In Search of a Steady State: Inflation, Interest Rates and Value

The nature of markets is that they are never quite settled, as investors recalibrate expectations constantly and reset prices. In most time periods, those recalibrations and resets tend to be small and in both directions, resulting in the ups and downs that pass for normal volatility. Clearly, we are not in one of those time periods, as markets approach bipolar territory, with big moves up and down. The good news is that the culprit behind the volatility  is easy to identify, and it is inflation, but the bad news is that inflation remains the most unpredictable of all macroeconomic factors to factor into stock prices and value. In this post, I will look at where we stand on inflation expectations, and the different paths we can end up on, ranging from potentially catastrophic to mostly benign.

Inflation: The Full Story

    I wrote my first post on this blog in 2008, and inflation merited barely a mention until 2020, though it is an integral component of investing and valuation. Since 2020, though, inflation has become a key story line in almost every post that I write about the overall market, and I have had multiple posts just on the topic. To see why inflation has become so newsworthy, take a look at the chart below, where I graph inflation from 1950 to 2022, in the United States:

Download data

While I report multiple measures of inflation, from the consumer price index (adjusted and unadjusted) to the producer price index, to the price deflator used in the GDP, they all tell the same story. We have had a long stretch of low and stable inflation, and that is especially true since the 2008 crisis. In fact, the average inflation rate in the 2011-20 decade was the lowest of the seven decades that I cover in this chart. Just as important, though, is the fact that variation in inflation, from year to year, was lower in 2011-2020 in every other decade, other than 1991-2000. It reinforces a point I made in my inflation post last year, where I argued that to understand inflation's impact on asset values, you have to break it down into its expected and unexpected components, with the former showing up in the expected returns you demand on investments, and the latter playing out as a risk factor.

Investors who are old enough to remember the 1970s point to it as a decade of high inflation, but that is only with the benefit of hindsight. At the start of that decade, investors had no reason to believe that they were heading into a decade of higher inflation, and initial signs of price increases were attributed to temporary factors (with OPEC being a convenient target). In fact, expected inflation lagged actual inflation through much of the decade, and the damage done to financial asset returns that decade came as much from actual inflation being higher than expected inflation, period after period, as from higher inflation.

It is precisely because we have been spoiled by a decade of low and stable inflation that the inflation numbers in 2021 and 2022 came as such a surprise to economists, investors and even the Fed. Early on, the inflation surge was explained away by the reopening of the economy, after the COVID shutdown, and then by stressed supply chains, and expectations about future inflation stayed low. However, as reported inflation has remained stubbornly high, and neither COVID nor supply chains provided sufficient rationale, market expectations of inflation have started to go up. I capture this shift using two measures of expected inflation, the first coming from the University of Michigan's surveys of consumer expectations of inflation for the future and the latter from the US Treasury market, as the difference between the ten-year treasury bond and the ten-year inflation-protected treasury bond (TIPs) rates:

Consumer expectations of inflation reached 5.40% in March 2022, hitting levels not seen since the early 1980s. While the market-implied expected inflation rate has also climbed to a ten-year high of 2.85%, it is clearly lower than the consumer survey expectation. There are three possible explanations for the divergence:

1. Short term versus Long term: The consumer survey extracts an expectation of inflation in the near term, whereas the treasury markets are providing a longer term perspective, since I am using ten-year rates to derive the market-implied inflation.
2. Consumers are over adjusting: The big inflation surges have happened in gasoline, food and housing, all items that consumers use on a continuous basis, and it is possible that they are over reacting and adjusting expected inflation up too much, as a consequence.
3. Markets are under adjusting: Alternatively, it is possible that it is consumers who are being realistic, and it is that the bond markets which are under adjusting to higher inflation, partly because many investors have operated only in a low and steady inflation environment, and partly because some of these investors have a belief that the Fed has super powers when it comes to setting interest rates and determining inflation.

I have always argued that the notion of the Fed as this all-powerful entity that sets rates, determines economic growth and keeps inflation in check is a myth, and a very dangerous one at that, since it gives license to policy makers and investors to behave rashly, expecting a safety net to protect them from their mistakes. 

Economic Consequences

    As inflation, actual and expected, has made a return, it is not surprising that the ripple effects are being felt across the economy, with the ripples sometimes resembling tidal waves. The most direct effects have been on interest rates, where we have seen rates rise quickly, and to levels not seen in years. In the chart below, I look at how the treasury curve has shifted in the recent periods:

To provide a sense of how much rates have changed just in 2022, compare the yield curve on January 1, 2022 to the one on May 5, 2022. On January 1, 2022, the yields on the very short end of the maturity spectrum (1-6 month treasuries) were close to zero, the ten-year treasury bond rate was 1.51% and the long end of the yield curve had an upward slope. On May 5, 2022, the treasury yields for the short end had risen, with the 1-month rate reach 0.50%, the ten-year treasury bond rate had breached 3% and the term structure had leveled out for the long end of the spectrum (with the 2-year yield moving towards the 10-year yield, which in turn was close to the 20-year and 30-year yields). Of course, the "Fed did it" crowd will argue that this is all Jerome Powell's doing, an indication of how little they understand about both what rates the Fed does control (the Fed Funds rate is at the very shortest end of the spectrum, and it is not a trading rate) and how willing they are to ignore the data. If you were to graph out when the Fed woke up from its inflation-denial and when treasury rates started rising, it seems clear that it was the treasury market that is causing the Fed to act, rather than the other way around.

    As treasury rates have risen, markets also seem to have been more wary about risk, and how it is being priced. In the chart below, I start with the default spreads in the corporate bond market and you can see the increase in spreads that have occurred just over the course of 2022:

Default spreads have risen across every ratings class, but more so for lowly-rated bonds than for bonds with higher ratings. Here again, there are some who would attribute this to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, but that would miss the fact that bulk of the surge in spreads happened before February 23, 2022, when the conflict started. In the equity market, I capture the price of risk with a forward-looking estimate of expected returns on stocks, computed from the level of stock prices and expected future cash flows, and I graph both the expected return and the implied equity risk premium (from netting out the risk free rate) in the graph below:

Implied ERP spreadsheet

In equity markets, the shift in expected returns has been significant, perhaps even dramatic, as the expected return on stocks, which started 2022 at 5.75%, has moved above 8% for the first time since May 2019, with some of that shift coming from a higher treasury bond rate (1.51% to 2.89%) and some of it coming from a higher equity risk premium (4.24% to 5.14%).

    As the inflation bogeyman returns, the worries of what may need to happen to the economy to bring inflation back under control have also mounted. Almost every economic forecasting service has increased its assessed probability for a recession, with variations on depth and length. In a note published in mid-April, Larry Summers and Alex Domash go as far as to put the likelihood of a recession at 100%, based upon a joint indicator, i.e., that a combination of inflation > 5% and unemployment<4% has always led to a recession within 12 to 24 months, using quarterly data from the 1950s to today. While I remain a skeptic about historic rules of thumb (downward sloping yield curve, for example) to make predictive statements about future economic growth, I think that we can state categorically that there is a greater chance of an economic slowdown now than just a few weeks ago.

Investment Consequences

    As the storm clouds of higher inflation and interest rates, in conjunction with slower or even negative economic growth, gather, it should come as no surprise that equity markets are struggling to find their footing. At the close of trading on May 5, 2022, the S&P 500 stood at 4147, down 13.3% from the start of the year value, accompanied by increased volatility. To the question of whether to sell, hold on or buy in the face of weakness, the answer will depend on your macro assessments of the following:

1. Steady State Interest Rate: As noted in the last section, the ten-year bond rate has doubled this year, an uncommonly large move for US treasuries, and there are three possibilities for the future. The first is that the bulk of the move in rates is behind us, and that treasury rates now reflect updated expectations of inflation. The second is that, like the 1970s, we will play catch up with inflation, and that rates will continue to move up, until expectations on inflation become more realistic. The third is that inflation is either transient, and will revert back to the lows we saw last decade, or that the economy will go into a recession and act as a natural break on inflation and interest rates. Note that in all three cases, it is not the Fed that is driving rates, but what is happening to inflation.
2. Equity Risk Premium Path: The equity risk premium of 5.24%, estimated at the start of May 2022, is at the high end of historical equity risk premiums, but we have seen higher premiums, either in crises (end of 2008, first quarter of 2020) or when inflation has been high (the late 1970s). I think that what happens to equity risk premiums for the rest of the year will largely depend on inflation numbers, with high and volatile inflation continuing to push up the premium, and steadying and dropping inflation having the opposite effect.
3. Earnings Estimates: The strength of the economy has been a big contributor to boosting actual and expected earnings on companies in the last two years, and these higher earnings have translated into more cash returned in dividends and buybacks. The earnings estimates for the S&P 500 companies from analysts, at the start of May 2022, reflect that strength and there seems to have been no adjustment downwards for a recession possibility. That may either reflect the fact that equity analysts are not among those who expect a recession (or expect only a very mild one, with little impact on earnings) or the possibility that there may be a lag in the process between the economy weakening and analysts adjusting expected earnings.

To see how these three forces play out, consider what I would term the status quo scenario, where you assume that today's treasury bond rate (3%) is the steady state, that earnings estimates will largely be delivered and that the equity risk premium will stabilize around current levels:

Download spreadsheet

The intrinsic value that you get for the index (4181) is almost spot on to the actual value, and that should not come as a surprise, since it reflects the consensus view on rates, earnings and risk premiums. However, there are wide divergences from the consensus on all three inputs and in the table below, I estimate the index values under these divergent viewpoints:

As you can see, the range of values is immense and they include scenarios ranging from the upbeat to the catastrophic. At one end of the spectrum, in the most benign scenario, which I will title Much Ado about Nothing, inflation turns out to be transient, fears of economic collapse are overstated and the equity risk premium reverts back towards historic norms, and the market looks under valued, perhaps even significantly so. At the other end, in perhaps the most malignant scenario, titled The Seventies Show, inflation continues to rise, even as the economy goes into recession and risk premiums spike, leading to a further correction of close to 50% in the market. In the middle, the Volcker rerun, Jerome Powell discovers his inner central banking self, cracks down on inflation and wins, but does so by pushing the company into a deep recession, making himself extremely unpopular with politicians up for election and the unemployed. There is a fourth possibility, where you Live and let live (with inflation), where we (as investors and consumers) accept a higher inflation world, with its costs and consequences, as the price to pay to keep the economy going. 

   One of the costs that come with the last scenario is that inflation eats away at trust in not just currencies, but in all financial assets, and that investors will turn away from stocks and bonds. In the 1970s, the asset classes that benefited the most from this flight were gold and real estate, and the question is which asset classes will best play this role now, if inflation is here to stay. I do think that securitizing real estate has made it behave more like financial assets, and removed some of its power to hedge against inflation, but there may be segments (such as rental properties, where rent can be raised to match inflation) that retain their inflation fighting magic. Gold's history as a collectible gives it staying power, but the truth is that it is not big enough or productive enough as an investment class for us to all hold it. That, of course, brings us to cryptos, NFTs and other, more recent, entrants into the investment choice list. In theory, you could make the argument that these new investment choices will operate like gold, but you have two serious barriers to overcome. The first is that they have not been around for long, and that history is full of collectibles, from tulip bulbs to Beanie Babies to Pokemon cards,  that people paid high prices for, but failed to hold their value. The second is that in the limited history that we have for cryptos and NFTs, they have behaved less like collectibles (holding or increasing in value, as stocks and bonds collapse) and more like very risky equities, going up when stocks go up, and dropping when stocks go down. In fact, higher and sustained inflation may be the acid test of whether there is any substance to the bitcoin as millennial gold story, and the results will make or break those holding cryptos for the financial apocalypse that they see coming.

In Conclusion

The inflation genie is out of the bottle, and if history is any guide, getting it back in is going to take time and create significant pain. It is the lesson that the US learned in the 1970s, and that other countries have learned or chosen to not learn from their own encounters with inflation. It is the reason that when inflation made itself visible in the early part of 2021, I argued that the Fed should take it seriously, and respond quickly, even if there existed the possibility that it was transient. Needless to say, the Fed and the administration chose a different path, one that can be described as whistling past the graveyard, not just ignoring the danger with happy talk, but also actively taking decisions that only exacerbated the danger. Needless to say, they now find themselves between a rock (more inflation) and a hard place (a recession), and while you may be tempted to say "I told you so", the truth is that we will all feel the pain. 

YouTube Video

Spreadsheets

1. Value of the S&P 500 on May 5, 2022

Data

1. Inflation: Historical Data for US

A Viral Market Meltdown III: Pricing or Value? Trading or Investing?

This is the third, and I hope the last, of my viral market updates, reflecting how much change a week can deliver, and last week delivered more change than most investors could handle. Not only did we see two of the worst market days in history, in absolute terms, we also saw the worst single day in US market history since October 19, 1987, in percentage terms. In fact, the price change this week has been so dramatic that it makes the tables that I provided last week on market damage, across sectors and regions,  seem dated. In this post, I will update those tables, but I want to focus on a much larger question of how investors should craft a response to the market meltdown, and how that response cannot be one-size-fits-all.

Price versus Value

I have long drawn a distinction between price and value, two terms that get used interchangeably in both academia and practice, but with very different drivers and implications. As we watch stock indices around the world gain and lose trillions each day, it is worth remembering that markets are pricing mechanisms, not value mechanisms, or as Ben Graham would put it, they are voting machines, not weighting machines, at least in the short term.

The Drivers

To draw the contrast between price and value, I will use a picture that I have used many times before, where I outline the drivers of value and contrast them with the determinants of price:

Note that the drivers of value are cash flows, growth and risk, familiar ingredients in both intrinsic value and fundamental analysis. The determinants of price are both less complicated and more powerful, demand and supply, and all of the forces that drive them. While rational investors may use only fundamentals in setting demand and supply, we know, both from research and experience, that fundamentals are drowned out in markets, by mood and momentum. Markets have always been pricing games, with the degree of weight put on fundamentals ebbing and flowing over time, with less weight assigned in good times, and more after market corrections. During periods like the last three weeks, the market is all pricing all the time, with fundamentals not even on the radar. That does not make markets wrong, but it does make them difficult to decipher and tricky to navigate.

The Differences

If you accept the distinction between price and value that I have drawn, it can be used to draw out why price and value diverge, and frame investment philosophies around those divergences.

1. Price has no upper or lower bound. Value does.

Since price is determined by demand and supply, and there is nothing that constrains those buying and selling in markets, at least in the near term, it follows that there is no upper or lower bound to prices. In short, the prices of stocks can move towards infinity or towards zero, depending on where mood and momentum take them. Value on the other hand has both upper and lower bounds, with both bounds being set by expected cash flows, growth and risk. The upper bound is set by those who are more optimistic about a stock and what they forecast the fundamentals to be (high cash flows, high growth and low risk) and the lower bound by those who are most pessimistic about that same stock, in terms of future expectations or liquidation value. It is true that reasonable investors can disagree about where these bounds lie, but they should not disagree about the existence of these bounds. It is possible, for some stocks, especially early in the life cycle and with substantial uncertainty about the future, for the lower bound on value to be zero, but stocks collectively cannot have that lower bound. For equities collectively to be worth nothing, you would require an apocalyptic scenario, one in which there is little point thinking about investments anyway.

2. Price is reactive, Value is proactive!

Information is the lubricant for market movements, but information works differently in the pricing and value processes, on two dimensions:

1. Incremental Information versus Fundamental Information: If pricing is driven by mood and momentum, those forces can take information that, at least at first sight, seems insignificant, from a value perspective, and cause price changes that are disproportional. Thus, when the mood is upbeat, small pieces of good news can result in big jumps in stock prices, but if that mood turns sour, small pieces of bad news can cause large drops in stock prices. To illustrate, the 10% plus drop in US stocks on Thursday (3/12) was supposedly caused by the Trump Administration's decision to bar flights from Europe for thirty days, and the almost equivalent jump the next day (3/13) by its decision to declare an emergency. 
2. Reactive versus Proactive: Since pricing is determined entirely be demand and supply, and there is no value center to it, it is, by its very nature, reactive. Put simply, traders react to the incremental information to adjust the price, and put little thought into whether the starting price itself has a basis to it. Thus, a starting price that is too high (low) will only get higher (lower), if the incremental news that comes out is good (bad). On the other hand, value is driven by expectations of cash flows, growth and risk, and incremental information has to be used to reassess those expectations, a more difficult task, but one that forces you to separate the wheat from the chaff. 

In periods of pricing tumult, like the last three weeks, it is both futile and perhaps counter productive to try to explain big pricing moves, especially on a day-to-day basis, with the language and tools of value. If I could make a suggestion to the financial news channels now, here is what it would be. Remove all the talking heads (including me) from the screen, and just show the stock indices in real time. This is a market that needs no commentary!

3. Equity prices may never converge on value (at least in your lifetime or mine).

Old time value investors live by the adage that prices can go up and down, with little relationship to value, but that they eventually converge on value. That sounds reasonable until you consider what "eventually" means, at least in the context of equity in a publicly traded company. Absent a catalyst causing the convergence, it is true that price will not only diverge from value in the short term, but it could do so for very long time periods. Put simply, assuming that you will be rewarded for being right on value can be a pipe dream, and Keynes was correct when he said that the "market can stay irrational longer than you and I can stay solvent".  So what is it that keeps investors toiling at the fundamentals, hoping to get rewarded? The answer is faith, faith that they can estimate value and faith that the price will adjust to value. It is faith because I can offer you no proof for either proposition, and it is faith, because its strength will be tested by markets like this one.

An Investing Game Plan

If you are wondering what all of this discussion of price and value has to do with how you should react to the market drop, I will argue that your response has to be tailored to (a) whether you have faith in investing (b) how much liquidity you have or need and (c) where you see yourself as having the biggest edge over the rest of the market.

Do you have faith?

In the abstract, most market participants describe themselves as long term, patient and believers in value. Books about Warren Buffett outnumber those sold about any other market player, by ten to one, but I think one of his pithier sayings comes to mind, when evaluating whether people mean what they say about being long term value investors. Buffett once said that it is only when the tide goes out that you can tell who’s been swimming naked, and it is only when the market goes into crisis mode that you can tell the investors from the traders. So, if you came into the February 2020, describing yourself as a believer in value, do you still believe? If yes, what have you done or not done during the last three weeks that is consistent with that faith?  My faith in value and price adjusting to value is strong, but it is not absolute. I have found myself questioning my own beliefs at times during these weeks, just I did in 2008, and I believe that is not only natural, but healthy. My faith still holds, but I have a feeling that there are more tests to come.

Are you selling or buying liquidity?

There is no stronger resource to have during a crisis than a cash cushion, since investors seek out liquidity and are willing to pay handsomely for it. That said, whether you can buy or sell liquidity may not be in your control and is affected by outside forces:

• Income Predictability: If you are feeling a little less secure about your income prospects after the last three weeks, you are not alone, and while this will pass, it does affect how much cash you need to conserve, just in case.
• Cash Needs: Virus or no virus, house payments have to be made, credit card bills paid and unexpected costs covered, and a shakier economy make all of these obligations more onerous.
• Personal make up: I believe that the key to picking an investment philosophy that is right for you is to make sure that you can pass the sleep test, with it. Put simply, if you lie awake at night thinking about your portfolio, you’ve failed the test. If you are naturally impatient, your time horizon is shortened, and no lecture on the importance of long term investing or data backing up that it works, can change that.

If you add mortality to this list, and the fact that if you manage other people's money (in a mutual or hedge fund), it is their time horizon that may matter, not yours, it is easy to see why what is perceived as liquidity in good times very quickly dissipates in bad one. If you are sitting on a cash cushion, you are already in a much better spot than those who do not have that luxury, but there are two uses that you can put the cash to, one passive and other active. The passive response would be to hold on to the cash, preserve your sanity and pass the sleep test, as markets stay volatile. The active response is to use the cash to take positions, though what you will invest in will depend on whether you believe in value or price, and within each of these, where you think that market is mistaken. If you are in the less enviable position of needing cash quickly, either to meet a liquidity crunch or to stop failing the sleep test, you should sell some of your holdings, though what you sell will reflect again your beliefs about market mistakes.

What is your edge?

To succeed as an active market player, you have to bring something to the table, and recognizing the edge that you bring is key to success, and that is true whether you are an investor (who believes in value) or a trader (who plays the pricing game).

• As an investor, your skills may lie in assessing the entire market, sectors or individual stocks, and this crisis has brought those all into sharper focus. 
• As a trader, you can be good at riding momentum or detecting shifts in it and making money from reversals, and the opportunities for both have expanded, as market volatility has expanded.

In either case, you will get an opportunity in the coming weeks to plot your own path through this crisis, and as I mentioned at the start of this post, it will not be one size fits all. 

Choosing your Game Plan

In the picture below, I have outlined how your faith or its absence, liquidity or lack thereof and your perceived edge will all come into play in determining what is your best path of action.

I have never believed in offering investing frameworks, without being open about the choices that I am making, not because they are the “right” ones, but because they are the ones that work for me. I believe in value, and I am lucky enough to have liquidity. I believe that I can bring more to the table, when valuing individual stocks, than I can, in assessing sectors or markets. 

What now?

I know that this post has meandered and I am sorry, but in this last section, I will come back to the numbers, by first updating my valuation of the S&P 500 and then moving on to both update the tables on market damage from March 6 to reflect the last week's market action. 

Valuing the Index

While some of you will view this as a futile exercise, I revisited my S&P 500 valuation spreadsheet that I created two weeks ago, and updated it, to reflect an expectation that the earnings damage this year is likely to be larger than I initially estimated. Rather than provide a single value estimate for the S&P 500, I have run a Monte Carlo simulation around the four key inputs: earnings drop this year, the percentage that will be recouped by 2025, the percent that will be returned as cash flows and the equity risk premium:

Download spreadsheet & Simulation results

Note that on the earnings drop and subsequent recovery, I have used distributions with more downside surprises than upside, reflecting my belief that there is a chance of significantly greater damage than expected, albeit with small probabilities. The median value of 2750 is marginally higher than 2011, the level of the index on Friday, March 13, but this is not an investment for the faint of heart. 

Valuing Individual Stocks/Sectors

I have held back on individual stock valuations for the last two weeks, but I will start looking, and to help decide where to start, I created this very simple structure for thinking about what companies are most affected and least affected by the virus:

Using this framework, firms that sell non-discretionary products, are non-travel related, have low leverage (operating and financial) and are cash flow positive should be least affected by the virus, and discretionary product/service or travel-related companies with high fixed costs and debt, should be most affected. In the table below, I have updated both my sector and industry tables that I had posted last week, to reflect the additional damage from last week:

Download spreadsheet

The ten industry groups that were affected most and least by the market turmoil are below:

Download spreadsheet

Updating the regional tables to include the last week’s data:

Download spreadsheet

I also rechecked the momentum and PE tables, and while every decile of each lost money last week, there was no discernible pattern in either. Finally, I broke firms down by debt ratio (as percent of total market value of the firm), to see if firms with more debt were being punished by the market more than less indebted firms, and see only a mild relationship. You can download all of this data by clicking on this link. Collectively, global equity markets have lost a staggering $18.65 trillion in market capitalization, with US stocks accounting for $7.6 trillion in those losses. Note that the market damage lines up well with our priors, which is what makes investing tricky. In fact, there are two perspectives that you can bring to surveying these stocks, leading to contradictory strategies.

• If you believe that markets have over reacted, your best chance at finding value might be to look in the rubble, the worst affected regions, sectors and companies
• If you think that markets have not fully incorporated the economic damage from the virus, you should look at the regions, sectors and companies that are more protected.

The first two stocks on my radar for in-depth intrinsic valuation are Zoom, one of the few stocks that has benefited from this crisis, and Boeing, a stock that has lost more than half of its market capitalization, as its high-leverage, travel-focused business is put to the test by this virus. Implicit in both these valuations will be my own views on the macro and timing effects of this virus, but that is something that I cannot avoid taking a point of view on. Stay tuned!

YouTube Video


Spreadsheets/Data

1. Spreadsheet to value S&P 500, March 13, 2020
2. Simulation Results for S&P 500 (Run using Crystal Ball)
3. Market Capitalization Changes, February 14- March 13, 2020

Viral Market Update Posts

1. A Viral Market Meltdown: Fear or Fundamentals?
2. A Viral Market Meltdown II: Pricing or Valuing? Investing or Trading?
3. A Viral Market Meltdown III: Clues in the Market Debris
4. A Viral Market Meltdown IV: Investing for a post-virus Economy
5. A Viral Market Meltdown V: Back to Basics
6. A Viral Market Meltdown VI: The Price of Risk
7. A Viral Market Update VII: Market Multiples
8. A Viral Market Update VIII: Value vs Growth, Active vs Passive, Small Cap vs Large!
9. A Viral Market Update IX: A Do-it-Yourself S&P 500 Valuation
10. A Viral Market Update X: A Corporate Life Cycle Perspective
11. A Viral Market Update XI: The Flexibility Premium
12. A Viral Market Update XII: The Resilience of Private Risk Capital
13. A Viral Market Update XIII: The Strong (FANGAM) get Stronger!

A Viral Market Meltdown: Fear or Fundamentals?

It has become almost a rite of passage for investors, at least since 2008, that they will be tested by a market crisis precipitated sometimes by political developments (Brexit), sometimes by governments (trade wars), sometimes by war and terrorism (the US/Iran standoff) and sometimes by economics (Greek default). With each one, the question that you face about whether this is the “big one”, a market meltdown that you have to respond to by selling everything and fleeing for safety (or the closest thing you can find to it) or just another bump in the road, where markets claw back what they gave up, and then gain more. After yesterday’s global meltdown in equity markets, I think it is safe to say that we are back in crisis mode, with old questions returning about the global economic strength and market valuations. I have neither the stomach nor the expertise to play market guru, but I will go through my playbook for coping.

Start at the source
This crisis has an uncommon source, insofar as it is one of the few that is not man-made (at least based upon what we know now) and is thus more difficult to predict, in terms of how it will play out. As a novice in infectious diseases, here is what I know at the moment:

1. The virus (COVID-19) had its origins in China, though what caused it to spread into the human population is still unclear and rife with conspiracy theories. In an attempt to keep the populace from panicking and to give the impress of being in control, the Chinese government initially went into crisis mode, trying to control the information that is being made public and that has created both confusion and skepticism about official claims.
2. Within China, the virus has had its biggest impact in the Wuhan province, but it has affected other parts, though there is still not clear by how much or how many. The count, which is obviously a moving target, is that there are more than 80,000 cases of the virus, with more than 2700 fatalities so far. The latest reports from China is that new infections are falling, and if true, this would suggest that the spread is being controlled. 
3. The most immediate spread has been to the neighboring Asian countries, with Singapore being an early casualty and South Korea a recent-add on. It has jumped borders and is showing up in more distant parts of the world, mostly in occasional cases. Over the weekend, though, the Italian government set alarm bells ringing with an announcement of a large cluster of cases in the country, which suggests that earlier assessments that the virus was not easily communicable may need to be rethought, and it was this news that seems to have precipitated this week’s sell off. On February 25, the CDC warned Americans that the disease could make significant inroads in the United States and suggested that states prepare cautionary measures.
4. There is no cure or vaccine yet for the virus, but the mortality rate from the virus seems to vary across the population, with the very young and the very old being the most likely to die from it, and across geographies, with more deaths in Asia than in Europe or the United States. The overall mortality rate is low ( about 3%), but it is higher for people who are hospitalized with complications. 

In short, there is a lot more that we do not know about COVID-19, than we do, at least at the moment. While it has not been labeled a pandemic yet, it seems to have the potential to become one, and we do not yet have a clear idea of how quickly it will spread, how many people will be affected and what will push it into dormancy. It is also clear that much of this uncertainty will get resolved by real-time developments, not by collecting data or by listening to experts to tell us what will happen.

Get perspective
There is no denying that the last week has been a rocky one for investors, and a 1800-point drop for the Dow over two days (February 24 &25) is bound to add to the sense of foreboding. Since the first casualty of a crisis is perspective, it may be worth stepping back and looking at the market through wider lens. After the drop yesterday (February 24), the S&P 500 was at 3225.89, slightly above where it started this month (February 2020) at. In short, investors in the index were back where they were 18 trading days ago. Bringing in February 25 into the picture does put you below that level, but it still way above what it was a year ago:

In fact, extending the comparison to longer time periods only makes the hand wringing over the last week’s losses look even more absurd. This is both good and bad news. The good news is that, if you are a diversified investor, your portfolio should not look dramatically different from what it looked like at the start of the year and much, much healthier than it looked a year ago, five years ago or ten years ago. The bad news is that the big run-up in stocks over the last decade has left you exposed to more and bigger losses to come. The bottom line is that your concern should not be about the damage to your portfolio from the last week’s developments, but the damage that is yet to come.

Have a framework

With perspective in place, I am now in a position to look to the future, since that should govern how we react to last week’s developments. Given my investment philosophy of trusting fundamentals and value, I have to go back to my basic framework for valuation, which is to tie the value of an investment to its cashflows, growth and risk. When valuing the overall market, here is what it looks like:

With my value framework, the effects of the Corona Virus will play out in my forward-looking numbers in the following inputs:

1. Earnings Growth: Even at this early stage in this crisis, it is clear that the virus is having an effect on corporate operations. With some companies like hotels and airlines, the effect that the virus has had on global travel has clearly had an effect on revenues and operations, and it should come as no surprise that United Airlines announced, after close of trading on February 24, 2020, that it was withdrawing its guidance for revenues this year, as it was waiting for more information. With others, it is concern about supply chain disruptions, especially with Chinese facilities, and how this will affect operations in the rest of the world. The follow up question then becomes one of specifics:

• Drop in 2020 Earnings: This is the number that will reflect how you see Corona Virus affect the collective earnings on stocks in 2020. This will include not only earnings declines caused by lower revenues growth at companies like United Airlines, but also the earnings decline caused by higher costs faced by companies due to virus related problems (supply chain breakdowns). The wider the swath of companies that are affected, the bigger will be the earnings effect. As to how big this effect will be on overall earnings, we can only guess, given where we are in this process. To provide some perspective, the 2008 banking crisis caused an earnings implosion, with earnings dropping almost 40% in 2008, from 2007, but the World Trade Center attacks in September 2001 barely made an impact on overall S&P 500 earnings in the last quarter of 2001.
• Drop in long term Earnings: In previous crises, where consumers and workers stayed home, either for health reasons or because of fear, the business that was lost as a result of the peril was made up for, when it passed. If consumption is just deferred or delayed, the growth in subsequent quarters will be higher, to compensate for the lost business in the crisis quarter. If consumption is lost, the drop in earnings in the crisis quarter will never be made up. 

To illustrate the point, I look at how three different perspectives on growth will play out in growth rates, based upon how much of the drop in earnings this year is recovered over the following years:

Note that the first series is the unadjusted earnings, prior to the corona virus scare and that in all three of the scenarios, there is a drop in earnings of 5% in 2020, putting earnings well below expected values for 2020, but the difference arises in how earnings recover after that. If none of the drop in earnings in 2020 is recouped in the following years, the earnings in 2025 is 179.22, well below the pre-virus estimate of 199.28. If only half of the earnings drop is recouped, the earnings in 2025 is 189.41 and if all of the earnings drop is recouped, the earnings in 2025, even with the virus effect, matches up to the original estimates.

2. Cash Returned: In 2019, US companies returned 92.33% of earnings as cash to stockholders, with a big chunk (about 60%) coming from buybacks. That high number reflects not only the cash that many US companies had on hand, but a confidence that they could maintain earnings and continue to pay out cash flows. To the extent that this confidence is shaken by the virus, you may see a pull back in this number to perhaps something closer to the 85.24% that is the average for the last decade.

3. Risk and Discount Rates: Finally, the required return on stocks will be impacted, with one of the effects being explicit and visible in markets, in the form of the US treasury bond rate and the other being implicit, taking the form of an equity risk premium. If investors become more risk averse, they will demand a higher ERP, though as the fear factor fades, this number will fall back as well, but perhaps not to what it was prior to the crisis. The fact that the equity risk premium is already at the higher end of the historical norms, at about 5.50% on February 25, 2020, does indicate limits, but there could be a short-term jump in the number, at least until there is less uncertainty.

Using this framework on the S&P 500, you can see how each of these variables play out in value.

Download spreadsheet

I am not an expert on infectious diseases, and the health and economic impacts of this virus are likely to play out as developments in real time, requiring that I revisit this framework frequently. Based upon my estimates of how this virus will affect the numbers, the value that I get for the index is 3003, about 4.14% less than the index level of 3128.21 at the close of trading on February 25, 2020, which, in turn, represents a significant drop from the level of the index a week ago. To the question of whether a virus can cause this much damage to the markets, the answer is yes, though whether it is an overreaction or not will depend on how it plays out in the numbers. For the moment, though, if you are tempted to buy on what looks like a dip, I would suggest caution just as I would argue for slowing down to someone who wants to do the opposite and sell. As you look at my assumptions about how the virus will play out in earnings (both short term and long term), cash flows and risk premiums, some of you may disagree (and perhaps even strongly) and you can use this spreadsheet to arrive at your own valuation of the index, and use it to drive your actions. 

To thine own self, be true...

It is entirely possible that I am underestimating the impact of this virus on economic growth and earnings and that I should be panicking more, but it is also plausible that I am over adjusting my numbers too much. The bottom line with my calculations is that I am inclined to do very little, at the moment. I don’t feel the urge to buy the market, because there is a plausible case to be made that the adjustment in value, steep and sudden, was merited. I feel little need to sell either, because I don’t see an over valuation large enough to trigger action. As for whether I should be reducing my exposure to companies that are directly affected by the virus (hotels and airlines) and increasing my exposure to companies that are more insulated, I don’t believe there will be any segment of the market that is fully protected from the consequences, no matter how far you get from China and from travel-oriented companies. In fact, if there is a segment of the market where you are likely to see over reaction, it is likely to be in airline, travel and energy stocks, precisely because they are in the center of the storm. Do I now wish that I had bought Zoom before this crisis reached full blown status? Yes, but I am not sure buying it now will do much for me. I am loath to offer advice, but my only suggestion is that rather than listen to the experts on either side of this debate tell you what to do, you should make your own best judgments, recognizing that they can and will change as more facts emerge, and act accordingly.

YouTube Video


Spreadsheets

1. Spreadsheet to value Corona Virus Effects on S&P 500 (February 25, 2020)

Viral Market Update Posts

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2. A Viral Market Meltdown II: Pricing or Valuing? Investing or Trading?
3. A Viral Market Meltdown III: Clues in the Market Debris
4. A Viral Market Meltdown IV: Investing for a post-virus Economy
5. A Viral Market Meltdown V: Back to Basics
6. A Viral Market Meltdown VI: The Price of Risk
7. A Viral Market Update VII: Market Multiples
8. A Viral Market Update VIII: Value vs Growth, Active vs Passive, Small Cap vs Large!
9. A Viral Market Update IX: A Do-it-Yourself S&P 500 Valuation
10. A Viral Market Update X: A Corporate Life Cycle Perspective
11. A Viral Market Update XI: The Flexibility Premium
12. A Viral Market Update XII: The Resilience of Private Risk Capital
13. A Viral Market Update XIII: The Strong (FANGAM) get Stronger!