The recent upturn in house prices from April to July (3.6%) is the sharpest change in direction professor Robert Shiller has ever seen.
It could signal a v-shaped recovery in house prices. Or it could be the "mother of all head fakes," as investor Whitney Tilson has described it.
Robert Shiller’s recent survey of attitudes about house prices suggests it’s probably the latter. The survey also suggests that Americans are still delusional about the long-term trajectory for house prices.
In the survey, Shiller and his partner Karl Case ask Americans what they think home prices will do over the short and long term.
The expectation for long-term price changes hasn’t changed much since before the bubble (it’s now down to 11% a year appreciation). This outlook is more reasonable now than it was at the peak of the bubble, but it’s still extraordinarily optimistic. This suggests that Americans still regard the last couple of years as a freak anomaly--even though house prices are just now hitting the range of "normal" on key price ratios like price-to-rent and price-to-income (see charts below).
The outlook for short-term changes (one year), meanwhile, has changed a lot in the past year. Specifically, it has gone from negative a year ago to 2% this summer. Thus, Americans are expecting a near-term housing recovery--in part, perhaps, because of the recovery from April to July.
Shiller thinks this change suggests that buyers are now trying to time the housing market by getting in at the bottom. This could be contributing to the surge in prices we’ve seen over the last few months.
It’s always possible that Americans are right, that we’ve passed the bottom and are on the way up. If so, however, this would mean remarkable foresight on the part of the average buyer.
Around major changes in market direction (the peak of the housing bubble, for example), there is widespread agreement about what future prices will do--and this consensus is usually 100% wrong. If the consensus is right this time that we’ve just passed the bottom, therefore, it will be because the average American has suddenly gotten a lot smarter that usual about what the future holds.
Go long Gannett at your own peril (although the short squeeze has a little more to play out so you are probably cool for a few more days). According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, in a memo submitted to staff on Friday, “USA Today publisher David Hunke said the average circulation at the Gannett Co.-owned newspaper was 1.88 million from April through September. That marks a loss of 398,000 copies, or 17 percent, from the same period the year before at the newspaper, which is printed on weekdays only.” The reason for this unprecedented drop, which will put the paper in second position behind a growing Wall Street Journal, is the “growth of online news and the slump in travel pummel the newspaper.”
The reason for the Gannett empire’s continuing asset value destruction is the “while most large dailies are struggling to hold on to print subscribers and newsstand sales, USA Today is being hurt by a drop in traffic at airports and hotels, the newspaper’s mainstay. It also increased the price of single copies to $1 from 75 cents last December.”
Adding insult to injury, the WSJ, whose most recent daily circulation was 2.08, has confirmed GCI’s fall from grace.
Dow Jones, the Journal’s parent company, declined to give out the newspaper’s circulation figures for the period, but spokesman Robert Christie said, “The Journal is now the largest newspaper by circulation.”
And so the continued shift from old to new media continues, with information increasingly becoming a commodity courtesy of millions of bloggers who mercilessly suck on the Google crawler’s tentacles, grasping and reaching every single relevant bit of data about any and every topic discussed, usually seconds after its “accession” (the time frame of capture is the only reason why Twitter has any value currently; as Google closes in on this last valuation loophole, expect the founders of Twitter to promptly find solace in whatever final valuation round they can get their hands on). Yet this brings up the question: while it may be too late for Gannett, how will the remaining titans of the old media empire respond vis-a-vis this encroaching commoditization of information, and when will the Google bot finally be no longer welcome at the “News Corp., Thomson Reuters, Bloomberg, Time Warner, etc.” media complex. Ironically: the shift…
First Steve Jobs and now Bruce Wasserstein? The head of Apple has had his share of disclosure issues regarding his health, which recently culminated with an (accelerated) liver transplant. It appears the CEO of Lazard could be next up on the health rumor pole. According to Bloomberg, Wasserstein “is in a “serious” condition after being hospitalized for an irregular heartbeat.” The investment bank has added that it would “not be providing additional updates at this time.”
“His condition is serious, but he is stable and recovering,” Lazard said in the statement distributed through Business Wire. Lazard spokeswoman Judi Mackey declined to comment.
This is not the first time Bruce’s health has been an issue of public debate. Several years ago, Peter Cohan wondered out loud if there is something more than meets the eye regarding the 60 year old’s health status:
According to my source, a few weeks after the tragic death of his beloved sister Wendy, from lymphoma, and just after delivering his infamous report on Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX), Bruce went into hiding for some eight weeks. He has lost 50 pounds and is said to look like a wobbly, 75-year-old. Bruce is 58 and has always been portly. He is apparently now back at work at Lazard and is to give a speech today.
Subsequently Cohan followed up his investigation with the following:
Claims that Wasserstein’s health is “fine” are at odds with reports I’ve received since July 27. For instance, on August 11, a person who has seen Wasserstein recently said, “He has a prior heart condition and this may have been a recurrence. He looks like he lost 75 pounds and his voice sounds different.”
Another person mentioned that Wasserstein had received quadruple bypass surgery prior to joining Lazard. On August 9th, without prompting, a former Wasserstein Perella & Co. banker said, “I saw Bruce Wasserstein two weeks ago and decided he must be sick because he looks like s--t.” One who met with him around the same time said that Wasserstein, who did not look well, commented “it’s just the pneumonia” — the same ailment from which he suffered in December 2005 as
Hello everybody. Quite the party we’re having here on Wall Street. My friends will tell you that I’m the polar opposite of someone who wants to bring any party to a crashing halt. Especially one as mind-blowing as this (did I see the dollar AND stocks up on Friday? At the same time? Waa-hoo!).
Anyway, I feel compelled to share a few data points from the ongoing real estate apocalypse, and in this post, I won’t even mention anything commercial real estate-related. This one’s strictly about the ‘hood:
Every 13 seconds, there’s another new foreclosure filing somewhere in America. Not a typo – every thirteen seconds.
There are now more than 6600 foreclosure filings a day. Yep – sixty six hundred a day.
There have been roughly 2 million foreclosures so far during the crisis and an assistant secretary from Treasury, Michael Barr, said that another 6 million families could face foreclosure over the next three years.
These aren’t my numbers, they were released last week by the Center for Responsible Lending, a non-partisan. So how did you, the sober and rigorous market participants I rub elbows with each day, take these latest little nuggets of tragedy?
You rallied the friggin’ luxury retailers, that’s what you did!
5 day chart of Coach, JW Nordstrom and Tiffanys
Listen up party people…yes, you there, the sell-side analyst with the lampshade on his head…and you, yes you, the investment advisor swinging from the chandelier…September retail sales were up .6%.
Yes, just .6% year-over-year versus last September (the crisis month) when Lehman and Merrill became memories in the market’s scrapbook and AIG imploded. Anyone else extremely impressed? Didn’t think so.
I don’t make market calls or buy and sell recs here on TRB, but I will say that I find it very difficult to be excited about a retail recovery with this type of foreclosure data continuing to haunt us.
You can tell me “it’s already in these stocks” and my response will be “fine, they’re all yours.”
The most leveraged bank by far is the-investment-bank-which-must-not-be-named. It is followed by J.P. Morgan on a percentage basis, but JPM is far larger nominally than these charts indicate because of its much larger capital base. Its in the nature of the difference between a cardshark (GS) and a pawnshop (JPM). Or perhaps just the capital requirements of the short versus the long con.
Luckily for the US financial system the big banks are incapable of making errors in risk management, and always seem to get by with a little helpful information from their friends, and a lot of money from the public.
We would ask Timmy for an explanation on how this could happen so soon after a crisis in which the Treasury had to ask Congress to stop financial armageddon overnight because of the perils of excessive leverage on dodgy capital, but he is taking dictation from Lloyd on line 1, and Jamie is on hold on line 2.
Like him or hate him, the author of The Black Swan does provide a unique and interesting perspective. Here is his entire presentation to the Long Now foundation (via Fora TV) from early 2008, a few short months before everything starting collapsing, and, in many ways some would say, proving him right. Of particular note: Taleb’s personal disdain for “experts” of all sorts, is second only to that of Buffett and Munger.
The price to book ratio (P/B) is not a good valuation metric for individual stocks, because the price discounts future earnings and growth. A P/B ratio less than 1 for stock X with low earnings and no earnings growth does mean that stock X is undervalued. If stock Y, with P/B=2 has healthy and growing earnings, it may actually be undervalued and a much better buy than A.
However, P/B does have value when assessing the relative valuation of indexes over time. To that extent, I found the following chart from David Rosenberg, Chief Economist at Gluskin Sheff, which I have modified as indicated.
Rosenberg suggests that the normal range for P/B ratios is between 1.5 and 2.4. The lower number is what is expected coming out of an economic trough and 2.4 is approximately the long-term average. By his analysis we have not had a P/B ratio consistent with economic reality since 1996. We came close on March 9 but quickly left that place.
Note: My reference lines are slightly above 1.5, 2.0 and 2.5 and are minimally above Rosenberg’s reference numbers.
Rosenberg also discusses other valuation measurements at length, including price to earnings ratios (P/E). Read his entire post here.
A graph such as this reinforces the opinion that some have regarding when equities in the U.S. really topped. Looking at this graph, one would say the market topped in 2000. The same conclusion is drawn when the market indices are priced in inflation adjusted dollars or gold. (See here.)
The inference from the Rosenberg graph is that one of the following conditions must pertain:
We are well into recovery and should entering a maturing growth phase of the business cycle within a couple of years; or
We are still declining from the 2000 market high and the current rally will have to give back substantial portions of the gains before long-term market growth can be maintained; or
We are still declining from the 2000 market high and have not yet reached the bottom.
I give a greater than 50% probability to #2. The other two get much smaller probabilities: #1 Less than 10% and #3 less than 30%. (You can put the missing 10% into rounding errors. After all, guesses should have large rounding errors.)…
As part of their program of ‘quantitative easing’ which is another name for currency devaluation through extraordinary expansion of the monetary base, the Fed has very obviously created an inflationary bubble in the US equity market.
Why has this happened? Because with a monetary expansion intended to help cure an credit bubble crisis that is not accompanied by significant financial market reform, systemic rebalancing, and government programs to cure and correct past abuses of the productive economy through financial engineering, the hot money given by the Fed and Treasury to the banking system will NOT flow into the real economy, but instead will seek high beta returns in financial assets.
Why lend to the real economy when one can achieve guaranteed returns from the Fed, and much greater returns in the speculative markets if one has the right ‘connections?’
The monetary stimulus of the Fed and the Treasury to help the economy is similar to relief aid sent to a suffering Third World country. It is intercepted and seized by a despotic regime and allocated to its local warlords, with very little going to help the people.
Deflation
By far this presents the most compelling case for a deflationary episode. As the money that is created flows into financial assets, it is ‘taxed’ by Wall Street which takes a disproportionately large share in the form of fees and bonuses, and what are likely to be extra-legal trading profits.
If the monetary stimulus is subsequently dissipated as the asset bubble collapses, except that which remains in the hands of the few, it leaves the real economy in a relatively poorer condition to produce real savings and wealth than it had been before. This is because the outsized financial sector continues to sap the vitality from the productive economy, to drag it down, to drain it of needed attention and policy focus.
At the heart of it, quantitative easing that is not part of an overall program to reform, regulate, and renew the system to change and correct the elements that caused the crisis in the first place, is nothing more than a Ponzi scheme. The optimal time to reform the system was with the collapse of…
The cremation of the dollar is spreading as other Central Banks realize what a nifty trick currency devaluation is. The BBC notes that tomorrow the CEBR (Centre for Economics and Business Research) will present a new forecast which calls for the BOE rate to remain at 0.5% until 2011, and to hit 2% in 2014 at the earliest. Furthermore, the pound will be the next carry currency, as it is now expected to drop to $1.40, and below €1. The culprit is the same as in the US: out of control budgets, which will be “moderated” by tax rises (precisely the thing Goldman was warning against earlier) and spending cuts. And, lastly, the CEBR sees the UK’s QE program increasing by nearly 50% from £175 billion to £250.
“We are likely to see an exciting policy mix, with the fiscal policy lever pulled right back while the monetary lever is fast forward,” said Douglas McWilliams, CEBR chief executive and one of the report’s authors.
“Our analysis says that this ought to work. If it does so, we are likely to see a major rerating of equities and property which in turn should stimulate economic growth after a lag.”
Last week the Bank of England held interest rates at a record low of 0.5% for the seventh consecutive month.
The CEBR added that the Bank programme to increase the amount of money in the economy – so-called quantitative easing – would increase by £75bn from the £175bn so far announced.
And it predicted that the UK economy would grow by 1.3% in 2010 – having shrunk by 4.3% this year.
A few points: how is it that all countries whose CBs have taken a week currency approach are expected to grow purely on that basis? Do prognosticators assume that rising stock markets alone (as a function of relative debt reduction due to domestic currency debt denomination) will be sufficient to compensate for the rolling drop off in international trade? Or is China now expected to somehow awaken every single economy in the world, while in the process not blowing up its own (contrary to Andy Xie’s warnings)? Curiouser is that even as the US and now the UK seem to have written off their currencies, Germany is somehow expected…
The results of a new study examining the use of options in a collar strategy (both active and passive implementations) on the PowerShares QQQ™ exchange-traded fund (ETF) show it provides superior returns to the traditional buy and hold strategy while reducing risk by almost 65%.
The Options Industry Council (OIC) is pleased to note the study reaffirms the risk management potential of equity options, finding that during the entire 10-year study period, including the sub-periods around the tech bubble and credit crisis, collars significantly outperformed the QQQ, providing much needed capital protection.
“Loosening Your Collar: Alternative Implementations of QQQ Collars,” by Edward Szado and Thomas Schneeweis, looked at data from March 1999 to May 2009. It concluded that over the entire 122 month period the passive collar returned almost 150%, while the QQQ lost one-third of its value. The active collar outperformed both strategies and returned more than 200%.
Additionally, the study simulated a collar on a small-cap mutual fund. The return of the active mutual fund collar was four times the return of the fund, while the standard deviation was about one-third lower. The study was conducted by the Isenberg School of Management’s Center for International Securities and Derivatives Markets (CISDM) at the University of Massachusetts.
Typically, you want to employ a collar to protect a dividend-paying stock from losing value. We employed this strategy successfully in our last $100K Virtual Portfolio with KMP, who pay a healthy 7.6% dividend but had fallen 35% in 6 months in March. As we were re-entering the position back at $40 (with a 10% dividend), we were happy to be in it just for the premiums.
The study makes for a very interesting read. We do not employ full collars very often but they are a very useful strategy to know as you can "lock down" your positions when the markets get rough and it’s also a great way to vacation-proof your virtual portfolio without having to alter your existing positions. Also, as noted in the study, an active management approach – like the one we employ in our buy/writes (rolling the short positions along) leads to the greatest benefits over time. As the OIC says about the strategy:
This strategy offers the stock protection of a put. However, in return for accepting a limited upside profit potential on his underlying shares (to the call’s strike price), the investor…
UK prime minister, David Cameron, promised to hold a referendum on whether Great Britain should remain in the EU, but only on two conditions. The first condition, that Cameron be re-elected as prime minister is iffy enough.
The second condition, that Cameron renegotiate the Lisbon Treaty, I said would never happen. And it won't.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel sealed the fate on that score as Berlin plans to streamline EU but avoid wholesale treaty change. Berlin is drawing up plans for treaty changes to streamline decision-making in the eurozone, while stopping short of any wholesale renegotiation that would allow the UK to repatriate powers from Brussels.
Although Angela Merkel, German chancellor, has expr...
U.S. equity futures traded lower in early pre-market trade following a weaker than expected GDP report from the eurozone for the first quarter. GDP growth rose to -0.2 percent on a quarterly basis from -0.6 percent but missed forecasts of a 0.1 percent contraction. Weakness was notably seen in Germany, France, and Italy in the report, with the annualized rate of growth for Germany dropping to -1.4 percent vs. 0.2 percent growth forecast.
Top News
In other news around the markets:
The U.K. had fewer people claim unemployment benefits in April than expected, a positive sign for the labor market as the ...
So, what did the market want today? Nothing it appears. It traded on weak volume and had very little movement. This morning the market hated commodities especially silver, but by days end, the market liked silver, gold and even oil but not the dollar. Why?
Last week the economic reports were tough, with bad misses on more than one occasion. But the market tended to ignore the bad news, probably because money continues to pour into equities from money market funds, long term fixed income, and many struggling foreign economies. On Thursday, investors finally caved to even more bad news from Initial Jobless Claims and weak Housing Starts. Then on Friday, when Michigan Sentiment and Leading Indicators posted large positive surprises, the money came pouring back to generate qui...
It's time again for my weekly gasoline update based on data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA). Rounded to the penny, the average for Regular increased seven cents and Premium four cents. This is the third week of price gains after nine weeks of declines, which followed eleven weeks of price rises. Since their interim high in late February, Regular is down 11 cents and Premium 16 cents.
According to GasBuddy.com, eight states are averaging above $4.00 per gallon, up from four last week. Six states are in the 3.90-4.00 range, up from two last week.
VOYA - ING US, Inc. – Shares in ING Group’s U.S. retirement, investment and insurance business are up as much as 8.0% today to $26.98, the highest level since the company’s May 2nd IPO. ING US was rated new ‘buy’ at BTIG LLC with a 12-month target share price of $31.00 today. The stock has rallied nearly 40% over the IPO price of $19.50, and some options traders are positioning for the price of the underlying to extend gains during the second half of the year. November expiry options are the most ac...
Again, not much to add to this market in terms of analysis – nothing matters other than central banks. Last Wednesday/Thursday there were some 9 economic reports, 7 of which were disappointing or could be considered as such and all it got was one rare day down, and then new highs Friday. Markets are up 10 of the past 12 sessions and 17 of 21. Friday's move to 1666 was an exact 1000 point rally from March 2009's 666 bottom. Since this most recent leg of the move has been medium fast rather than a huge spike ala 1999, things are not necessarily overbought on the daily chart but we are seeing extremely rare action on the ...
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This post is for all our live virtual trade ideas and daily comments. Please click on "comments" below to follow our live discussion. All of our current trades are listed in the spreadsheet below, with entry price (1/2 in and All in), and exit prices (1/3 out, 2/3 out, and All out).
We also indicate our stop, which is most of the time the "5 day moving average". All trades, unless indicated, are front-month ATM options.
Please feel free to participate in the discussion and ask any questions you might have about this virtual portfolio, by clicking on the "comments" link right below.
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By Craigzooka
I am going to share with you how I manage my IRA and the power of reducing your cost basis. My goal each year is a 20% return in my IRA. Sometimes I make it and sometimes I don't, but I believe that all of my success is due to reducing my cost basis. To illustrate the power of reducing your cost basis here are some trades we did last year. These trades are taken from an educational portfolio we ran in a paper-trading account for a little more than a year.
We bought RIG on 5/15/2012 for $44.13, sold it on 1/18/2013 for $46 but booked a profit of $1,154.
We bought MT on 1/4/2012 for $19.24, sold it on 12/21/2012 for $15 but booked a profit of $454.
We bought CHK on 1/27/2012 for $21.93, sold it on 10/19/2012 for $18 b...
Stock market posts another record setting week, but the big news came after Friday’s close.
Courtesy of NASA
The stock market put on another record setting show with the Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSEARCA:DIA) closing at a record high 15,118 and the S&P 500 (NYSEARCA:SPY) closing at 1633.70, another all time closing high.
For the week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSEARCA:DIA) gained 1%, the S&P 500 (NYSEARCA:SPY) climbed 1.2%, the Nasdaq Composite (NYSEARCA:...
Reminder: Pharmboy is available to chat with Members, comments are found below each post.
Well, well, well....it is good to know that there are others in the scientific arena who believed that YMI Bioscience's data (cough - Gilead) is a better drug than Incyte's Jakafi. Now, the definitive data are still unknown, but there was enough evidence from a Phase 2 trial to take a small risk for a huge reward. So, let's forget about Apple (AAPL), and do nothing but biotechs from now until Congress passes universal health care coverage for prescriptions....and drive the prices down so that research and development is no longer feasible to conduct in the US. Even Seattle Genetics (SGEN) has been on a tear as of late...
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the Favorites backup site
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