Risk/Reward Vol. 271
THIS IS NOT INVESTMENT OR TAX ADVICE. IT IS A PERSONAL REFLECTION ON INVESTING. RELY ON NOTHING STATED HEREIN.
“When I'm gone (when I'm gone)
When I'm gone (when I'm gone)
You're gonna miss me when I'm gone”—lyrics from “Cups (You’re Gonna Miss Me) sung by Lulu and The Lampshades
“Imagine how the world could be
So very fine
So happy together”---lyrics from “Happy Together” sung by The Turtles
“The foot bone connected to the leg bone,
The leg bone connected to the knee bone”---lyrics from “Dem Bones” sung by Everyone
The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 have barely moved since last I wrote two weeks ago. In fact, I am sure that “You did not miss me when I was gone/When I was gone/When I was gone.” Plot the 50 Day Moving Average on these indices, year to date, and you will see both undulate over and under the nearly flat 50DMA like gentle waves. This remarkably stable condition prevails despite a worsening of the Greek debt crisis; a story to which much blame is assigned to explain day to day market variability. I don’t know what will cause the stock market to break up or down. Maybe it will be when the Fed raises rates in September or December, but one would think much of that has been baked into stock prices already. But the wags who proclaimed that this is a “stock picker’s market” (that is, one where gains are achieved on individual stocks and not on stock indices) appear to be right.
The stock pickers that have done the best this year are those that have identified merger and acquisition candidates. And there are a lot of them. The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that we are headed for the most active m&a year on record. More than $2.15 trillion worth of deals have been announced as of the third week in June which puts us on a pace to eclipse 2007’s $4.3 trillion merger mania. (Yikes! Does that portend something?) With debt so cheap, plenty of cash on balance sheets and stock prices still high, corporate managers “imagine how the world could be/So very fine/So happy together.” No industry exemplifies this thinking more than health insurance where Humana is for sale, United Health is stalking Aetna and Anthem wants to buy CIGNA---and where, with this week’s Supreme Court decision, we march inexorably to a one party payer system.
This has NOT been a good few months for those who like income producing stocks; that is, those correlated to the bond market. It is for this reason that I am so heavily weighted in cash, having sold most of these in March. However, it has been a great time to study these correlations. And if anyone doubts the existence of correlations (which I define as “the foot bone connected to the leg bone/And the leg bone connected to the knee bone, etc.”), I suggest you do the following. Access Yahoo Finance, and click on the 10Yr. Bond hyperlink. When it opens locate the chart and click on the 2y hyperlink. When it opens click on “Comparison” and enter OHI, the symbol for Omega Health Investors one of my favorite real estate investment trusts (REIT’s). What will be displayed is a chart showing the relative performance between the yield on the 10Yr. and the price of OHI. Have you ever seen a more perfect inverse relationship? Plug in any income stock (REIT, BDC, preferred stock) and you will see similar results. I look for these correlations, focus like a hawk on the yield on the 10Year and make investment decisions accordingly. At present, all signs are that the yield on the 10Yr is headed up. Thus I am in cash until that yield stabilizes. I only need stability because what I seek is steady income (for example, the yield on OHI is presently over 6% annually). However, if the yield on the 10 Year falls, all the better for me because I achieve capital appreciation as well as income. It is an imperfect system, but it protects me from experiencing what befell the stock markets in 2008-2009; an event which has had a greater influence on my investing philosophy than the spectacular gains achieved thereafter.
Having interviewed countless money managers and read countless books on investing, I am convinced that all of us in the game are looking for the one, true secret to investing success. Barb calls it “the one trick”- as in “he is a one trick pony.” For me, the “one trick” is trading in correlation to the yield on the 10Yr. Like The Turtles, that yield
“…showed me what to do
Exactly what to do
How I fell in love with you.”
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