Finance – Page 45

US Presidential Election: Current Guess

I apologize to my readers. Instead of writing anything relevant to the financial markets, I’m instead writing about Trump vs. Clinton. Please forgive me – this will pass after Tuesday.

The following is my November 3, 2016 guess. My prediction has nothing to do with endorsement of any candidate or policies they represent. In fact, a Kaine/Pence (choose one for president and vice president by flipping a coin) administration would probably be a lot more acceptable for most of the public.

Canadian readers of this site can remember what happened with the NDP and Jack Layton in the 2011 election in Quebec. While it isn’t huge like that election was, there is an element of it in this particular election.

Polling:

If you are Hillary you do not want to see this:

LA Times / USC has always had a pro-Republican skew to it from the very beginning of this election (although they were quite right in 2012), but that “hockey stick” boost at the end is something you don’t want to be seeing if you are a Democrat – people locking in their votes for Trump. Since this is a national poll, it can only be extrapolated so far since there are huge Democratic majorities in California and New York, but this isn’t what you want to be seeing if you are cheering for Clinton.

The aggregate polling also shows a Trump spike, but I have always claimed that poll samples (including the LA Times one above) is not representative of who Trump is going to actually get out to vote – voter turnout and the distribution of voters that show up is of paramount importance in elections in Canada and the USA.

Polls do try to correct for this factor by including “likely voters”, but methodologies can only go so far. Since most political pundits use backward-looking lenses to project results, it is not surprising that they are all still predicting a Clinton victory.

The real-money markets (Pinnacle Sports is the best proxy for this) has Trump at +226, which is the highest probability odds I have seen him. Betfair (which is closed to Canadians), I also consider highly credible and they have him as 9/4, which is pretty much the same.

US Presidential Election: Current Guess

Disclaimer: My prediction of winners has nothing to do with the endorsement or non-endorsement of any particular candidates or policies.

Markets will be asleep for the next week and a half

Mark November 8, 2016 on your calendars – the date of the US Presidential Election.

Until then, no major market participant is going to be doing anything, short of the knee-jerk reactions from quarterly earnings reports.

You’re also starting to see a build-up of volatility which bettors are using to hedge:

And yes, Donald Trump becomes the next president. This isn’t an endorsement of him, but rather what I have been saying for the past year and a bit. This is an election where the standard calculus does not work, and people are continuing to make the mistake of using those lenses in a very different environment (similar to the error that the Conservative Party of Canada in the lead-up to the 2015 election).

Pinnacle Sports had Trump at +580 (roughly 1-in-7) to win a week ago and now he is at +280 (roughly 1-in-4), so the betting markets have been very volatile.

Also I have noticed most Canadians use Canadian lenses to look at what is going on in this very American election. Most of the time the political culture is similar, but this is a very special situation.

De-leveraging

Leverage is great – only when everything is appreciating. Indeed, if things appreciate, the leverage ratio goes down since the loan-to-equity ratio goes lower. A simple example is taking a $100 portfolio, borrowing $100, which gives you a 50% loan-to-equity ratio. If your portfolio appreciates 10%, the loan-to-equity goes down to 45%, and suddenly you’re feeling more comfortable again.

This basically explains the real estate market – you buy a house, take a mortgage for 80% of the house value (paying 20% down), and when the real estate market goes up 40% (like it has in the Vancouver area), suddenly your loan-to-value ratio goes down to 57% – let’s suck more money out of the house and get that back to 75%! This means borrowing another 25% of your original house value.

This all works, until the underlying asset value falls and you have to pay back your loans. In the instance of an initial 80% loan-to-value, a price drop of 10% means the loan-to-value goes up to 89%.

The same dynamics go for portfolio management – leverage is painful in the down direction because your loan-to-equity ratio becomes more concentrated.

Clearly, the best time to de-leverage is when you’ve made your anticipated gains.

I’ve started to take some money off the table. Specifically, Genworth (NYSE: GNW) and most US insurers have gotten hot because of the probability of the federal reserve increasing interest rates again.

After raising cash, the most difficult part of investing is to wait. The easiest way to lose money is to do something with cash just because it is earning zero yield in the brokerage account.

Selling volatility works, until it doesn’t

Since February, yields have compressed to the point where I am getting a bit suspicious that we are going to see some spreads widen again whenever we get some sort of credit event that will cause another round of financial distress. I am not forecasting when this will happen, but historically speaking, the lead-up to the presidential election always causes unwelcome volatility. Right now the assumption is that Hillary will win, but between now and the early November election date, things will change when the public actually starts to pay attention again to their two choices.

The markets, however, do not appear to indicate to price in much risk. Following is a chart of the VIX:

The last time volatility got that low was back in the middle of 2014 (remember when oil was at US$100/barrel?).

Volatility is typically anti-correlated to positive price movement. Right now, investors that sell risk on the main index are not receiving much money for what is a piddling amount of yield – an at-the-money option sold a month out on the S&P 500 will only yield an investor about 1.1% on their at-risk amount, which is very, very, very low. Looking out nearly 5 months to mid-January, that same premium is 3.7%.

In the event of a market crash, an investment in put options not only profits due to the pricing differential between market and strike, but also due to the increase in volatility that occurs during turbulent markets. There’s probably never been a better time to invest in a potential market crash than right now, but the phrase that says markets can be calmer for longer than one can remain solvent applies.

Indeed, I am seeing many market prognosticators talk about skepticism of the existing market conditions, that the indexes (which are at all-time highs) are sputtering, that the economy recovery is long in the tooth, etc, etc. This does not bode well for crash conditions, which happen when there is stress and underlying causes to force entities to liquidate at all costs.

I can’t conceive what could cause crash conditions other than a major WMD event to the scale of a 9/11.

I still believe that a cautious approach is appropriate and that the market participants that will get the most out of the market will do so on the fixed income side. However, these opportunities I have noticed have basically vanished from the good risk/reward column to just ordinary. Ordinary valuations are good enough for me to hold onto things, but not nearly enough for me to invest in.

I was fortunate enough to fully participate in this market cycle, but in general at present, I am in a very slow liquidation mode as I do not see much worth investing in. There are a couple portfolio components (fixed income) that are trading at prices that are within 5% of me dumping it, but I am no rush for them to get there – I will keep collecting dividends, distributions and interest to pay down the very low interest margin debt. In general, I see about a maximum capital appreciation of about 15% in the remaining portfolio for still relatively low risk – even if the actual appreciation is zero, the weighted average coupon is 7.9% and I get paid to wait.

If we get some sort of spike that caused a general portfolio rise of 10%, I would have sold enough to have a healthy double-digit percentage cash balance. If this portfolio spike was 15% from present levels, the only things I’d be holding would be my bonds to maturity (unless if those too were trading ridiculously above par value). Then I would go on vacation and wait a long time.

Sometimes I am furiously active on trading, and sometimes there are very dull moments. The past few months have been very dull and I’ve been twiddling my thumbs. My investment strategies have been working and there will be a time to shift gears once my current strategy has run out of gas. Just not today.