dramatic change of course from the policies of the last decade, our economy will continue to grow at a very European rate of two percent, not at normal U.S. growth standards, but not a depression either. Rory McIlroy will most probably be a solid Hall of Fame golfer, but neither another Tiger Woods nor a flash in the pan. Most importantly for us, Treasuries will most likely deliver the three percent return their yield indicates, and stocks will likely grow at the approximately ten percent their earnings yield is indicating. We will see neither a boom nor a collapse in the long run.

In the meantime, the market never ceases to entertain. I love my job.

Chuck Osborne, CFA
Managing Director

~Manic-Depressive/Bipolar Disorder: Do We All Have It?

I’m not sure how it happened, but someone has caused a rally in the bond market. Commodity prices have been dropping, although not as fast as they should. Stock prices have been falling faster than they should, and bonds are rallying.

The yield on the ten-year Treasury has dropped from 3.5 percent to just below three percent. For those who need a refresher, bond prices move in the opposite direction of interest rates, so a drop in the yield equals an increase in the price. To understand the oddity here one must put all of this in context.

The Federal Reserve has been buying up Treasuries in a program commonly referred to as QE2. Some have estimated that the Fed’s purchases represent as much as 30 percent of current demand for Treasuries. This program is about to end. Economically if the largest purchaser of Treasuries stops buying, the price should go down, not up.

Down the street from the Fed our representatives in Congress are debating whether to raise the debt ceiling. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has told us that if this does not occur then all these Treasuries will be in default and the world will actually come to an end on August 2, not October 21 as that other guy predicts.

Moody’s is threatening a downgrade of Treasuries. Bill Gross, the man who manages more bond assets than anyone else in the world, has very publically taken a short position in Treasuries. Yet, the Treasury market rallies?

I can understand the market ignoring Geithner’s warning of sudden doom on August 2. I don’t believe anyone seriously believes that Congress will not raise the debt ceiling. In the interim we are witness to a lot of political theater and some smaller amount of actual negotiation between the Administration and Congress. However, does anyone not think QE2 is going to end? Does no one care that the world’s preeminent bond man is going short and one of the largest rating agencies is considering a downgrade?

The bond market’s answer? “No.” It doesn’t care. How can this be? We have been pondering this question for weeks now, and have come up with only one somewhat satisfactory answer: old habits die hard.

Shortly after the earth cooled and mankind started walking on it, that talking baby in the E-Trade commercials and his trading friends invented the ‘risk-on risk-off trade.’ We see it everywhere. The simple version is evidenced in almost every individual portfolio I have ever seen (before it comes to Iron Capital, that is), made up of nothing but equities and cash. The self-proclaimed “savvy” investor usually talks about going into and out of “the market” – a statement which is evidence enough of a lack of actual savviness. The professional version of the same disease is the rotation between Treasuries and anything else that isn’t a Treasury.

In other words, the only explanation we can come up with for the piling into Treasuries is that, with all their current faults, Treasuries are still the safe haven for temporarily parking money when you don’t know what else to do.

The unfortunate part in this knee-jerk reaction is that safety in investing is not, as some believe, a permanent design feature. The ‘stocks are risky and Treasuries are safe’ mentality is naïve to say the least. Let’s not forget that it was the mortgage-backed securities with their quasi-government backing making them “almost as safe as Treasuries,” which caused the market meltdown of 2008. Safety is not a function of product design; it is a function of price compared to actual value. In that light, Treasuries are not looking so safe today.

There are those who disagree with this position and will claim that the risk to principal is overstated. I believe they are missing the point. We often repeat the quotation from Benjamin Graham that a sound investment offers safety of principal and an adequate return. As I write, the 10-year Treasury offers a return of 3.125 percent. Even if we are wrong about the risk to principal, I don’t know many who would call that an adequate return. Graham says the purchase of securities which fail his test – any part of his test – is not investing but speculation, and that is exactly what the risk-on risk-off traders are doing.

Chuck Osborne, CFA
Managing Director

~Old Habits Die Hard

It is always hard to tell when a market has gone from being just a little maddening to becoming a full-blown bubble, but we are starting to see some telltale signs.

One of those signs is the classic market bifurcation. Over the last year, everyone has done well on an absolute basis but some have done much better than others. Over the twelve month period ending March 31, 2011, the Russell 1000 was up 16.69 percent, but the Russell 2000 was up 25.79 percent. At quarter-end the Russell 1000 had a P/E Ratio of 17.2, compared to the Russell 2000 P/E Ratio of 29.9. The out-performance of small-cap stocks cannot continue with that big of a P/E dispersion, or so one would think.

Commodities are up even more, many over 100 percent. Last quarter the energy sector in the S&P was up 16.8 percent. Gold, which was ridiculously priced at $1,000 per ounce, is now $1,500 per ounce. Silver is through the roof as are less sexy commodities like cotton. These are all supposedly hedges on inflation, yet the only inflation the eye can see is the commodities themselves. Wages are not growing. GDP growth is low, so where is the actual inflation? There is a great deal of talk about inflation because of food and fuel costs, but economically inflation means the cost of everything rises. Inflation occurs when prices rise and people pay those higher prices through a combination of higher wages and increased debt. In true inflation you must have more money to spend, and we don’t have that today. There is next to no wage pressure and consumers are not borrowing money; if anything, it is the opposite. Today what we see is prices rising in specific areas and people adjusting by spending less elsewhere.

The overall market return is not surprising as much as what is actually driving the market: momentum. Things that have been going up keep going up. When momentum gets carried away and assets that seem overvalued continue to rise while simultaneously assets that seem reasonably valued are ignored, it starts to look and smell like a bubble. The last thing that happens in a bubble is that the really smart money managers, the ones who care about things like fundamental valuations, start to underperform. This is happening. These are signs.

There are also signs that the bubble may be bursting. Commodities have come under pressure. Most notably silver is down nearly 30 percent, but it is hardly alone. Yesterday a host of poor manufacturing reports from around the globe contributed to the commodity downfall. Small cap stocks are already in the red over the last four weeks and large caps may well join them.

My hope is this is just the beginning of a market correction followed by a rotation into more sound areas of the market. Yet my fear is…here we go again!

Chuck Osborne, CFA
Managing Director

~Commodity Bubble?

Over the years I have written a great deal about the various problems in my industry. I have discussed the flawed structure of the retail brokerage world, the lack of training of the vast majority of “financial advisers,” the layers and layers of fees, and the conflicts of interest. I also have discussed the psychological mistakes investors make – the desire to fit in, which leads to following the crowd into asset bubbles, and in some cases scams; the desire to not admit mistakes, which leads to holding on to losers far too long; and the overconfidence in investing in areas where one feels comfortable, which leads to under-diversification and the taking of undo risk. I have written about all of these issues and more.

However, not until this week had I seen evidence of how much these phenomena collide. Somehow I got on an email list for an industry newsletter called, originally enough, “Investment News.” Usually its content is nothing but garbage, but this week a title caught my attention: “Advisers Not Charging Enough.” The article was based on a study by a software firm PriceMetrix Inc., which provides practice management software to the adviser community. They studied the fee arrangements of fee-based financial advisers and found that there does not seem to be any rhyme or reason to the fees charged.

PriceMetrix said that finding was their biggest surprise, but that is not a surprise to me. What was surprising – in fact shocking – to me was a statement made by Doug Trott, CEO of PriceMatrix, who said, “Those advisers doing the most business tended to charge more.” He went on to discuss the difficulty advisers have in raising their fees, and here was another shocker: the advisers who were successful at raising their fees were the ones who charged more than average from the start. An even bigger surprise: advisers who raised fees opened 25% more new accounts than advisers who lowered fees. Mr. Trott’s advice to advisers, “The message from the data is that advisers should charge more.”

Relax. Iron Capital is not about to take Mr. Trott’s advice. We have set our fees based on the hurdle rate we believe we can get over to achieve our goal of providing you with market-beating investment results over full market cycles. Nothing kills returns like fees, yet the retail investor still seems to be blind to them.

It has always been shocking to me how people choose an adviser. We have been very fortunate at Iron Capital in that we are the largest fee-only adviser in Atlanta even though the other firms in the top-ten have been around a lot longer. Still, if one were to ask me about the hardest part of my job, I would say it is getting new clients. I have always been amazed at how people like Bernie Madoff were able to gather so many assets running a scam. Yet it is not just the Bernie Madoff’s of the world. I have recently been talking to some people interested in joining Iron Capital. Their firm has fallen apart, largely because one member of the firm put several of his clients into a ponzi scheme. The people to whom I’m talking had nothing to do with it, but you know the old saying about one bad apple. What is amazing is that the bad apple also was the biggest producer in that firm. The nicest, most honest guy in the firm? You are correct, he was the smallest producer.

People make financial decisions for all the wrong reasons. One of our biggest competitors in Atlanta begins every sales pitch by telling prospective clients who their biggest client is, and he is a famous, very successful businessman. Of course, no one should ever make an investment decision based on what someone else has done, but it happens all the time. An important side note here: Iron Capital considers our private clients private, and not only because selectively disclosing client names is against SEC regulations, but also because it also goes against the trust our clients have placed in us.

Investors should look for an adviser based on several important criteria:
• Background – have they ever managed money? The vast majority have not.
• The structure of their business – true independence and a fiduciary relationship.
• Their investment philosophy – does it match yours?
• Their track record of success across all of their clients, not just one star client.

Investors also should pay attention to the total cost of their portfolio. Based on what we have seen in competition, Iron Capital’s total cost is much less than anyone else we have encountered. This is not because we desire to be a low-cost leader or some kind of discount operation. Exactly the opposite is true; our service is greatly differentiated. Our cost structure is this way because our goal has never been to impress, or to gather the most assets, or to make more money than our overpaid competitors. Our goal always has been to deliver the best investment results, and if that is your goal, you try to keep investment costs to a minimum.

Some days I feel ashamed of our industry. Mr. Trott’s findings were bad enough, but to react by saying advisers should just go along and raise their fees because they can, taking advantage of irrational consumer behavior, is truly disappointing. I have a better suggestion: Let’s try to educate the consumer, not take advantage of them.

Chuck Osborne, CFA
Managing Director

~Irrational Investor Behavior

First and foremost let me say that our thoughts and prayers are with the people of Japan who continue to suffer in this awful tragedy. I know I have shared this story with many of you before, but any time my job forces me to focus on what is often the cold, hard reality of looking after our clients’ money during times that reminds us there are far more important things, it brings me back to those days after 9/11. I was with Invesco and I had to call fund families in New York with whom we did business to find out first, if they were alive, and second, whether they would be able to do business when the markets re-opened. It was not fun, but it was necessary. Even at times like this we have to remember that our first responsibility is to you, our clients.

So, let me cut to the chase: we had practically no exposure to Japan in any of our clients’ portfolios. We have had a sizable underweight to developed international, which is basically Japan and Europe, and within that space we had an underweight to Japan.

Having said that, we are not surprised to see the overall market react negatively to what is happening in Japan. We are also not concerned at the moment. There is a great scene in Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean,” when young Will Turner asks Mr. Gibbs about the story of Capitan Jack Sparrow. Mr. Gibbs talks about Jack being left behind on a deserted island and Will asserts that this must be the reason for Jack’s odd behavior. Mr. Gibbs responds, “Reason’s got nothing to do with it.”

There is a lot of investing wisdom there. Natural disasters often bring about market sell-offs and there is seldom an actual good reason for it. Business in Japan has certainly been disrupted, but the disruption is temporary. It is possible that insurance companies may be hurt with large claims, although JP Morgan this week in a letter to clients estimates that the losses will be handled easily. It is probable that Japan may need to import more coal until they can get their nuclear power plants operating safely again, but this is a temporary blip.

The truth is that Japan was an economic mess before this happened. They are still suffering from a deflationary spiral that has been going on sporadically for nearly three decades now. They are a net exporter to the world and consume relatively little, so the business disruption for US companies is not likely to be great. Even the largest Japanese companies like Toyota now manufacture in multiple locations including the US. Once the dust settles and they have the nuclear issues locked down, a rebuilding process will begin. That process actually will be stimulative to their economy.

In the meantime this tragedy occurs on the tail end of a strong six-plus month run for the stock market. Traders have been warning for a pullback but it just hasn’t happened. Is Japan a good reason for the market to fall? Well as Mr. Gibbs knows, “reason’s got nothing do with it.” Excuse, maybe; reason, no. Ultimately financial markets are about two things, prices and earnings. It is hard to see any real earnings disruption for non-Japanese companies, so any price reduction will just makes the market that much more attractive.

Of course we will be diligent should something change, but it looks like the market is progressing as we thought it would in 2011, three steps forward and two steps back.

Chuck Osborne, CFA
Managing Director

~Japan, Natural Disasters and the Stock Market