Finance – Page 46

US Presidential Election Update

The Republicans are having their national convention this weekend. Donald Trump will be nominated as their candidate for president, something that most pundits saw as a joke when he announced last year.

Readers should be cautioned that the national polling figures for the USA are nearly useless in determining the closeness of the presidential race. Three major states with huge populations, California, Illinois and New York, are very heavily Democratic-leaning and they will not be seriously contested during the election. These states will involve lop-sided victories and will skew the numbers.

Instead, readers should be looking at the following states (electoral votes in brackets):

Florida (29)
Pennsylvania (20)
Ohio (18)
Michigan (16)
North Carolina (15)
Arizona (11)
Wisconsin (10)
Iowa (6)

Click the map to create your own at 270toWin.com

Note it is very probable that Hillary Clinton requires 270 to win, while Donald Trump requires 269 to win.

I will be reverting my previous prediction of a “landslide” to a moderate victory for Donald Trump. As readers can infer from this map, the Republicans have much more “work” to do to win these swing states than the Democrats. That said, the nature of elections in Canada and the USA depend on a factor of voter turnout, something that polling does very poorly – the primary component of this assumption is that Trump has the ability to get out previous non-voters due to his non-political methods.

I will also state that I do not endorse the policies of either candidate. It is simply a prediction of what I believe will happen given what is going on in the USA political landscape. From a market investment perspective, it is likely the fruition of Donald Trump’s policies will cause considerable volatility in the markets and the markets are not sufficiently bracing for impact.

Brexit – Impact

Market volatility has been high leading up to and including after the Brexit referendum results. The VIX has climbed up to around the 25 level which is above the average ambient temperature of 15, but not ridiculously high (last August, for example, there was a spike up to 50 and I’m struggling to remember what calamity was the order of that day).

The UK exiting from the EU causes uncertainty in the minds of money managers. Whenever uncertainty is high, the natural desire is to raise cash and reduce portfolio risk, so futures get sold. This triggers automatic liquidations of underlying equities and debt portfolios, which leads to broad-based asset price decreases as the liquidations occur. There also may be some margin liquidation going on for more over-leveraged players.

Eventually this vicious cycle ends – the trick is anticipating when the vicious cycle ends. I believe it will be sooner than later, although the choppyness of the market will continue to confuse most market participants into believing that we are either entering into the new dark ages, or a golden era of economic productivity when neither seems to be the case.

Canadian Preferred Share price appreciation nearly done

Preferred share spreads (in relation to government) have compressed significantly since last February and it appears that the macro side of the preferred share market has mostly normalized and accounted for the incredible drop of dividends on the 5-year rate reset shares due to the 5-year government bond rate plummeting (0.62% at present with short-term interest rate futures not projecting rate increases until at least 2018).

We are still seeing significant dividend decreases as rates continue to be reset.

I have looked at the universe of Canadian preferred shares (Scotiabank produces a relatively good automated screen) and further appreciation in capital is likely to be achieved through credit improvement (e.g. speculation that Bombardier will actually be able to generate cash indefinitely) concerns rather than overall compression in yields.

As such, one should most certainly not extrapolate the previous three months of performance into the future. Future returns are likely to primarily consist of yields as opposed to capital appreciation.

While investment in preferred shares, in most cases, is better than holding zero-yielding cash (in addition to dividends being tax-preferred), one can also speculate whether there will be some sort of credit crisis in the intermediate future that would cause yield spreads to widen again. If your financial crystal ball is able to give you such dates, you can continue picking up your quarterly dividends in front of the steamroller, but inevitably there will always be times where it is better to cash out and then re-invest when everything is trading at a (1%, 2%, 3%, etc.) higher yield.

I am also finding the same slim pickings in the Canadian debenture marketplace.

Valuations have turned into such that while I’m not rapidly hitting the sell button, I’m not adding anything either and will continue to collect cash yields until such a time one can re-deploy capital at a proper risk/reward ratio. If I do see continued compression on yields I will be much more prone to start raising significant fractions of cash again. Things are very different in 2016 compared to 2015 in this respect – in 2015 I averaged about 40% cash, while in 2016 I have deployed most of it.

A very quiet May and some self-reflection

It has been a relatively calm month of May for me – I know the cliche of sell in May and go away has resonated in my mind, but my positioning is still quite defensive (very heavily weighted in preferred shares and corporate debt). One advantage of such a defensive portfolio structure is that it is relatively insulated to equity volatility.

The past three months have seen quite a significant performance gain and when there are gains this large I always ask myself whether it is sustainable. When I look at the fixed income components of my portfolio, I see higher room for appreciation from current levels as markets continue to normalize. For whatever reason, Canadian markets were heavily sold off in early February, especially in the fixed income space, and we are still continuing to see a normalization of these valuations.

There were a few missed opportunities on the way. I will throw out a bone for the audience and mention I was willing to pounce on Rogers Sugar (TSX: RSI) when it was going to trade below $3.75/share, but clearly that did not happen (sadly, its low point was $3.84/share) and it has rocketed upwards nearly 50% to $5.71 presently on the pretense that Canadians are going to have a sweeter tooth for sugar rather than corn sweeteners in the upcoming months (which is true – their last quarterly financial statements show an uptick in business and this should continue for another year or so and the market has priced this in completely).

My overall thesis at this point is that the aggregate markets will be choppy – there will not be crashes or mega-rallies, but there will be lots of smaller gyrations up and down to encourage the financial press that the world will be ending or the next boom is starting. When looking at general volatility, the markets usually find something to panic about twice a year and we had a large panic last February. The upcoming panic would likely deal with the fallout concerning the presidential election.

If net returns from equity are going to be muted, it would suggest that the best choices still continues to be in fixed income. The opportunities at present are not giving nearly as much of a bang for the buck in terms of risk/reward, but there are still reasonable selections available in the market. A good example of this would be Pengrowth Energy debentures (TSX: PGF.DB.B) which is trading between 94 to 95 cents of par value. Barring crude oil crashing down to US$30/barrel again, it is very likely to mature at par on March 31, 2017. You’ll pick up a 6% capital gain over 10 months and also pick up some interest at a 6.25% coupon rate. Worst case scenario is they elect a share conversion, but with Seymour Schulich picking up a good-sized minority stake in the company, I very much doubt it. (Disclosure: I bought a bunch of them a couple months ago at lower prices).

In the meantime, I am once again twiddling my thumbs in this market.

Reviewing one of my year-end predictions

For my December 31, 2015 new year’s predictions, I said the following:

* Next US President: Donald Trump will be elected as the next president of the United States, by a considerable margin. This prediction is not an endorsement of him, but it is a reflection of my political analysis and my take on what is happening in the United States at present.

I’ve been telling people since September 2015 that Donald Trump would not only win the nomination, but the presidency of the United States. The general election result is not even going to be close – Trump will get at least 350 electoral votes.