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Steve's note: I'm bullish on U.S. stocks today. But investors are scared... wondering when this long bull market will end. That's why taking emotion out of your trading is more important than ever. This week, my colleague Dan Ferris is sharing his cautious view of the markets – including how you can make money while preparing for the worst...
How to Invest for 'Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt' TodayBy
Thursday, December 28, 2017
You need to understand what a mania looks and feels like to survive it.
That's why I've spent the past two days detailing the traits of speculative manias.
I continue to believe several years' worth of stock-price gains will evaporate quickly when the current mania finally ends. But human nature is perverse. Following the herd into expensive stocks gets more attractive as it gets more risky.
Don't let the mania tempt you to overpay for stocks to make a quick buck.
But also, don't let it deter you from investing in attractive securities and assets whenever and wherever you find them. That will be our strategy as growth stocks begin to significantly underperform value stocks during a new "Golden Age of Value Investing."
I'll explain more on that subject tomorrow. Today, let's go over the final two traits common to speculative manias...
6. 'This time is different'
The most famous example of Trait No. 6 was days before the 1929 crash, when economist Irving Fisher said stock prices had reached "a permanently high plateau."
Today, anybody who does not acknowledge that U.S. equities are trading near their highest valuations of all time (second only to March 2000) is as blinded as Fisher. U.S. equities have always performed poorly from current valuations.
Even famous investors try to convince themselves and others that "this time is different." Jeremy Grantham published a report saying exactly that, titled "This Time Seems Very, Very Different."
Warren Buffett appears to have abandoned his primary metric for gauging the value of the overall market (U.S. total market cap divided by gross domestic product) to a nebulous statement that stocks are cheap as long as interest rates stay low.
And the bitcoin bulls are also convinced this time is different. Here's a recent Twitter post that smacks of Irving Fisher...
The author of this quote says he's a bitcoin "spirit guide for the journey to $100,000 and beyond... FUD dies here." FUD means fear, uncertainty, and doubt. It's my experience that English philosopher Francis Bacon was right... Those who begin with certainties shall end in doubts, and those who begin with doubts shall end in certainties. This guy is too certain he's right. Markets love to reward hubris, right up until the minute they destroy it. Only overconfidence and lack of experience could lead anyone to believe banishing fear and doubt is possible. It's not. Living with it and managing it is possible and necessary for investment success. And the bitcoin hyper-bulls will have to do that eventually.
7. Financial shenanigans
This trait describes the nuts-and-bolts reasons why investors lose money in individual stocks during a financial mania.
As equity markets rise higher, the incentive to keep reporting good results grows stronger, compelling management teams to report better numbers than business reality might dictate.
The worst financial shenanigans are the ones that affect entire swaths of the stock and bond markets. They tend to go on – detected or not – for a long, long time. Then one day, the chickens start coming home to roost, and investors suddenly find themselves deep underwater.
Today, there's an enormous underlying problem affecting the overwhelming majority of U.S. public companies: the increasing use of non-GAAP accounting in quarterly and annual financial reports.
GAAP stands for generally accepted accounting principles. It's the standard for reporting financial results. Sometimes, a business might feel the standard doesn't accurately portray the true financial performance of the business. So instead, it will publish figures not supported by the GAAP standard to portray the business in a more accurate light.
Non-GAAP figures aren't inherently bad. Free cash flow (FCF) – our favored earnings metric – is a non-GAAP number. The problem comes when differences between GAAP and non-GAAP numbers grow larger. That's what's happening today, as noted in an October 26 blog post by State Street analyst Michael Arone...
Financial data and software company FactSet also recently noted that...
The per-share intrinsic value of a business can only increase if its earnings per share (EPS) also increases. This statistic suggests that the market is either OK with all the unpublished abuses of non-GAAP accounting, or that a reckoning may be at hand. Lastly, a June 2017 article in the CPA Journal studied non-GAAP adjustments for six large social media companies (Facebook, Groupon, Pandora, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Yelp) from 2011 to 2015. The authors concluded: "The magnitude of non-GAAP adjustments increased over time for all the companies in this study."
So... what can increased non-GAAP reporting do to your returns?
Just look at General Electric (GE). It was once the bluest of blue-chip stocks, but its share price is down more than 40% this year. GE's comeuppance was years in the making...
Especially during the tenure of former CEO Jack Welch (1981-2001), GE became a notorious earnings manipulator. Welch fostered a highly competitive make-your-quarterly-numbers-or-else corporate culture. The culture might not be as competitive now, but the financial reporting hasn't improved and investors are fed up.
An October Bloomberg article said as much a couple months ago, noting that GE reports four separate EPS numbers, each excluding various expenses. Bloomberg said GE is one of just 21 S&P 500 companies to report more than one EPS figure – though nearly all S&P 500 companies report some form of non-GAAP metrics, up from 58% of S&P 500 companies using non-GAAP reporting 20 years ago.
I suspect that when the current mania ends, many companies will suddenly get religion about GAAP accounting again as the deficiencies they're hiding finally become unavoidable. This will send many share prices sharply lower... likely reflecting enough investor revulsion to push prices well below reasonable intrinsic values.
Non-GAAP issues could lead to thousands of stock prices falling 50% or more from their ultimate tops, whenever those tops finally arrive.
It may take more than a few years for such a top to arrive, or it may not. Remember, we don't bet on predictions. We simply prepare our portfolio for the widest possible range of outcomes.
That includes the likelihood that good businesses purchased at cheap prices will generate acceptable long-term returns. More on this tomorrow...
Good investing,
Dan Ferris
Further Reading:
"Stocks are super-expensive right now," Dan writes. "Yet everybody thinks it's easy to get rich owning them." Check out the first part of his series on market booms – featuring three of today's hidden dangers – right here: The Key to Surviving a Speculative Mania.
Yesterday, Dan revealed a huge change he sees in the stock market. If he is correct, some of today's safest investments could soon lead investors to ruin... Read more here: The 'Golden Age of Value Investing' Is Coming.
Market NotesTHE SEMICONDUCTOR BOOM CONTINUES Today's chart highlights the long-term gains of an industry leader...
Longtime readers know we are always looking for big secular trends to invest in. And since the invention of the personal computer and the cellphone, the need for semiconductors has been one of the biggest... These little devices power most of the electronics we use today. We last checked in on this trend with chipmaker Texas Instruments (TXN) and chip-equipment manufacturer Lam Research (LRCX). Today, we'll look at another chipmaker...
Intel (INTC) is a global leader in the semiconductor space. Recently, it has even expanded into the virtual-reality and self-driving car markets. The $215 billion behemoth earns huge profits – nearly $12 billion over the past three quarters. And as demand for chips has increased, its success has grown steadily... Over the past five years, Intel's sales and profits are up about 16% and 57%, respectively.
As you can see in the chart below, shares are soaring. They're up around 130% over the past five years... And they recently hit a new multiyear high. Keep an eye on this company as the semiconductor trend marches on...
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