Finance – Page 84

Psychology of ETF investing

It seems to me that the financial advisory industry as a whole spends a great deal of time creating instruments and building an investor culture that tries to act as if investing (or trading) can be simplified to a set of easy-to-follow rules and, hey, we’re professionals, so leave your money with us. I think it’s made even easier for them to convince people because the majority of people want to be convinced. They’re not that interested in thinking about how to invest their money — not really — so they do their best to wipe their hands of it, with all the consequences that entails.

This is absolutely correct. The psychology of “easy investing” has not changed since the dawn of cheap trading on the internet – the initial “brain-dead” way to invest was always going with a “trusted professional” (financial adviser, stockbroker, etc.) to make your decisions for you, since they clearly knew more than you did. Then for those that got jaded with the performance of such “trusted professionals” and eventually want to do-it-yourself, you have a whole host of products that essentially boil down to “stock pick” type newsletters (e.g. publications like the Motley Fool and TheStreet.Com, which are really fronts for subscriptions to newsletters). All of these don’t really involve any type of thinking – monkey see, monkey-do – if Cramer’s buying Amazon, might as well buy Amazon, eh?

Big banks, especially in Canada, will have you sit down in a branch with a “financial adviser” (who is really a salesperson for the funds the bank sells) and get you to fill in a simple questionnaire, which asks many questions to put you in one of three risk categories. If you were high risk (likely a “young” investor), you were suggested to invest 70% in equity funds, and 30% in bond funds. If you were medium risk, you are suggested to invest 40% in equity funds, 30% in “balanced” funds, and 30% in bond funds. If you are close to retirement and low risk, the suggestion will be 10% equity, 40% balanced, and 50% money-market funds. More “modern” suggested asset mixes may include 10-15% for “commodities”. Simple formulas to make investing easier.

Unfortunately, such cookie-cutter solutions will never provide superior returns. In fact, they will dramatically underperform. The reason is because of the fallacy that asset mix determines 90% of portfolio performance and neglecting to look at valuations.

Once an investor starts to realize that there is no informational benefit to newsletter-type subscriptions, or mutual funds, they will eventually shift to another form of control – exchange-traded funds, which essentially are mutual funds that are easier to buy and sell by virtue of being exchange-traded and not having to deal with an annoying bank middle-man. Once you give up and realize you can’t beat the market (the literature that suggests this starts to be compelling when you suffer losses), you will invest in the S&P 500 index fund, which apparently has slipped the actual index by 0.19% (which is actually not that bad, but slippage should be less than 5 basis points for such a large fund).

Even investing in different ETFs you have to do your homework and cannot apply a “cookie cutter” solution. There is no better example than with commodity-based ETFs.

Commodity-based ETFs that invest in underlying commodities with futures are very bad products. They experience huge trading losses when they have to rollover front-month contracts – the biggest culprit so far has been UNG, the United States Natural Gas ETF. Traders have absolutely ripped UNG’s investors to shreds, and rightfully so – investing in futures is not the same as investing in the commodity itself.

Commodity-based ETFs that invest in the underlying commodity (not futures) are legitimate long-term investment products – the best example is the Gold Trust (GLD), which invests in the physical metal. Your cost of investment is 0.4% per year instead of taking delivery of a gold bar and storing it in your own safety deposit box.

Note that I am making no opinion on the future pricing of natural gas or gold – I am just using these ETFs as an example. If I wanted to bet on a higher price of gold over the long run, I could consider the Gold Trust ETF. If I wanted to bet on a higher price of natural gas over the long run, I would not use the UNG ETF.

I have no issues with investing in ETFs – they provide much cheaper coverage than most mutual funds do, although there are some ETFs out there that are clearly geared towards traders/gamblers than actual investors. People that invest in most ETFs would likely be much better off looking at the top ten holdings and just investing proportionally in the common shares of such companies and will be able to save significant amounts of money from management expense ratios.

Just as an example, if you think energy will be a hot product in the future and choose to invest in XEG.TO (a Canadian energy sector fund), we see the following as the top 10 holdings:

17.74% SUNCOR ENERGY INC
14.02% CANADIAN NATURAL RESOURCES
9.31% ENCANA CORP
7.36% CENOVUS ENERGY INC
6.72% TALISMAN ENERGY INC
5.09% CANADIAN OIL SANDS TRUST
4.45% NEXEN INC
3.63% IMPERIAL OIL LTD
3.05% PENN WEST ENERGY TRUST
2.82% CRESCENT POINT ENERGY CORP

The MER of the fund is 0.55%, so if you invested $10,000 in XEG, you are paying roughly $55/year for management of the fund. This $55 is reduced from the dividend payments you would otherwise receive had you been invested in the common shares (which is a tax-inefficient way of paying for management expenses since such dividends are tax-preferred eligible dividends – a better way would be to bill ETF holders directly and they can take a full deduction for this expense from income). If you can scale into the 10 positions for less than $55 (which is easily done at a properly selected brokerage firm) then with a little mouse-clicking, you can save money on your long-term investments. Since 74% of the fund is invested in its top 10 holdings, the tracking error is trivial since the top 10 securities (74% of investments) are likely to be highly correlated investments to the other 26% in a sector fund.

The conclusions are fairly clear – for most passive index funds out there, it is better to just invest in individual components unless if you are dealing with small amounts of money, or small amounts of time.

True out-performance is difficult to achieve – it requires research, work, and sharp decision-making. It is very unlikely that Joe Investor out there will be able to outperform without going into microscopic details of individual securities. This requires skills such as being able to read financial statements, and knowledge of the sector. Not many people will want to do this – and thus, they will dump their RRSP money in some index fund since it is an easy decision to make and will likely underperform since others will be doing the same thing.

Replacing ING Direct

The place where I normally park cash is in ING Direct, which has been a mainstay financial institution for myself for a very long time. When they first opened, they were by far and away the best place to park cash. Now they are a mediocre offering of the many online products that are available out there. I am guessing that they achieved their desired level of deposits and have achieved their desired debt-to-equity ratio with their residential mortgage offerings.

ING Direct hasn’t contaminated their customer experience by spamming their customer base with too many useless services, but this encroachment to simplicity has been eroding at a faster pace as of late – see my post about RSP loans, for example. It is simplicity that has caused me to stick around with ING Direct instead of shopping for other services. However, that time has now come.

So today I sent in a cheque to Ally, which used to be known as GMAC. Obviously since GM tarnished their brand with their bankruptcy filing and investing money in an institution that shares the same name with a bankrupt entity doesn’t inspire much confidence, they changed their name in 2009. In Canada, they are run by a firm called ResMor Trust Company, which otherwise does mortgages. In any event, they are CDIC insured and this means that the taxpayers of Canada will be picking up the guarantee for deposits up to $100,000.

Since I will not be depositing more than $100,000 in Ally, the safety issue of the institution is more or less mitigated.

Their peak offering is a savings account which delivers 2% interest (which is subject to change at anytime), but since this is significantly higher than ING Direct’s offering at 1.2%, it is a trivial process to click a few mouse buttons and transfer the money. Every dollar counts.

As interest rates rise, it will be interesting to see the spread between these two institutions since they are competing for the same bucket of capital from Joe Saver.

Knowing the difference between cash and income

One of the most powerful concepts that most beginning investors confuse is the concept of cash flow, and the concept of net income. In capital-intensive industries, an investor must know enough about the underlying accounting in order to make a proper investment decision.

Probably one of the easiest textbook cases for this concept is looking at the year-end report for Sprint Nextel Corporation. For 2009, they reported a net loss of $2.44 billion, but generated about $2.7 billion in cash at the end of the day.

The simple reason for this is that the company made huge investments in telecommunication assets in prior years and is continuing to depreciate those assets – the actual cash has been long since paid and as such, the depreciation expense does not represent a cash transaction.

So while Sprint will be reporting net losses for the foreseeable future, the company will still be generating cash to pay off its debt. Eventually this process will stop when the assets have been further depreciated, but it is up to an investment analysis to decide whether the company will put more cash into more capital projects, or whether to milk their existing investments and just spend money on maintenance.

Telecommunication companies, in this respect, are relatively easy to analyze.

Finally, as a bondholder in Sprint, all I am concerned about is their ability to service debt. The company does not pay a dividend and at the rate they are able to generate cash, will be able to service their debt for the foreseeable future. Back in October 2008 and March 2009, I was busy picking up equivalent units of debt that will continue to give off insane returns on investment (averaging roughly 18% in coupon payments and 5% in annualized capital gains upon maturity). There is no chance that equity will be able to repeat this at the risk I am taking!

Even today, such units are trading at about a 9.3% current yield, and about 1.9% capital growth to maturity, which is likely better than what you would get from equity over the next 19 years.

Merits of the GIC-only investment strategy

I was reading an article on the Globe and Mail about David Trahair, who advocates a GIC-only investment strategy.

Despite the relatively negative income tax implications (the income from the GICs are fully taxable unless if sheltered in an RSP or TFSA), it is not a bad strategy because it can be implemented with a few clicks of the mouse and should provide protection of principal in most situations. It is something even the most unsophisticated investor can perform and you can shop around for the best GIC rates by using a site like GICBroker.com as a guideline for where to get the highest rates.

The only relevant risk worth mentioning is that you are exposing yourself to is inflationary risk (loss of purchasing power of principal), but given the relatively low duration of investment (an average of roughly 3, assuming you are using a GIC ladder) should properly capture heightened interest rate expectations if and when CPI inflation does occur. Right now the best 5-year GIC is a good 100 basis points higher than the equivalent Government of Canada 5-year benchmark bond rate (2.47% vs. 3.5%).

The other comment is that James Hymas makes a very good argument for preferred shares in a portfolio that will diversify the risks associated with having a GIC-only portfolio, and makes for a very good read. Implementing such a change in a portfolio does involve quite a bit of financial sophistication for the do-it-at-home investor, however.

ING Direct trying to trap capital in TFSA accounts

I noticed at the start of the year that ING Direct was offering a 3% 90-day GIC for RRSP accounts (no transfers required) and also 3% for a TFSA account, but with the rate subject to change at any time.

Anybody with an RRSP in ING Direct would do well to lock in the 90-day rate as soon as they can; even though they stated they will offer it until March 1st, they could revoke it. The difference between a 3% rate and a 1.25% rate (which is more representative of the current market rate for a 1-year GIC) is $43.15 on a $10,000 investment. It is not huge money, but it is more money nonetheless.

The 3% TFSA offer is quite a lure, but it is designed to trap as much money before they reset the rate back to a lower rate. The trick with the TFSA is that once customers have deposited their money into the TFSA, it is a lot of unnecessary paperwork to get their money out of the TFSA account once the rate resets to something lower. If customers decide to withdrawal the TFSA once the rate goes lower, then they lose the contribution room into their TFSA until January 1, 2011.

For those people that want to keep their money in a risk-free instrument (e.g. a GIC), use the ING Direct TFSA at your own peril. As a matter of financial planning, the TFSA should not be used as a risk-free account anyhow, but some people will want to use it to park idle cash.

ING Direct used to be the undisupted best place to save money, but over the past few years they have become just “normal”. They are still excellent with respect to having a no-fee operation and this works to their benefit – if money is easy to get out of them, then I feel much safer keeping money with them. For matters such as RRSP and TFSA transfers, however, there is a real bureaucratic cost associated with these and it is not worth it to capture an extra 0.5% elsewhere for the dollar amounts in question that people typically deal with.

If ING Direct wanted to raise a lot of longer duration capital, they’d do fairly well if they offered a 5% 5-year GIC.