Vad tycker några kompetenta investerare idag?

Personliga Anekdoter kring situationen på börsen

Topp eller bara indikation om fortsatt progressivt samhällsförfall?

Intresset för aktier är tillräckligt stort för att DI skall utöka sin "tv-kanal".

Nog med anekdoter, här kommer några kompetenta individers tankar, vars tankar ej överensstämmer sinsemellan:


Rune Andersson
Från DIs pappersversion:

"Industrimannen Rune Andersson gick ur aktiemarknaden helt strax för årsskiftet.
"Jag äger för närvarande noll aktier", säger han.

(...) "Det är så sjukt nu. Jag tittade häromdagen på börslista och bolag som jag känner till. Det är ju p/e 20 på allting - mitt i en högkonjunktur."

(...) "Jag hade aktier privat i en kapitalförsäkring och sålde allt. Jag tyckte att det hade gått upp vansinnigt. När jag sålde hade det gått upp med 20% på ett år ungefär och det är inte rimligt att det bara fortsätter.

(...) Får vi ett börsfall på 20% skulle jag nog kunna tänka mig att köpa aktier igen, men i dag letar man inte ens efter aktier när p/e talen ligger på 20."

(...) "Marknaden är enormt överhettad just nu. Det är inte en tillfällighet att vi ser så mycket börsnoteringar. Jag har varit med så många år att jag känner lukten när vi är på väg in i en ny pyramid och därför är det bra att spara på krutet." säger Rune Andersson.

"Det här kommer som vanligt att sluta med tårar. Jag tror marknaden kommer att vända och vad är det då som utlöser detta? Jag tror det händer när väl räntan börjar normaliseras. Det dröjer lite, men när ECB och Riksbanken byter kurs kommer det att påverka värderingen av aktier." (Intervju i DI, 2017-03-24)


Prem Watsa

Från Fairfaxs årsredovisning 2016, min fetstil:

"Since we fully hedged our common stock portfolio in 2010, we have been frequently asked, as we have constantly asked ourselves, under what circumstances would we remove the hedges. Obviously, a huge sell-off in the financial markets, such as that of 2008/2009, would have led to that result, as the hedges would have performed the purpose for which they were established. What actually happened with the U.S. presidential election on November 8 was the arrival of a new administration focused on dramatically reducing corporate taxes (35% to 15% – 20%), rolling back a myriad of regulations large and small which unnecessarily impede business, and very significantly increasing much needed infrastructure spending. In our view, this should light up ‘‘animal spirits’’ in America and result in much higher economic growth than what has prevailed in the last eight years. 

(...) Higher economic growth would result, we think, in higher profits for many companies, so that even though the indices may not go up significantly, we think a value investor like us can ply our trade again with less of a concern of economic collapse. When the U.S., a $19 trillion economy, does well, the world tends to do well!"

While many risks to global economic growth remain, such as protectionism, China unraveling and the euro disintegrating, we believe the chances for robust growth have significantly increased. We will remain vigilant to these and other risks, and will retain protections in place, such as the $110 billion notional amount of deflation swaps we hold, which have five and a half years yet to run.

(...)In our minds, if the U.S. has higher economic growth of 3% plus, the major risks that we have discussed in past Annual Reports are significantly reduced but not eliminated. Why? Because the U.S. is the largest economy in the world and is the only economy that can impact the world in any significant manner. So we will continue to watch China (we haven’t changed our minds, it is a bubble waiting to burst), Europe and the potential destruction of the euro, and the huge amounts of debt in the world, but our view is that this will be a stock picker’s market in which a long term value-oriented investment approach will thrive – and investing with a long term value-oriented approach is what we have done successfully for the last 31 years.

(...) The markets are not cheap, so we have to focus always on downside protections with potential upside. " (Prem Watsa, Fairfaxs årsredovisning 2016)


Vito Maida

Från patient capital managements Q4 brev till investerare 2016.


Seth Klarman

Frank K Martin

Men glöm ej hur detta slutar, från Frank K Martin:

"As sure as a thief in the night, the Great Moderation stole the cautious conservatism forged in the crucible of suffering in the early 1980s and fomented an illusion of economic and financial stability. Empowered by new Chairman Alan Greenspan’s ability to stop the Crash of 1987 from metastasizing to the real economy, the Fed embarked on a path toward increasing intervention to tamp down economic and financial market volatility. In the years to come, Greenspan’s interference with the normal functioning of the economy and  capital markets actually had the unintended consequence of perversely and systematically increasing fragility

As the new millennium dawned, the Fed’s attempt to render business and market cycles obsolete backfired. A sea change was at hand that continues to this day. The Fed, already behind the curve and again fearing that the threat de jure, the dot.com bust, might migrate to the real economy, pushed rates down to 1% by 2003, which gave impetus to the emerging housing bubble. More perniciously, the “Greenspan put” incited a swagger of invincibility in both the private and public sectors. From Wall Street to Main Street, it seemed that everyone had a vested interest in the glorious process of enrichment. The cries of skeptics, who reasoned that the economic and financial system was getting dangerously out of kilter, fell on deaf ears. They were thought ignorant of the new era and seemingly lacked faith in the inherent wisdom of the market itself. In retrospect, when reforms were desperately needed, apathy filled the void.

Once it became clear that the Fed’s easy money alchemy had shielded the economy from the dot.combust bullet, the speculative mindset became contagious, infecting both the financial and real economies— from investment bank securitizations to local bank homebuyer mortgage originations. Although seismic evidence had been accumulating all along, the volcanic eruption of the financial crisis broke the surface in September 2008, just before the election of Barack Obama. Once again, the Fed hastened to stop the hemorrhage, but this time, seeing itself as the only ER doctor in the hospital, overplayed its hand, perhaps fearing the patient would succumb. It kept the economy on a ventilator for years after it was no longer needed. It does get good marks for mitigating the liquidity crisis, but it never let the deleveraging cycle proceed with cleansing the accumulated financial excesses. Although it would’ve been painful, one must learn to breathe without a ventilator if one is to heal.

Returning decision making to the will of the millions who make up the economy and the markets would not have been painless, but perhaps far less painful than what might lie ahead otherwise. Sadly, Ben Bernanke (Greenspan’s successor in 2006) didn’t have the flexibility, or temerity, of Paul Volcker. The crisis hit, and damage control preempted all other considerations. Current inflated asset values and a lethargic economy are the effect of eight years of ad hoc reactionary and experimental measures. The latent cost may be revealed as the Fed’s life support is removed.

(...)Now in the eighth year of the most extravagantly excessive monetary policy experiment ever, the Fed has enabled a bubble in domestic nonfinancial debt borrowed by households; non-financial businesses; federal, state, and local governments; as well as in the many nonproductive investments it financed. The over indebted economy is becoming even more so this year.

(...) The broader story of debt, including that of the government, is told relative to GDP; as debt increases, it loses its potency to underwrite economic growth. Known as the “law of diminishing returns,” a fundamental economic principle, it plays a central role in productivity theory. In the decades before 2000, the number of dollars of debt necessary to create a dollar’s worth of growth in GDP steadily increased, averaging $1.70 of debt for every $1.00 growth in GDP. From 2000, the ratio doubled, requiring $3.30 of debt for each $1.00 increase in GDP. For the latest statistical year, ending September 30, 2016, it had risen still further, requiring $4.90 of debt to generate $1.00 in GDP.

(...)While of no pressing concern for us as investors so long as we are aware, several very long-term (secular) trends do not bode well for economic growth getting out of its rut anytime soon, regardless of who resides in the White House or which party controls Congress. The digital-age optimism that permeates our culture, along with the belief that the technology revolution will be the wellspring of future growth, may have a tough time measuring up to the per-capita standard of living gains achieved from 1870 to 1970.6 Perhaps the future isn’t what it used to be. " (Martin capital management årsbrev 2016), Frank K Martin)

Byggpartner

Case: Byggpartner värderas relativt lågt, samtidigt som orderingången antyder att kommande året kommer bli ljust. Även ägarna signalerar genom köp av aktier eller ökad utdelning att året blir bra. Riskerna är framförallt relaterad  till bolagets storlek och att enstaka kvartal i viss grad kan påverkas av enskilda projekt. Bolaget är även nynoterat och statistiskt går ipos sämre än börsen som helhet.

Byggpartner är en byggnadsentreprenör som färdigställer större bostadsprojekt såsom flerbostadshus. Med en börskurs kring 42 kr erhålls ett p/e tal om 12 för 2016 och direktavkastningen blir 6%.

Det kan vara värt att notera att sista kvartalet 2016 påverkades negativt av försenade byggstarter. 

Undantaget problemen i sista kvartalet så har orderingången varit väldigt stark och orderstocken är 30% högre än samma period föregående år. Givet att lönsamheten bibehålls kommer det bli en rejäl resultatökning om den ökade orderstocken omsätts i ökad omsättning. Risken är förstås att lönsamheten faller på grund av den hastiga omsättningsökningen.

Historiskt har resultatet och marginalerna pendlat, även om verksamheten över tid tyckts utvecklas i önskvärd riktning (se nedan). Man kan även se att konjunkturen har ett inflytande på omsättningen.

Balansräkningen kunde varit starkare för bolaget, dock är den inte extremt svag och det finns knappt några långfristiga lån. På grund av den starka orderingången valde styrelse att dela ut förhållandevis mycket av resultatet (70%).

Ovanpå den positiva tongången i samband med utdelningshöjningen så har en av storägarna förvärvat aktier nyligen. Bo Olsson förvärv är kanske inte gigantiskt i relation till hans innehav i aktien, men förhoppningsvis har han en viss önskan om att kapitalet han köper för inte ska gå upp i rök.

Bolagsrisken är dock påtaglig och trots förvärvet av Bo Olsson kan man fråga sig varför ägarna valde att notera bolaget givet den stark orderingången. Kanske hade de kommit långt i processen och valde att ej avbryta trots den starka utvecklingen? Kanske ville riskkapitalbolaget Priveq ut och drev därför på processen? Eller kanske dumpas nu bolaget på börsen och nyblivna aktieägare får ta notan.

Trots orosmomenten bör den förhållandevis låga värderingen och starka orderingången ge en god uppsida. Utdelningshöjningen och Olssons inköp av aktier bör ha minskat risken för att de nya ägarna kommer överraskas negativt.

För Byggpartner kan enskilda projekt ha en betydande storlek och på grund av detta ökar bolagsrisken.

Om någon kan såga investeringen så mottags tacksamt dessa tankar.

Caveat emptor........................


För er som håller på att bli kroniska optimister så föreslår jag att man har i åtanke Klarmans senaste tankar. Fortsatt bör man fokusera på sin egen självbevarelsedrift och ha i åtanke att denna marknaden är ytterst en reflektion av låga räntor, öppen centralbanksintervention och kortsiktighet

(...)

Eller som Klarman uttryckte det 2014, något mer alarmistiskt:

Welcome to “The Truman Show” market. In the 1998 film by that name, actor Jim Carrey is ignorant of the fact that his life is a hugely popular reality show. His every action, unbeknownst to him, is manipulated while being broadcast to millions of TV viewers worldwide. He seemingly lives in an idyllic seaside community where the manicured lawns are always green and the citizens are always happy. These people are, of course, actors. The world Truman inhabits turns out to be phony: a gigantic sound stage created for a manufactured “reality.” As Truman starts to unravel the truth, his anger erupts and chaos ensues.

Ben Bernanke and Mario Draghi, as in the movie, are the “creators” who have manufactured a similarly idyllic, if artificial, environment for today’s investors. They were the executive producers of “The Truman Show” of 2013. A global audience sat in rapt attention before this wildly popular production. Given the U.S. stock market’s continuing upsurge, Bernanke is almost certain to snag yet another People’s Choice Award for this psychological “thriller.” Even in “The Truman Show,” life was not as good as this for investors.

But there is one fly in the ointment: in Bernanke’s production, all the Trumans – the economists, fund managers, traders, market pundits – know at some level that the environment in which they operate is not what it seems on the surface. The Fed and the Treasury openly discuss the aim of their policies: to manipulate financial markets higher and to generate reported economic “growth” and a “wealth effect.” Inside the giant Plexiglas dome of modern capital markets, just about everyone is happy, the few doubters are mocked and jeered, bad news is increasingly ignored, and markets go asymptotic. The longer QE continues, the more bloated the Fed balance sheet and the greater the risk from any unwinding. The artificiality of today’s markets is pure Truman Show. According to the Wall Street Journal (12/20/13), the Federal Reserve purchased about 90% of all the eligible mortgage bonds issued in November.

Like a few glasses of wine with dinner, the usual short-term performance pressures on most investors to keep up with the market serve to dull their senses, which makes it a bit easier to forget that they are being manipulated. But what is fake cannot be made real. As Jim Grant recently noted on CNBC, the problem is that “the Fed can change how things look, it cannot change what things are.” According to John Phelan, a fellow at the Cobden Centre in the U.K., “the Federal Reserve has become an enabler of the financial havoc it was designed (a century ago) to prevent.”

Every Truman under Bernanke’s dome knows the environment is phony. But the zeitgeist so so damn pleasant, the days so resplendent, the mood so euphoric, the returns so irresistible, that no one wants it to end, and no one wants to exit the dome until they’re sure everyone else won’t stay on forever.

A marketplace of knowing Trumans seems even more unstable than the movie sound stage character slowly awakening to reality. Can the clued-in Trumans be counted on to maintain their complicity or will they go off-script? Will Fed actions reliably be met with the desired response? Will the program remain popular? Could “The Truman Show” be running out of material? After all, even Seinfeld ended.

Someday, the Fed’s show will be off the air and new programming will take its place. And people will debate just how good it really was. When the show ends, those self-deluded Trumans will be mad as hell and probably broke as well. Hopefully there will be no sequels.

Someday, financial markets will again decline. Someday, rising stock and bond markets will no longer be government policy – maybe not today or tomorrow, but someday.

Someday, QE will end and money won’t be free.

Someday, corporate failure will be permitted.

Someday, the economy will turn down again, and someday, somewhere, somehow, investors will lose money and once again come to favor capital preservation over speculation.

Someday, interest rates will be higher, bond prices lower, and the prospective return from owning fixed-income instruments will again be roughly commensurate with the risk.

Someday, professional investors will come to work and fear will have come to the markets and that fear will spread like wildfire. The news flow will be bad, and the markets will be tumbling.

(ZH)