Investing Curiouscatblog

Tag: Investing

  • Delaying the Start of Social Security Payments Can Pay Off

    Delaying when you start collecting Social Security benefits in the USA can enhance your personal financial situation. You may start collecting benefits at 62, but each year you delay collecting increases your payment by 5% to 8% (see below). If you retire before your “normal social security retirement age” (see below) your payments are reduced from the calculated monthly payment (which is based on your earnings and the number of years you paid into the social security fund). If you delay past that age you get a 8% bonus added to your monthly payment for each year you delay.

    The correct decision depends on your personal financial situation and your life expectancy. The social security payment increases are based on life expectancy for the entire population but if your life expectancy is significantly different that can change what option makes sense for you. If you live a short time you won’t make up for missing payments (the time while you delayed taking payments) with the increased monthly payment amount.

    The “normal social security retirement age” is set in law and depends on when you were born. If you were born prior to 1938 it is 65 and if you are born after 1959 it is 67 (in between those dates it slowly increases. Those born in 1959 will reach the normal social security retirement age of 67 in 2026.

    The social security retirement age has fallen far behind demographic trends – which is why social security deductions are so large today (it used to be social security payments for the vast majority of people did not last long at all – they died fairly quickly, that is no longer the case). The way to cope with this is either delay the retirement ago or increase the deductions. The USA has primarily increased the deductions, with a tiny adjustment of the retirement age (increasing it only 2 years over several decades). We would be better off if they moved back the normal retirement age at least another 3 to 5 years (for the payment portion – given the broken health care system in the USA retaining medicare ages as they are is wise).

    In the case of early retirement, a benefit is reduced 5/9 of one percent for each month (6.7% annually) before normal retirement age, up to 36 months. If the number of months exceeds 36, then the benefit is further reduced 5/12 of one percent per month (5% annually).

    For delaying your payments after you have reached normal social security retirement age increases payments by 8% annually (there were lower amounts earlier but for people deciding today that is the figure to use).

    Lets take a quick look at a simple example:
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  • Cockroach Portfolio

    Dylan Grice suggests the Cockroach Portfolio: 25% cash; 25% government bonds; 25% equities; and 25% gold. What we can learn from the cockroach

    Each of those asset buckets protects against a different type of risk. And that is a very sensible approach to investing in the year ahead. Cash will protect you against a market collapse in anything (provided it’s cash held with a solid institution).

    Government bonds protect against deflation (provided your money’s invested in solid government bonds and not trash). Equities offer capital growth and income. And gold, as we know, protects against currency depreciation, inflation, and financial collapse. It’s vitally important to maintain holdings in each, in my opinion.

    The beauty of a ‘static’ allocation across these four asset classes is that it removes emotion from the investment process.

    I don’t really agree with this but I think it is an interesting read. And I do agree the standard stock/bond/cash portfolio model is not good enough.

    I would rather own real estate than gold. I doubt I would ever have more than 5% gold and only would suggest that if someone was really rich (so had money to put everywhere). Even then I imagine I would balance it with investments in other commodities.

    One of the many problems with “stock” allocations is that doesn’t tell you enough. I think global exposure is wise (to some extent S&P 500 does this as many of those companies have huge international exposure – still I would go beyond that). Also I would be willing to take some stock in commodities type companies (oil and gas, mining, real estate, forests…) as a different bucket than “stocks” even though they are stocks.

    And given the super low interest rates I see dividend paying stocks as an alternative to bonds.

    The Cockroach Portfolio does suggest only government bonds (and is meant for the USA where those bonds are fairly sensible I think) but in the age of the internet many of my readers are global. It may well not make sense to have a huge portion of your portfolio in many countries bonds. And outside the USA I wouldn’t have such a large portion in USA bonds. And they don’t address the average maturity (at least in this article) – I would avoid longer maturities given the super low rates now. If rates were higher I would get some long term bonds.

    photo with view of Glacier National Park,
    View of Glacier National Park, from Bears Hump Trail in Waterton International Peace Park in Canada, by John Hunter

    These adjustments mean I don’t have as simple a suggestion as the cockroach portfolio. But I think that is sensible. There is no one portfolio that makes sense. What portfolio is wise depends on many things.

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  • Amazon Using a Costco Strategy?

    Amazon Prime is in some ways is similar to Costco’s membership fees. Costco make the vast majority of their profit on membership fees and largely breaks even otherwise.

    Amazon reported earning that were once again very short on earnings given how successful the company has been. Net income increased to $239 million for the 4th quarter (which is by far Amazon’s most profitable quarter since it includes the Christmas buying season) from $97 million last year.

    Amazon Prime costs $79 a year (in the USA) and provides free 2 day shipping and access to their streaming video content. Amazon doesn’t disclose the numbers of prime members (that I can find anyway) but educated guesses seem to say 20 million (or more). That would be $1.6 billion a year.

    Amazon’s net income for the full year was $274 million. Fees for Prime customers were $1.6 billion (at 20 million members). Amazon is considering raising the Prime price to $99 or $129 a year (25-50%).

    While not directly comparable to Costco it is similar. Both are running much of their business just to break even (or at a loss) and Costco manages to take membership fees as profit (along with a very tiny profit on everything else) while Amazon doesn’t even come close to running the rest of their business at break even.

    Now you can look at the two fees and say it isn’t the same. Amazon has to pay for shipping on each of the purchases etc. Still it is an odd strategy of charing customers an annual fee and then providing them services almost like a co-op that runs at break even for members.

    I really like lots of what Jeff Bezos does. He goes even farther than I do at prioritizing long term benefit over current profit. I can’t think of any other leader that does that and he isn’t really close to me in how far he goes.

    Beyond that long term thinking he is much more sensible about financial figures than the extremely over simplified (and even often just wrong) ideas spouted by other CEOs and CFOs. The quarterly report release form the company starts with:

    Operating cash flow increased 31% to $5.47 billion for the trailing twelve months, compared with $4.18 billion for the trailing twelve months ended December 31, 2012. Free cash flow increased to $2.03 billion for the trailing twelve months, compared with $395 million for the trailing twelve months ended December 31, 2012. Free cash flow for the trailing twelve months ended December 31, 2012 includes fourth quarter cash outflows for purchases of corporate office space and property in Seattle, Washington, of $1.4 billion.

    Bezos understand (and makes sure that the company explains) that operating cash flow is a much better measure in many ways than earnings. Bezos is willing to take many actions to bolster long term gains which often hurt current earnings (and also cash flow though he is less willing to drastically undermine cash flow).

    Reading reports from Amazon over the years you get the feeling of reading reports from Warren Buffett. The thinking behind the reports both make is very rare among the rest of the senior leadership of our large corporation (who sadly take huge paychecks while providing mediocre leadership or often worse than mediocre).

    I love the prospects for Amazon, as a company. I continue to be frustrated by the price of the stock – it is priced so highly it is difficult for me to justify buying. I do hold it in my paper sleep well portfolio, but I am definitely worried about the price. But I see very little else nearly as compelling and on balance find it an attractive, though risky, investment. I see Apple as an extremely good buy at these prices. I see Google more similar to Amazon – very nice prospects but also a very richly priced stock (though I think much more reasonably priced, all things considered, than Amazon).

    Related: Amazon Keeps Spending, Sales Growing But Not Income – Google is Diluting Shareholder Equity – Another Great Quarter for Amazon (2007) – Is Google Overpriced? (2007)

  • Google is Diluting Shareholder Equity

    Many companies that have have plenty of cash chose to dilute stockholder equity instead of paying market rate salaries. They also do this to pay more than they would be willing to if they had to pay cash and take a direct earnings hit officially and unofficially. And they may do it to allow employees to delay paying taxes (I am not sure if this plays a part or not) – and maybe even avoid taxes using some financial games. Companies chose to give away stockholder equity under the pretense that those losses to shareholders can be hidden on financial statements (and they often are).

    Thankfully SEC rules forced disclosure of such financial games in the last few years. Still “Wall Street” often promotes the earnings which pretend though employee costs that are paid with stock instead of cash are not costs to the business.

    Google is cash flow positive by billions every quarter. Yet they have issued over 1% more stock each year.

    Outstanding share balances in millions of shares

    Sep 30 2013 Dec 31 2012 Dec 31 2011 Dec 31 2010 Dec 31 2009
    334.2 330 324.9 321.3 317.8

    This means Google has given away over 5.2% of a shareholder’s ownership from January 1, 2010 to September 30, 2013. If you owned 100 shares at the end of 2010 you owned .000315% of the company. At the end of the period your ownership had been diluted to .000300% of the company.

    When the stock value is rising rapidly (as Google’s has) it proves to be much more costly than if the company had just paid cash in the first place. In Google’s case you would own 5% more of the company and the cash stockpile Google had would be a bit lower (Google had $56,523,000,000 in cash at the end of Sep 2013).

    For companies that don’t have cash (startups) paying employees with stock options makes sense. When companies have the cash it is mainly a way to hide how much the company is giving away to executives and to provide fake earnings where only a portion of employee pay is treated as an expense and the rest is magically ignored making earnings seem higher.

    Related: Apple’s Outstanding Shares Increased a Great Deal the Last Few Years, Diluting Shareholder Equity – Global Stock Market Capitalization from 2000 to 2012 – Investment Options Are Much More Confusing to Chose From Now – Google up 13% on Great Earnings Announcement (2011)

  • 12 Stocks for 10 Years – Jan 2014 Update

    The 12 stock for 10 years portfolio consists of stocks I would be comfortable putting away for 10 years. I look for companies with a history of large positive cash flow, that seemed likely to continue that trend.

    Since April of 2005 the portfolio Marketocracy calculated annualized rate or return is 8.2% (the S&P 500 annualized return for the period is 7.8%). Marketocracy subtracts the equivalent of 2% of assets annually to simulate management fees – as though the portfolio were a mutual fund. Without that fee the return beats the S&P 500 annual return by about 240 basis points annually (10.2% to 7.8%). And I think the 240 basis point “beat” of the S&P rate is really less than a fair calculation, as the 200 basis point “deduction” removes what would be assets that would be increasing.

    In reviewing the data it seemed to me the returns for TDF and EMF were too low. In examining the Marketocracy site they seem to have failed to credit dividends paid since 2010 (which are substantial – over 15% of the current value has been paid in dividends that haven’t been credited). I have written Marketocracy about the apparent problem. If I am right, the total return for the portfolio likely will go up several tens of basis points, maybe – perhaps to a 10.5% return? And the returns for those 2 positions should increase substantially.

    Since the last update I have added Abbvie (part of the former Abbot which was split into two companies in 2013). I will sell TDF from the fund (I include it in the table below, since I haven’t sold it all yet).

    The current stocks, in order of return:

    Stock Current Return % of sleep well portfolio now % of the portfolio if I were buying today
    Amazon – AMZN 622% 10% 10%
    Google – GOOG 388% 18% 16%
    Danaher – DHR 111% 10% 10%
    Templeton Dragon Fund – TDF 100%*** 3% 0%
    PetroChina – PTR 82% 4% 4%
    Toyota – TM 65% 9% 10%
    Apple – AAPL 57% 15% 15%
    Intel – INTC 32% 7% 7%
    Templeton Emerging Market Fund – EMF 29%*** 5% 7%
    Pfizer – PFE 27% 6% 5%
    Abbvie – ABBV 18% 3% 5%
    Cisco – CSCO 12% 3% 4%
    Cash – 7%* 4%
    Tesco – TSCDY -5%** 0%* 3%

    The current marketocracy results can be seen on the Sleep Well marketocracy portfolio page.

    Related: 12 Stocks for 10 Years: January 2012 Update – May 2013 portfolio update – 12 Stocks for 10 Years, July 2009 Update

    I make some adjustments to the stock holdings over time (selling of buying a bit of the stocks depending on large price movements – this rebalances and also lets me sell a bit if I think things are getting highly priced. So I have sold some Amazon and Google as they have increased greatly. These purchases and sales are fairly small (resulting in a annual turnover rate under 5%).

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  • Lazy Golfer Portfolio Allocation

    There are many asset allocation strategies; which often are pretty similar. In general they oversimplify the situation (so an investor needs to study and adjust them to their situation – though most don’t do this, which is a problem). In general, I think asset allocation suggestions are too heavily weighted on bonds, and that is even more true today in the current environment – of could that is just my opinion.

    I ran across this suggested allocation in Eyewitness to a Wall Street mugging which I think has several good values.

    • It focuses on low fee, market index funds. Fees are incredibly important in determining long term investment success
    • It has lower bond allocation than normal
    • It has more international exposure than many – which I think is wise (this suggested portfolio is for those in the USA, USA portion should be lowered for others)
    • It includes real estate (some suggested allocations miss this entirely)

    In my opinion this allocation should be adjusted as you get closer to retirement (put a bit more into more stable, income producing investments).

    My personal preference is to use high quality dividend stocks in the current interest rate environment. I would buy them myself which does require a bit more work than once a year rebalancing that the lazy golfer portfolio allows.

    I would also include 10% for Vanguard emerging markets fund (VWO) (for sake of a rule of thumb reduce Inflation Protected Securities Fund to 10% if you are more than 10 years from retirement, when between 10 and 1 year from retirement put Inflation Protected Securities Fund at 15% and Total Stock Market Index Fund at 35%, when 1 year from retirement or retired lower emerging market to 5% and put 5% in money market.

    Depending on your other assets this portfolio should be adjusted (large real estate holdings [large net value on personal home, investment real estate…] can mean less real estate in this portfolio, 401k holdings may mean you want to tweak this [TIAA CREF has a very good real estate fund, if you have access to it you might make real estate a high value in your 401k and then adjust your lazy portfolio], large pension means you can lower income producing assets, how close you are to retirement, etc.).

    The Lazy Golfer Portfolio (Annually rebalance the fund on your birthday and ignore Wall Street for the remaining 364 days of the year) contains 5 Vanguard index funds

    • 40% Total Stock Market Index Fund (VTSMX)
    • 20% Total International Stock Index Fund (VGTSX)
    • 20% Inflation Protected Securities Fund (VIPSX)
    • 10% Total Bond Market Index Fund (VBMFX)
    • 10% REIT Index Fund (VGSIX)

    Related: Retirement Planning, Looking at Asset Allocation – Lazy Portfolio Results – Investment Risk Matters Most as Part of a Portfolio, Rather than in Isolation – Starting Retirement Account Allocations for Someone Under 40 – Taking a Look at Some Dividend Aristocrats

  • Global Stock Market Capitalization from 2000 to 2012

    Looking at stock market capitalization by country gives some insight into how countries, and stocks, are doing. Looking at the total market capitalization by country doesn’t equate to the stock holdings by individuals in a country or the value of companies doing work in a specific country. Some countries (UK and Hong Kong, for example) have more capitalization based there than would be indicated by the size of their economy.

    It is important to keep in mind the data is in current USA dollars, so big swings in exchange rates can have a big impact (and can cause swings to be exacerbated when they move in tandem with stock market movements – if for example the market declines by 15% and the currency declines by 10% against the US dollar those factors combine to move the result down).

    Chart of stock market capitalization from 2000 to 2012 for USA, China, Japan, UK and world
    The chart shows the top four countries based on stock market capitalization, with data from 200 to 2012. The chart created by Curious Cat Investing and Economics Blog may be used with attribution. Data from the World Bank.

    As with so much recent economic data China’s performance here is remarkable. China grew from 1.8% of world capitalization in 2000 to 6.9% in 2012. And Hong Kong’s data is reported separately, as it normally is with global data sets. Adding Hong Kong to China’s totals would give 3.7% in 2000 with growth to to 8.9% in 2012 (Hong Kong stayed very stable – 1.9% in 2000, 2% in 2012). China alone (without HK) is very slightly ahead of Japan.

    The first chart shows the largest 4 market capitalizations (2012: USA $18.6 trillion, China and Japan at $3.7 trillion and UK at $3 trillion). Obviously the dominance of the USA in this metric is quite impressive the next 7 countries added together don’t quite reach the USA’s stock market capitalization. I also including the data showing the global stock market capitalization divided by 3 (I just divide it by three to have the chart be more usable – it lets us see the overall global fluctuations but doesn’t cram all the other data in the lower third of the chart).

    Canada is the 5th country by market capitalization (shown on the next chart) with $2 trillion. From 2000 to 2012 China’s market capitalization increased by $3.1 trillion. The USA increased by $3.6 trillion from a much larger starting point. China increased by 536% while the USA was up 23.5%. The world stock market capitalization increased 65% from 2000 to 2012.

    Related: Stock Market Capitalization by Country from 1990 to 2010 – Government Debt as Percent of GDP 1998-2010 – Manufacturing Output by Country 1999-2011: China, USA, Japan, Germany

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  • Looking at the Malaysian Economy

    Since I am living in Malaysia now, I pay attention to Malaysia’s economy. There are many reasons to be positive but the large consumer and government debt in Malaysia is a serious concern. They do have many administrators that say the right things, the question is going to be whether those statement define policy action or if they are ignored.

    Wahid Says Ringgit Too Weak as Growth Improves: Southeast Asia

    Malaysia and Thailand may be the most vulnerable after India and Indonesia, with the former facing a deteriorating current-account balance and elevated foreign ownership of its debt

    India and Indonesia have experienced large stock market declines and currency devaluations recently. The Malaysian Ringgit has declines 10% against the US $ in the last 3 months. Malaysia is holding up ok, but is venerable as these international loses of confidence often sweep over countries (and move from country to country).

    Malaysia’s current-account surplus probably shrank to 900 million ringgit ($274 million) in the second quarter, according to the median estimate of five economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. That would be the smallest since at least 1999, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

    There is a real risk that the current account could slip into a deficit for the first time since the fourth quarter of 1997, Macquarie Group Ltd. analysts said in a report this month.
    “We are aware of this situation and we are aware of some of the measures to be undertaken to make sure that Malaysia remains in a surplus position,” Abdul Wahid said, without elaborating on the steps. “It is still a surplus and we are managing it.”

    The surplus is narrowing on increased overseas investment and property buying, higher imports for infrastructure projects, lower palm oil and rubber export prices and the acquisition of new aircraft by Malaysian Airline System Bhd., the minister said.

    The main foreign exchange earner recently seems to be selling property, that isn’t a good way to be earning foreign currency (selling assets). It is ok to do this to some extent, but relying on large inflows this way is very risky (and self defeating over the long term if it is too large). Even though palm oil and rubber exports are declining a bit, I believe they are still strong sources of foreign currency so that is good.

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  • The Risks of Too Big to Fail Financial Institutions Have Only Gotten Worse

    Printing money (and the newer fancier ways to introduce liquidity/capital) work until people realize the money is worthless. Then you have massive stagflation that is nearly impossible to get out from under. The decision by the European and USA government to bail out the too big to fail institutions and do nothing substantial to address the problem leaves an enormous risk to the global economy unaddressed and hanging directly over our heads ready to fall at any time.

    The massively too big to fail financial institutions that exist on massive leverage and massive government assistance are a new (last 15? years) danger make it more likely the currency losses value rapidly as the government uses its treasury to bail out their financial friends (this isn’t like normal payback of a few million or billion dollars these could easily cost countries like the USA trillions). How to evaluate this risk and create a portfolio to cope with the risks existing today is extremely challenging – I am not sure what the answer is.

    Of the big currencies, when I evaluate the USA $ on its own I think it is a piece of junk and wouldn’t wan’t my financial future resting on it. When I look at the other large currencies (Yen, Yuan, Euro) I am not sure but I think the USD (and USA economy) may be the least bad.

    In many ways I think some smaller countries are sounder but smaller countries can very quickly change – go from sitting pretty to very ugly financial situations. How they will wether a financial crisis where one of the big currencies losses trust (much much more than we have seen yet) I don’t know. Still I would ideally place a bit of my financial future scattered among various of these countries (Singapore, Australia, Malaysia, Thailand, Brazil [maybe]…).

    Basically I don’t know where to find safety. I think large multinational companies that have extremely strong balance sheets and businesses that seem like they could survive financial chaos (a difficult judgement to make) may well make sense (Apple, Google, Amazon, Toyota, Intel{a bit of a stretch}, Berkshire Hathaway… companies with lots of cash, little debt, low fixed costs, good profit margins that should continue [even if sales go down and they make less they should make money – which many others won’t]). Some utilities would also probably work – even though they have large fixed costs normally. Basically companies that can survive very bad economic times – they might not get rich during them but shouldn’t really have any trouble surviving (they have much better balance sheets and prospects than many governments balance sheets it seems to me).

    In many ways real estate in prime areas is good for this “type” of risk (currency devaluation and financial chaos) but the end game might be so chaotic it messes that up. Still I think prime real estate assets are a decent bet to whether the crisis better than other things. And if there isn’t any crisis should do well (so that is a nice bonus).

    Basically I think the risks are real and potential damage is serious. Where to hide from the storm is a much tricker question to answer. When in that situation diversification is often wise. So diversification with a focus on investments that can survive very bad economic times for years is what I believe is wise.

    Related: Investing in Stocks That Have Raised Dividends Consistently – Adding More Banker and Politician Bailouts in Not the Answer –
    Failures in Regulating Financial Markets Leads to Predictable Consequences – Charlie Munger’s Thoughts on the Credit Crisis and Risk – The Misuse of Statistics and Mania in Financial Markets

  • Investment Options Are Much Less Comforting Than Normal These Days

    I think the current investing climate worldwide continues to be very uncertain. Historically I believe in the long term success of investing in successful businesses and real estate in economically vibrant areas. I think you can do fairly well investing in various sold long term businesses or mutual funds looking at things like dividend aristocrates or even the S&P 500. And investing in real estate in most areas, over the long term, is usually fine.

    When markets hit extremes it is better to get out, but it is very hard to know in advance when that is. So just staying pretty much fully invested (which to me includes a safety margin of cash and very safe investments as part of a portfolio).

    I really don’t know of a time more disconcerting than the last 5 years (other than during the great depression, World War II and right after World War II). Looking back it is easy to take the long term view and say post World War II was a great time for long term investors. I doubt it was so easy then (especially outside the USA).

    Even at times like the oil crisis (1973-74…, stagflation…, 1986 stock market crash) I can see being confident just investing in good businesses and good real estate would work out in the long term. I am much less certain now.

    I really don’t see a decent option to investing in good companies and real estate (I never really like bonds, though I understand they can have a role in a portfolio, and certainly don’t know). Normally I am perfectly comfortable with the long term soundness of such a plan and realizing there would be plenty of volatility along the way. The last few years I am much less comfortable and much more nervous (but I don’t see many decent options that don’t make me nervous).

    One of the many huge worries today is the extreme financial instruments; complex securities; complex and highly leveraged financial institution (that are also too big to fail); high leverage by companies (though many many companies are one of the more sound parts of the economy – Apple, Google, Toyota, Intel…), high debt for governments, high debt for consumers, inability for regulators to understand the risks they allow too big to fail institutions to take, the disregard for risking economic calamity by those in too big to fail institutions, climate change (huge insurance risks and many other problems), decades of health care crisis in the USA…

    A recent Bloomberg article examines differing analyst opinions on the Chinese banking system. It is just one of many things I find worrying. I am not certain the current state of Chinese banking is extremely dangerous to global economic investments but I am worried it may well be.

    China Credit-Bubble Call Pits Fitch’s Chu Against S&P

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