Excellent advice.....First seen at
www.valuebuddies.com
Originally taken fromÂ
www.creditwritedowns.com/2011/04/confess...-of-an-investor.html
A solution to the problem
Here is what I would do in terms of applying his thinking into a modern day investment approach:
1. Do what you do best. Some investors are made for short-term trading. Others are much more suited for long-term investing (like me). Donât be shy to utilize whatever edge you may have. MPT (modern portfolio theory) suggests that markets are efficient. Nothing could be further from the truth. If you have spent your entire career in the medical device industry, the chances are that you understand this industry better than most. Use it when managing your own assets. Insider trading is illegal; utilizing a life time of experience is not.
2. Take advantage of mean reversion. Mean reversion is one of the most powerful mechanisms in the world of investments. At the highest of levels, wealth has a long term âequilibriumâ value of about 3.5 times GDP. As recently as 2007, wealth was well above the long term equilibrium value and signalled overvaluation in many asset classes. But be careful with the timing aspect of mean reversion. The fact that an asset class is over- or undervalued relative to its long term average tells you nothing in terms of when the trend will reverse. A good rule of thumb is to buy into asset classes when they are at least a couple of standard deviations below their mean value.
3. Be cognizant of herding. We are all guilty of keeping at least one eye on other investors, and we are certainly guilty of letting it influence our own investment decisions. This is how investment trends become investment bubbles and fortunes are wiped out. Herding is relatively easy to spot despite the fact that former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan argued otherwise â probably because it was a convenient argument at the time. But herding is also subject to the greater fool theory. You can make a lot of money investing in fundamentally unsound assets, as long as you can find a greater fool to whom you can sell it at a higher price. It works fine but only to a point.
4. Think outside-the-box. All those millions of baby boomers all over the western world who will retire in the next 10-15 years have been told by the MPT-trained financial advisers that they need to lighten up on equities and fill their portfolios with bonds, because they need the income to live on in old age. STOP! Who says that bonds canât be riskier investments than equities? When circumstances change, you should change your investment approach accordingly and not rely on historical norms. Given the state of fiscal affairs in Europe and North America, it does not seem unreasonable to suggest that circumstances have indeed changed.
5. Bring non-correlated asset classes into the frame. As alluded to in footnote 4, one should consider having a core allocation to non-correlated assets. Traditionally, many non-correlated asset classes have not met the liquidity terms required by the majority of investors (see below on liquid versus illiquid investments), but there are exceptions, the most obvious one being managed futures. The asset class proved its worth in 2008 with managed futures funds typically up in the range of 20-30% that year.
6. Take advantage of investor constraints and biases. The classic, but by no means only, example is the outsized impact a downgrade to below investment grade (i.e. a credit rating below BBB) may have on corporate bonds, as some institutional investors are not permitted to own high yield bonds and are thus forced to sell regardless of price when the downgrade takes place.
My favourite example right now is illiquid as opposed to liquid investments. I strongly believe that less liquid investments will outperform more liquid ones over the next few years for the simple reason that the less liquid ones are struggling to catch the attention of investors who, still smarting from the deep wounds inflicted in 2008-09, stay clear of anything that is not instantly liquid. This has had the effect of pushing the illiquidity premium (i.e. the extra return you can expect to earn by investing in an illiquid as opposed to a liquid instrument) to levels we havenât seen for years.
At Absolute Return Partners we believe it is possible to earn attractive returns on investments which are not particularly sensitive to the ups and downs of the economic cycle provided you are prepared to commit to a 4-5 year investment period (which, by the way, does not imply that other risk factors do not apply). As these types of investments require a certain level of sophistication from participating investors, I cannot write about them in this letter; however, if you feel that such investments may be appropriate for you, feel free to call or email me for further information.
Niels C. Jensen
