Unravelling value's decade-long underperformance (and imminent resurgence)

In a recent (generally excellent) podcast with Inside the Rope with David Clark (#78), John Hempton discussed (amongst other things) value's past decade of underperformance, and opined that the primary driver was the fact that the pace of technological change had accelerated, such that we have seen an unprecedented level of disruption to traditional business models. Value investors have apparently spent a decade naively riding doomed low-multiple companies like the Myers of this world into oblivion. 

Market inefficiency, liquidity flywheels, asset class arbitrage, and Hong Kong Land

Conventional economic theory holds that the marketplace in financial assets ought to be 'efficient'. Large numbers of intelligent and diligent investors have access to largely the same pool of information, and are highly motivated to root out and exploit any underpricings that exist. It is believed this competitive process will inevitably drive assets to their fair value - i.e. those that accurately reflect their risk and reward characteristics, and also price assets correctly relative to one another.

Coronavirus update: From an unknown unknown to a known unknown

On March 17th, I blogged some thoughts on the coronavirus outbreak; its significance; and how I was seeing the outlook. While we are still far from the end of this crisis, at this stage events appear to be playing out largely in line with the analysis and predictions outlined in that article, so I haven't felt much need to pen an update. My views were generally considered wildly optimistic at the time, but recent events suggest it was more a case of investor sentiment being unreasonably bearish than my views being unreasonably optimistic.

Coronapocalypse - some thoughts

Over the past few weeks, markets have witnessed a legitimate 'black swan' event with the emergence of the covid-19 pandemic, which has resulted in a catastrophic collapse in global equity markets of a speed and severity that has rivaled - if not exceeded - that seen during the GFC panic.

Dynamic vs. static analysis, and what the US shale and technology sectors have in common

Over the past decade, few industries have incinerated as much shareholder capital as the US shale oil and gas (O&G) sector. Attracted by the substantial technology-driven structural growth opportunity the sector promised, and its putatively low costs and attractive well-level IRRs much-touted by management, investors initially flocked to the sector, but have since been badly burned, as losses have mounted; debt levels skyrocketed; and share prices plummeted.

Afterpay Touch: a more expensive solution to an existing, solved problem

Afterpay Touch (APT AU) is a stock that has acquired a cult following in recent years. The shares have risen spectacularly, and catapulted the company's market capitalisation to an astonishing A$10bn - almost 40 times trailing revenues (there are no earnings - the company lost about A$40m last year on revenue of $260m).*

Facebook - the bear case

Facebook is currently a stock beloved by both growth and value investors alike. It is an esteemed member of the FANG club - an aristocrat of the modern digital era. Everyone seems to own it. I don't like it. I think the stock is much riskier than most investors appreciate - particularly at this point in the cycle. (I am a day late in publishing this article, as the stock is down 6% to US$210 post its 4Q19 results - albeit this is small fry compared to the aggregate potential downside; I tweeted the WSJ Casper article referenced below over the weekend, and in related comments referenced the risks to Facebook, and began writing this post on Sunday. Unfortunately I was too slow to complete it).

Learning the wrong lessons; style drift; and why smart value investors underperform

There are many things that separate the great value investors from the poor to mediocre, but aside from simply being better or worse at valuing companies (table stakes for a good value investor), one of the most important is that the former tend to reason from first principles - i.e. from things that are true by definition in the long term - and implement a disciplined and consistent process informed by those principles; whereas poor to mediocre value investors attempt to draw far too many 'lessons' about how to invest from recent market experience/outcomes. Quite often, the belated incorporation of these 'lessons' into investment decisions results in untimely 'style drift', with a shift towards strategies/sectors/stocks that have worked well in the recent past, rather than those that are most likely to work in the future. This untimely vacillation all but ensures long term underperformance.

Extrapolation; Technology One & SaaS; Affiliated Managers Group; margins of safety; and growth bubbles

Of the many causes of market inefficiency and investor misjudgement, there is perhaps no more important contributor than investors' tendency towards excessive extrapolation. This is borne - I believe - of investors' general overconfidence in their ability to predict the future (a theme I have discussed in many past blog entries).

Demystifying post-GFC economics; the problem with scarcity; interest rates; long political cycles; and the end of history

The post-GFC era has given rise to widespread investor confusion, as macroeconomic and market outcomes have deviated from the received economic wisdom about what 'ought' to have happened. Old hands have been particularly wrong footed, as their tried and true mental and financial models about how the world operates, which worked so well during 1980-2007, have failed them. Traditional monetary policy has stopped working, and many economies (e.g. Europe) have remained sluggish and unresponsive to very low, or even negative, interest rates. Low rates were supposed to stimulate investment and consumption, and yet both have remained weak. "Unprecedented" unconventional monetary stimulus (in quotation marks as very similar policies were tried - with similar results - in Japan during the 1990s) in the form of QE has been undertaken, but despite this vigorous 'money printing' which was expected by many to result in inflation, we have had disinflation bordering on deflation, with inflation stubbornly refusing to rise towards central bankers' 2% trend-rate goal.