How You Can Tell When a Company’s P/E is All Flash

By Andrey Dashkov

College reunions are toxic. Except for the few precious moments of genuine human connection, these parties are nothing but status pageants. Suits and watches are inconspicuously glanced at, vacation photos (carefully selected the night before) are passed around; compensations guesstimated; Platinum Master Cards flashed (“Oh no, let me take care of this round!”); spouses evaluated based on trophy-worthy qualities… and inconspicuously glanced at.

It’s hard to tell true, praiseworthy success from carefully crafted smoke and mirrors. Your college friend may have rented that car, watch, suit—and even his “spouse.” In fact, there are escort agencies out there that provide “dates” for single men to social occasions. Don’t ask me how I learned about it.

The point is, both people and companies like to project high status and success to the public. Not only do your friends from Beta Phi Delta want to look alpha (pun intended), but companies, too, often want you to think they earn more than they actually do.

There are many incentives to do that: management’s compensation may be tied to earnings-per-share (EPS) goals; the company may be trying to maintain an image of rapid growth; or it could be attempting to raise funds by issuing debt or shares. Higher EPS would benefit the company and the team at the helm in all of these cases.

The Illusory P/E Ratio

Another reason why companies try to massage their earnings is that millions of investors pay attention to the price-to-earnings ratio (P/E). It is one of the most intuitive financial metrics. Potential investors see it all across the Internet, on free finance sites and many trading platforms. However, despite its popularity, I’d argue that it’s one of the most illusory financial metrics that exists, and the blame is on the denominator, earnings. Let’s see how we can make better use of it.

“E” in the P/E ratio stands for earnings per share, which is a ratio itself. EPS is the company’s net income for the reported 12-month period (or forecasted net income for the next 12 months) divided by its shares outstanding. Without going into too much detail, here are some of the potential issues with the usefulness of reported historical, or trailing, earnings per share for investors:

• Seasonality. Earnings of a lot of companies fluctuate due to seasonal buying activity, weather, and other factors. In these cases, quarter-to-quarter comparisons are meaningless, and it’s necessary to understand the company’s operating cycles (annual, based on contract renewals, etc.) to make use of the reported earnings.

• Dilution. There are two broad measures of shares outstanding: basic (or common) and diluted. Diluted shares outstanding include common shares, options, warrants, convertible preferred shares, and convertible debt. All of these can potentially be converted to common stock and result in lower earnings per share because of the higher denominator in the EPS ratio. However, when you look at a P/E ratio on the Internet, it’s not always clear whether it was based on basic or diluted shares. The latter is more conservative, and we pay more attention to it than to the basic EPS.

• Accruals-based accounting, in which revenues are recognized at the moment they’re earned, and expenses are recognized when they’re incurred. In contrast, under cash-based accounting, revenues are recognized when cash is collected, and expenses are recognized when cash is paid.
  
  Accruals-based accounting has its advantages:

*  It allows the company to match revenues to expenses in time more closely (for example, the cost of a piece of equipment is depreciated over its useful life to match the revenues this equipment generates); and

*  It provides the market with information about the company’s operations as soon as it has enough objective evidence that the transaction will be fulfilled. For example, when a company sends an invoice to a customer, it records a receivable, which sends a signal to the market that a sale took place. We don’t need to wait until the actual funds are deposited in the company’s bank account, which may take a month or more, to become aware of this sale.

However, accrual accounting has two major drawbacks for analysts and investors:

*  Reported income and expenses do not mirror actual cash inflows and outflows; and

*  Management can accelerate or postpone recognition of revenue and expenses, which makes reported net income figures less reliable.

Consider a real-world example. A friend of mine—let’s call him Steven—spent several years as a credit manager. One of his responsibilities was to expense a “reserve” for anticipated credit losses. The first time he was about to charge the expenses, he estimated them realistically and quickly realized that it wouldn’t work. The reserve wasn’t there to cover the related losses calculated fairly and correctly.

After a discussion with the corporate accounting department (his superior), if they needed to find more profit to make their numbers, Steven would lower his reserve estimates. If they were having a good year, he was told to increase the reserve write-off to provide a cushion for the next quarter.

The beauty of it was that such draws and deposits are almost impossible to catch unless the amounts are outrageous, so any auditor would overlook them. Steven and his team were safe legally, but the practice misrepresented his company’s financial performance nevertheless.

When I asked another friend—let’s call him Jack—to share any stories about his company’s creative accounting, he said he too would get calls from the corporate accounting department at the end of each quarter. Another easy target to massage is insurance costs. To get the lowest prices, many of its insurance policies were paid annually, and the premium period did not correspond with the accounting year. If the company was having a good quarter or year, he was encouraged to write off the entire annual premium in that accounting period. Conversely, if it was struggling to make its numbers, the team would show the premiums for future months as “prepaid insurance,” effectively delaying the expense until the next accounting period.

The effect, as with our first example, was to smooth out period-to-period fluctuations to keep stockholders happy by “making their numbers” or beating them by a little bit. The justification was that they weren’t really manipulating profits—“in the long run, it all comes out in the wash.”

Part of Jack’s annual performance review was “being a good team player.” Helping the corporate team was part of that evaluation.

Other common revenue and expense “management” techniques include adjustments to how depreciation expense is calculated, which is doable within limits under generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), and can affect net income as desired; and adjustments to revenue recognition policies that technically comply with GAAP but distort the underlying economic reality to artificially boost the top line and thereby juice earnings.

Normalization Helps Solve the Numbers Game

The first two issues with earnings—seasonality and dilution—can be addressed simply: instead of looking at price to reported earnings per share, pay attention to P/E calculated from normalized earnings based on diluted shares outstanding. Normalization takes care of seasonality and some of the nonrecurring revenue and cost items. Using diluted share count instead of basic will return a more conservative number, because it assumes that all options, warrants, and convertible debt are converted into common shares. The more common shares there are, the lower the EPS.

As shareholders, we need those conservative estimates. Our returns (share price appreciation and dividend income) aren’t based on management achieving arbitrary earnings targets that can be fiddled with, but on how the company functions as a business. To get a clearer picture, using normalized diluted EPS should help.
Note that I wrote “clearer” but not “clear,” “true,” or “objective.” The reason we stay away from such absolutes is that it’s prohibitively difficult to say what’s going on with any company’s earnings with 100% accuracy.

One simple tip can help you make better use of P/E: use normalized earnings and diluted shares. These numbers are often available on free websites or in SEC filings.

Now I’ll go ahead and clear my browser history. Although reading about escort services for college reunions is a great study of the human condition, I’ll have a hard time explaining to my lovely wife why I need to do it for work.

And speaking of the work I do… you can receive more unique insights on better investing strategies by signing up for our free, retirement-focused e-letter, Miller’s Money Weekly.

The article How You Can Tell When a Company’s P/E is All Flash was originally published at millersmoney.com.

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The Truth About Today’s Market

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aka The Crude Oil Trader


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Thoughts from the Frontline: What’s on Your Radar Screen?

By John Mauldin

Toward the end of every week I begin to ponder what I should write about in the next Thoughts from the Frontline. Much of my week is spent in front of my iPad or computer, consuming as much generally random information as time and the ebb and flow of life will allow. I cannot remember a time in my life after I realized you could read and learn new things that that particular addiction has not been my constant companion.

As I sit down to write each week, I generally turn to the events and themes that most impressed me that week. Reading from a wide variety of sources, I sometimes see patterns that I feel are worthy to call to your attention. I’ve come to see my role in your life as a filter, a connoisseur of ideas and information. I don’t sit down to write with the thought that I need to be particularly brilliant or insightful (which is almighty difficult even for brilliant and insightful people) but that I need to find brilliant and insightful, and hopefully useful, ideas among the hundreds of sources that surface each week. And if I can bring to your attention a pattern, an idea, or thought stream that that helps your investment process, then I’ve done my job.

What’s on Your Radar Screen?

Sometimes I feel like an air traffic controller at “rush hour” at a major international airport. My radar screen is just so full of blinking lights that it is hard to choose what to focus on. We each have our own personal radar screen, focused on things that could make a difference in our lives. The concerns of a real estate investor in California are different from those of a hedge fund trader in London. If you’re an entrepreneur, you’re focused on things that can grow your business; if you are a doctor, you need to keep up with the latest research that will heal your patients; and if you’re a money manager, you need to keep a step ahead of current trends. And while I have a personal radar screen off to the side, my primary, business screen is much larger than most people’s, which is both an advantage and a challenge with its own particular set of problems. (In a physical sense this is also true: I have two 26-inch screens in my office. Which typically stay packed with things I’m paying attention to.)

So let’s look at what’s on my radar screen today.

First up (but probably not the most important in the long term), I would have to say, is Scotland. What has not been widely discussed is that the voting age was changed in Scotland just a few years ago. For this election, anyone in Scotland over 16 years old is eligible. Think about that for a second. Have you ever asked 16-year-olds whether they would like to be more free and independent and gotten a “no” answer? They don’t think with their economic brains, or at least most of them don’t. If we can believe the polls, this is going to be a very close election. The winning margin may be determined by whether the “yes” vote can bring out the young generation (especially young males, who are running 90% yes) in greater numbers than the “no” vote can bring out the older folks. Right now it looks as though it will be all about voter turnout.

(I took some time to look through Scottish TV shows on the issue. Talk about your polarizing dilemma. This is clearly on the front burner for almost everyone in Scotland. That’s actually good, as it gets people involved in the political process.)

The “no” coalition is trying to talk logic about what is essentially an emotional issue for many in Scotland. If we’re talking pure economics, from my outside perch I think the choice to keep the union (as in the United Kingdom) intact is a clear, logical choice. But the “no” coalition is making it sound like Scotland could not make it on its own, that it desperately needs England. Not exactly the best way to appeal to national instincts and pride. There are numerous smaller countries that do quite well on their own. Small is not necessarily bad if you are efficient and well run.

However, Scotland would have to raise taxes in order to keep government services at the same level – or else cut government services, not something many people would want.
There is of course the strategy of reducing the corporate tax to match Ireland’s and then competing with Ireland for businesses that want English-speaking, educated workers at lower cost. If that were the only dynamic, Scotland could do quite well.

But that would mean the European Union would have to allow Scotland to join. How does that work when every member country has to approve? The approval process would probably be contingent upon Scotland’s not lowering its corporate tax rates all that much, especially to Irish levels, so that it couldn’t outcompete the rest of Europe. Maybe a compromise on that issue could be reached, or maybe not. But if Scotland were to join the European Union, it would be subject to European Union laws and Brussels regulators. Not an awfully pleasant prospect.

While I think that Scotland would initially have a difficult time making the transition, the Scots could figure it out. The problem is that Scottish independence also changes the dynamic in England, making it much more likely that England would vote to leave the European Union. Then, how would the banks in Scotland be regulated, and who would back them? Markets don’t like uncertainty.

And even if the “no” vote wins, the precedent for allowing a group of citizens in a country within the European Union to vote on whether they want to remain part of their particular country or leave has been set. The Czech Republic and Slovakia have turned out quite well, all things considered. But the independence pressures building in Italy and Spain are something altogether different.

I read where Nomura Securities has told its clients to get out of British pound-based investments until this is over. “Figures from the investment bank Société Générale showing an apparent flight of investors from the UK came as Japan’s biggest bank, Nomura, urged its clients to cut their financial exposure to the UK and warned of a possible collapse in the pound. It described such an outcome as a ‘cataclysmic shock’.” (Source: The London Independent) The good news is that it will be over next Thursday night. One uncertainty will be eliminated, though a “yes” vote would bring a whole new set of uncertainties, as the negotiations are likely to be quite contentious.

One significant snag is, how can Scottish members of the United Kingdom Parliament continue to vote in Parliament if they are leaving the union?

I admit to feeling conflicted about the whole thing, as in general I feel that people ought have a right of self-determination. In this particular case, I’m not quite certain of the logic for independence, though I can understand the emotion. But giving 16-year-olds the right to vote on this issue? Was that really the best way to go about things? Not my call, of course.

Emerging Markets Are Set Up for a Crisis

We could do a whole letter just on emerging markets. The strengthening dollar is creating a problem for many emerging markets, which have enough problems on their own. My radar screen is full of flashing red lights from various emerging markets. Brazil is getting ready to go through an election; their economy is in recession; and inflation is over 6%. There was a time when we would call that stagflation. Plus they lost the World Cup on their home turf to an efficient, well-oiled machine from Germany. The real (the Brazilian currency) is at risk.

Will their central bank raise rates in spite of economic weakness if the US dollar rally continues? Obviously, the bank won’t take that action before the election, but if it does so later in the year, it could put a damper on not just Brazil but all of South America. Take a look at this chart of Brazilian consumer price inflation vs. GDP:

Mbeki

Turkey is beginning to soften, with the lira down 6% over the last few months. The South African rand is down 6% since May and down 25% since this time last year. I noted some of the problems with South Africa when I was there early this year. The situation has not improved. They have finally reached an agreement with the unions in the platinum mining industry, which cost workers something like $1 billion in unpaid wages, while the industry lost $2 billion. To add insult to injury, it now appears that a Chinese slowdown may put further pressure on commodity-exporting South Africa. And their trade deficit is just getting worse.

Who’s Competing with Whom?

We could also do a whole letter or two on global trade. The Boston Consulting Group has done a comprehensive study on the top 25 export economies. I admit to being a little surprised at a few of the data points. Let’s look at the chart and then a few comments.



First, notice that Mexico is now cheaper than China. That might explain why Mexico is booming, despite the negative impact of the drug wars going on down there. Further, there is now not that much difference in manufacturing costs between China and the US .
Why not bring that manufacturing home – which is what we are seeing? And especially anything plastic-related, because the shale-gas revolution is giving us an abundance of natural gas liquids such as ethane, propane, and butane, which are changing the cost factors for plastic manufacturers. There is a tidal wave of capital investment in new facilities close to natural gas fields or pipelines. This is also changing the dynamic in Asia, as Asian companies switch to cheaper natural gas for their feedstocks.

(What, you don’t get newsfeeds from the plastic industry? Realizing that I actually do makes me consider whether I need a 12-step program. “Hello, my name is John, and I’m an information addict.”)

To continue reading this article from Thoughts from the Frontline – a free weekly publication by John Mauldin, renowned financial expert, best-selling author, and Chairman of Mauldin Economics – please click here.

The article Thoughts from the Frontline: What’s on Your Radar Screen? was originally published at mauldineconomics.com.

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Floating Rate Funds Poised to Profit as Interest Rates Rise

By Andrey Dashkov

Money can’t be this cheap forever. In other words, one of the most likely scenarios the U.S. economy faces is rising interest rates. The current low interest rate climate is simply unsustainable. At some point—as it always does—the trend will turn around. We want to be prepared for that turn, and the right floating-rate fund can help.

A floating rate loan is a bank loan with interest that’s tied to some benchmark rate, often the London Interbank Offer Rate (LIBOR). When the LIBOR changes, so does the loan’s coupon. The rate is adjusted every 30 - 90 days. Floating rate funds are pools of capital that invest in these loans, earn variable-rate interest, and pay dividends that are themselves flexible.

Variable Dividends Boost Immunity

Variable dividends are the key feature of floating rate funds. They’re what separate floating rate funds from the rest of the debt market. Flexible dividends make shares of the bond funds immune to rising interest rates; the prices of the bonds and the fund’s shares don’t get punished when rates go up. What the investor sees is higher dividends; his principal is safe.

A note of caution is in order here: Even though floating rate bonds don’t have the same inverse price-yield relationship as fixed rate debt instruments, their prices can still go down. Although the automatic coupon adjustments mostly eliminate the first major risk of any debt instrument—interest-rate risk—floating-rate funds still hold the other major risk: credit risk. As a reminder, credit risk is the risk that the borrower won’t make payments on time or will default on the debt entirely.

The credit risk of floating rate loans is high because the companies that borrow under these conditions are usually rated below investment grade. They can’t go to capital markets for money because fixed rate loans would be too expensive, so they turn to banks that provide funds on floating rate terms.

Since the companies borrowing these funds are below investment grade, their default rates are close to those of speculative grade bonds. Vanguard Research reports that the average annual default rate from 1996 to 2012 for speculative grade bonds was 4.5%; for senior floating-rate loans, it was 3.4%. Better, but still much higher than investment-grade bonds at 0.1%.

High Post - Default Recovery Rates

Does this mean that you should avoid floating rate loans in favor of AAA-rated debt? No. First, floating-rate loans are high in a companies’ debt structure, which means that if the borrower defaults, investors holding floating rate debt have a priority claim on the company’s assets. This leads to very high recovery rates for senior floating rate loans in the event of default: 71.1%, or more than 70 cents on the dollar. Compare that to the next class of loans, senior secured, which are recovered at a rate of 56.8%.

Second, floating rate loans outperform both high yield loans and the aggregate U.S. bond market. According to Vanguard, during the last three rising rate periods (January 1994-February 1995, June 1999-May 2000, and June 2004-June 2006) floating rate bonds outperformed high yield instruments by 2.5 percentage points (pp) and the aggregate bond market by 4.3 pp.

After the rising rate periods end, however, floating rate funds tend to underperform both high yield instruments and the overall bond market. This is why we’re buying them now, when rates have nowhere to go but up. We don’t know when that will happen, but when it does, we want to be positioned to profit.
In addition to their excellent performance in rising interest rate periods, floating rate funds are good for diversification. Their correlation with the overall US bond market is close to zero, which makes them especially good for a portfolio focused on fixed-rate US bonds. However, they also belong in our retirement portfolio—the Money Forever portfolio—where we use them to diversify our allocation across various debt instruments and to make sure we are well positioned to profit from rising interest rates.

Entrée into the World of Big Money

To sum it up, floating rate funds provide a way to diversify into an investment class that is almost immune to rising interest rates. Like business development companies, floating rate funds offer retail investors entrée into an area of finance usually reserved for big money and institutions. In exchange for these opportunities, investors accept credit risk due to the low credit ratings of the borrowing companies. With that in mind, we pay close attention to the sectors of the funds we consider investing in, and prefer more defensive and crisis-resistant industries.

At Miller’s Money we closely monitor the bond market, constantly scouting out the best options for seniors and savers. Learn more need to know information about bonds and the role they play in today’s low-interest rate environment by downloading our free special report, Bond Basics today.

The article Floating-Rate Funds Poised to Profit as Interest Rates Rise was originally published at Millers Money

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What Chimpanzees Can Teach Us about Convertible Bonds

By Dennis Miller

In a renewed commitment to finally learn Spanish, one of my colleagues spent quite a bit of time this week awkwardly saying, “Qué es eso?” into the headset Rosetta Stone provides with its language learning programs. Translation: “What’s that?”

Here in the US, the 10,000 or so people reaching retirement age each day often find themselves asking the same question—though maybe not out loud—when advisors use terms of art or casually mention sophisticated investment options. What’s that? Most of these folks didn’t earn their living in the financial services sector, so they don’t speak the language—nor should they feel embarrassed about it.

That said, no one—particularly risk-adverse retirees—should ever invest in something they don’t understand. So let me add one more type of investment to your “I know about that” toolbox: convertible bonds. Despite their obscurity, they’re not the least bit complicated.
Put simply, convertible bonds:

• have, as a rule of thumb, two-thirds of the upside of common stock and one-third of the downside; and
• can be an excellent way to diversify your portfolio.

Convertible bonds are bonds an investor (let’s say it’s you) can convert into common stock of the issuing company under certain circumstances. Imagine, for example, that Rosetta Stone wants to finance a new project—maybe it’s doing R&D on how to teach humans to speak the language of chimpanzees (hey, this is purely hypothetical). So Rosetta Stone (RST), which has a current stock price of about $8.80, issues a convertible bond and sets the conversion rate so that it’s not profitable to convert your bonds unless the stock price rises, say to $11.

Then more people start to feel a burning need to learn Spanish—or Mandarin, or Farsi—and RST’s price passes $11. At that point, you can convert your bonds into shares of RST worth more than the stream of payments from the bond alone. You own bonds with upside potential.

If RST’s price goes up, the value of your convertible bond goes with it. If it goes down, the discounted stream of underlying cash flows (the bonds’ coupon payments plus return of the principal at maturity) act as a price floor.

Now imagine that speaking multiple languages goes out of vogue, and instead of rising past $11.00, RST drops to $4.00. You’ll still receive interest and principal—meaning your convertible bonds can’t be worth less than those payments.

Of course, there’s always the threat of default. Say Rosetta Stone goes bankrupt for one reason or another (maybe it overspent on the chimp project, and it failed). The silver lining is that you’ll have a better chance of getting some money back than if you owned common stock.

What You Trade for the Option to Convert

As with any investment, there are trade offs: convertible bonds have slightly lower yields. The company pays a lower interest rate, and in exchange you have the option to convert your bonds. Also, convertible bonds often fall into the high yield/junk-bond category.

What’s more, it’s often only feasible for individuals to invest in convertible bonds through convertible bond funds. And you know what that means: fees. With an average expense ratio of 1.25%, fund managers have to get past that hurdle before they can start making you money.

With that, why would anyone want to buy a convertible bond fund? In a word, diversification. We hold one convertible bond fund in our retirement-specific portfolio for downside protection and the diversification it provides. With a gross expense ratio of 0.4% and one-third of its holdings in investment-grade bonds, this particular fund avoids the major pitfalls of most convertible bond funds.

Less common investments are worth knowing about, but understanding them doesn’t mean you should jump in whole hog—particularly when you’re investing your retirement nest egg. And that’s our focus at Miller’s Money: plain-English financial education and smart retirement investing. Read our free weekly e-letter, Miller’s Money Weekly every Thursday by signing up here.

The article What Chimpanzees Can Teach Us about Convertible Bonds was originally published at millers money

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Europe Takes the QE Baton

By John Mauldin

If the wide, wide world of investing doesn’t seem a little strange to you these days, it can only be because you’re not paying attention. If you’re paying attention, strange really isn’t the word you’re probably using in your day-to-day investing conversations; it may be more like weird or bizarre. It increasingly feels like we’re living in the world dreamed up by the creators of DC Comics back in the 1960s, called Bizarro World. In popular culture "Bizarro World" has come to mean a situation or setting that is weirdly inverted or opposite from expectations.

As my Dad would say, “The whole situation seems about a half-bubble off dead center” (dating myself to a time when people used levels that actually had bubbles in them). But I suppose that now, were he with us, he might use the expression to refer to the little bubbles that are effervescing everywhere. In a Bizarro French version of very bubbly champagne (I can hardly believe I’m reporting this), the yield on French short term bonds went negative this week. If you bought a short-term French bill, you actually paid for the privilege of holding it. I can almost understand German and Swiss yields being negative, but French?

And then Friday, as if to compound the hilarity, Irish short term bond yields went negative. Specifically, roughly three years ago Irish two year bonds yielded 23.5%. Today they yield -0.004%! In non-related un-news from Bizarro World, the Spanish sold 50-year bonds at 4% this week. Neither of these statistics yielded up by Bloomberg makes any sense at all. I mean, I understand how they can technically happen and why some institutions might even want 50-year Spanish bonds. But what rational person would pay for the privilege of owning an Irish bond? And does anyone really think that 4% covers the risk of holding Spanish debt for 50 years? What is the over-under bet spread on the euro’s even existing in Spain in 50 years? Or 10, for that matter?

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We might be able to lay the immediate, proximate cause of the bizarreness at the feet of ECB President Mario Draghi, who once again went all in last Monday for his fellow teammates in euroland. He gave them another round of rate cuts and the promise of more monetary easing, thus allowing them to once again dodge the responsibility of managing their own economies. The realist in me scratches my already well scratched head and wonders exactly what sort of business is going to get all exuberant now that the main European Central Bank lending rate has dropped to 0.05% from an already negligible 0.15%. Wow, that should make a lot of deals look better on paper.

We should note that lowering an already ridiculously low lending rate was not actually Signor Draghi’s goal. This week we’ll look at what is happening across the pond in Europe, where the above-mentioned negative rates are only one ingredient in a big pot of Bizarro soup. And we’ll think about what it means for the U.S. Federal Reserve to be so close to the end of its quantitative easing, even as the ECB takes the baton to add €1 trillion to the world’s liquidity. And meanwhile, Japan just keeps plugging away. (Note: this letter will print longer than usual as there are a significant number of graphs. Word count is actually down, for which some readers may be grateful.)

But first, I’m glad that I can finally announce that my longtime friend Tony Sagami has officially come to work for us at Mauldin Economics. Tony has been writing our Yield Shark advisory since the very beginning, but for contractual reasons we could not publicize his name. I will say more at the end of the letter, but for those of you interested in figuring out how to increase the yield of your investments, Tony could be a godsend.

The Age of Deleveraging

Extremely low and even negative interest rates, slow growth, unusual moves by monetary and fiscal authorities, and the generally unseemly nature of the economic world actually all have a rational context and a comprehensible explanation. My co-author Jonathan Tepper and I laid out in some detail in our book End Game what the ending of the debt supercycle would look like. We followed up in our book Code Red with a discussion of one of the main side effects, which is a continual currency war (though of course it will not be called a currency war in public). Both books stand up well to the events that have followed them. They are still great handbooks to understand the current environment.

Such deleveraging periods are inherently deflationary and precipitate low rates. Yes, central banks have taken rates to extremes, but the low rate regime we are in is a natural manifestation of that deleveraging environment. I’ve been doing a little personal research on what I was writing some 15 years ago (just curious), and I came across a prediction from almost exactly 15 years ago in which I boldly and confidently (note sarcasm) projected that the 10-year bond would go below 4% within a few years. That was a little edgy back then, as Ed Yardeni was suggesting it might go below 5% by the end of the following year. That all seems rather quaint right now. The Great Recession would send the 10-year yield below 2%.

Sidebar: The yield curve was also negative at the time, and I was calling for recession the next year. With central banks holding short-term rates at the zero bound, we no longer have traditional yield curve data to signal a recession. What’s a forecaster to do?

I was not the only one talking about deflation and deleveraging back then. Drs. Gary Shilling and Lacy Hunt (among others) had been writing about them for years. The debt supercycle was also a favorite topic of my friend Martin Barnes (and prior to him Tony Boeckh) at Bank Credit Analyst.

Ever-increasing leverage clearly spurs an economy and growth. That leverage can be sustained indefinitely if it is productive leverage capable of creating the cash flow to pay for itself. Even government leverage, if it is used for productive infrastructure investments, can be self sustaining. But ever increasing leverage for consumption has a limit. It’s called a debt supercycle because that limit takes a long time to come about. Typically it takes about 60 or 70 years. Then something has to be done with the debt and leverage. Generally there is a restructuring through a very painful deflationary bursting of the debt bubble – unless governments print money and create an inflationary bubble. Either way, the debt gets dealt with, and generally not in a pleasant manner.

We are living through an age of deleveraging, which began in 2008. Gary Shilling summarized it this week in his monthly letter:

We continue to believe that slow worldwide growth is the result of the global financial deleveraging that followed the massive expansion of debt in the 1980s and 1990s and the 2008 financial crisis that inevitably followed, as detailed in our 2010 book, The Age of Deleveraging: Investment strategies for a decade of slow growth and deflation. We forecast back then that the result in the U.S. would be persistent 2% real GDP growth until the normal decade of deleveraging is completed. Since the process is now six years old, history suggests another four years or so to go.

We’ve also persistently noted that this deleveraging is so powerful that it has largely offset massive fiscal stimuli in the form of tax cuts and rebates as well as huge increases in federal spending that resulted in earlier trillion dollar deficits. It has also swamped the cuts in major central bank interest rates to essentially zero that were followed by gigantic central bank security purchases and loans that skyrocketed their balance sheets.  Without this deleveraging, all the financial and monetary stimuli would surely have pushed real GDP growth well above the robust 1982–2000 3.7% average instead of leaving it at a meager 2.2% since the recovery began in mid-2009.

The problems the developed world faces today are the result of decisions made to accumulate large amounts of debt over the past 60 years. These problems cannot be solved simply by the application of easy-money policies. The solution will require significant reforms, especially labor reforms in Europe and Japan, and a restructuring of government obligations.

Mohammed El-Erian called it the New Normal. But it is not something that happens for just a short period of time and then we go back to normal. Gary Shilling cites research which suggests that such periods typically last 10 years – but that’s if adjustments are allowed to happen. Central banks are fighting the usual adjustment process by providing easy money, which will prolong the period before the adjustments are made and we can indeed return to a “normal” market.

How Bizarre Is It?

We are going to quickly run through a number of charts, as telling the story visually will be better than spilling several times 1000 words (and easier on you). Note that many of these charts display processes unfolding over time. We try to go back prior to the Great Recession in many of these charts so that you can see the process. We are going to focus on Europe, since that is where the really significant anomalies have been occurring.

First, let’s look at what Mario Draghi is faced with. He finds himself in an environment of low inflation, and expectations for inflation going forward are even lower. This chart depicts inflation in the two main European economies, Germany and France.



Note too that inflation expectations for the entire euro area are well below 1% for the next two years – notwithstanding the commitment of the European Central Bank to bring back inflation.



But as I noted at the beginning, ECB policy has already reached the zero bound. In fact the overnight rate is negative, making cash truly trash if it is deposited with the ECB.



With inflation so low and a desperate scramble for yield going on in Europe, rates for 10-year sovereign debt have plummeted. It is not that Italy or Spain or Greece or Ireland or France is that much less risky than it was five years ago.

Note that banks can get deposits for essentially nothing. They can lever those deposits up (30 or 40 times), and the regulators make them reserve no capital against investments made in sovereign debt. Even after their experience with Greek debt, they essentially claim that there is no risk in sovereign debt. If your bank’s profits are being squeezed and it’s hard to find places to put money to work in the business sector, then the only game in town is to buy sovereign debt, which is what banks are doing. Which of course pushes down rates. Low interest rates in Europe are as much a result of regulatory policy as of monetary policy.

Next is a chart of 10 year bond yields. We’ve also included the US, Japan, and Switzerland. Note that Japan and Switzerland are in the 50-basis point range. (Japan is at 0.52%, and Switzerland is at 0.45%). Italy and Spain now have 10 year bond yields below that of the US.



The following chart is a screenshot of a table from Bloomberg, listing 10 year bond yields around Europe. Note that Greece is at 5.48%. Hold that thought while you look at the table.



This next chart requires a minute or two of analysis, and looking at it in black and white probably won’t work. Essentially, this is the spread of the yields of 10-year bonds of various European countries over German bunds. Note that only two years ago Greek debt paid 25% per year more than German debt did. Anyone who bought Greek debt when that country was busy defaulting has scored big. (While I probably take far too much risk in my portfolio, I will readily admit to not having enough nerve to do something like that.) The other thing to note, and it is a little bit more difficult to see on this chart, is that for all intents and purposes the market is treating European-wide EFSF debt as German debt. There are only 10 basis points of difference.



Now let’s take a little stroll through history and view a chart of the yield curve of French debt. The top dotted line is where the yield curve was on January 1, 2007. We took our first look at this chart last Tuesday in preparation for this letter, noting that short-term French debt was at the zero bound. It went negative on Thursday, and negative all the way out to two years! Note that a 50-year French note (which I’m not sure actually trades) yields a hypothetical 2.5%, only modestly more than a 30-year would yield. You might have to have the patience of Job, and I’m not sure quite how you would go about executing the trade, but that has to be one of the most loudly screaming shorts I’ve ever seen!



Here is the equivalent chart for the German yield curve going back to January 2007. Note that German debt has a negative yield out to three years!!!



While it should surprise no one, German long-term bond yields are at historic lows. I recall reading that Spanish bond yields are lower now than they have been at any other time in their history. I actually applaud the Spanish government for issuing 50-year bonds at 4%. I can almost guarantee you the day will come when Spain looks back at those 4% bonds with fondness. (I assume that the buyers are pension funds or insurance companies engaged in a desperate search for yield. I guess the extra 2% over a ten-year bond looks attractive … at least in the short term.)

And finally, let’s really widen our time horizon on German yields:



Time to Ramp up the Currency War

The yen hit a six-year low this week (over 105 to the dollar), creating even more of a problem for Germany and other European exporters to Asia. The chart below shows that Germany’s exports to the BRIICS except China are down significantly over the past few years, partially due to competition from Japan as the yen has dropped against the euro.

The yen-versus-euro problem (at least from Germany’s standpoint) is exacerbated by the remarkable appetite of Japanese investors for French bonds. This has been going on for over a year. In May and June of this year alone, Japanese investors bought $29.3 billion worth of French notes maturing at one year or more (presumably, this was before rates went negative). Note that even with minimal yields, the Japanese investors are up because of the currency play. (Interestingly, Japanese investors are dumping German bonds, again a yield play.)

Japanese analysts say that Japanese investors are hesitant to take the risks on the higher-yielding Italian and Spanish bonds, but for some reason they see almost no risk in French bonds. (Obviously not many Thoughts from the Frontline readers in Japan.) This behavior, of course, helps to drive down the price of the yen relative to the euro. (Source, Bloomberg)



Interesting side note: the third-largest country holding of US treasuries behind Japan and China is now Belgium. When you first read that, you have to do a double-take. Digging a little deeper, you find out there’s been a 41% surge in Belgian ownership of US bonds in just the first five months of this year. As it turns out, Euroclear Bank SA, a provider of security settlements for foreign lenders, is based in Belgium and is where countries can go to buy bonds they are not holding in their own treasuries. This buying surge is helping hold down US yields even as the Federal Reserve is reducing its QE program. Further, there is serious speculation, or rather speculation from serious sources, that Russian oligarchs are piling into US dollars by the tens of billions, again through Belgium.

Europe Takes the Baton

It is probably only a coincidence that just as the Fed ends QE, Europe will begin its own QE program. Note that the ECB has reduced its balance sheet by over $1 trillion in the past few years (to the chagrin of much of European leadership). There is now “room” for the ECB to work through various asset-buying programs to increase its balance sheet by at least another trillion over the next year or so, taking the place of the Federal Reserve. Draghi intends to do so.

Risk-takers should take note. European earnings per share are significantly lower than those of any other developed economy. Indeed, while much of the rest of the world has seen earnings rise since the market bottom in 2009, the euro area has been roughly flat.


Both the US and Japanese stock markets took off when their respective central banks began QE programs. Will the same happen in Europe? QE in Europe will have a little bit different flavor than the straight-out bond buying of Japan or the US, but they will still be pushing money into the system. With yields at all-time lows, European investors may start looking at their own stock markets. Just saying.

Draghi also knows there is really no way to escape his current conundrum without reigniting European growth. One of the textbook ways to achieve easy growth is through currency devaluation; and as we wrote in Code Red, the ECB will step up and do what it can to cheapen the euro in competition with Japan.
Just as the world is getting fewer dollars (in a world where global trade is done in dollars), Draghi is going to flood the world with euros.

Bank of Japan Governor Kuroda has steered the BOJ to where it now owns 20% of all outstanding Japanese government debt and is buying 70% of all newly issued Japanese bonds. The BOJ hoped that by driving down long-term rates it could encourage Japanese banks to invest and lend more, but bond-hungry regional Japanese banks are still snapping up long-term Japanese bonds, even at 50 basis points of yield. Given the current environment, the Bank of Japan cannot stop its QE program without creating a spike in yields that the government of Japan could not afford. Hence I think it’s unlikely that Japanese QE will end anytime soon, thus putting further pressure on the yen.

The BOJ is going to continue to buy massive quantities of bonds and erode the value of the yen over time in an effort to get 2% inflation.

In a world where populations in developed countries are growing older and are thus more interested in fixed-income securities, yields are going to be challenged for some time. Those planning retirement are going to generally need about twice what would have been suggested only 10 or 15 years ago in order to be able to achieve the same income. Welcome to the world of financial repression, brought to you by your friendly local central bank.

Introducing Tony Sagami

When we first launched Mauldin Economics some two years ago, my partners and I thought there was a need for a good fixed-income letter with a little different style and focus. My very first phone call was to my longtime friend Tony Sagami, to ask if he would write it. I have known Tony for almost 25 years. We have worked together, he has worked for me, and we have been competitors, but we’ve always been good friends.

Even though he now lives in Bangkok most of the year, we still visit regularly by email and Skype, and try to make a point of catching up in some part of the world at least twice a year. In addition to his talents as a writer, Tony brings a seasoned perspective and huge experience as a trader and investor. (Seasoned is a technical term for getting older, having made lots of instructive mistakes in your early years.) He has a way of taking my macro ideas and efficiently and effectively putting them to work. I know Yield Shark subscribers must be happy, because our renewal rates are very high by industry standards.

As I mentioned early in the letter, for contractual reasons we haven’t been able to name Tony as the editor of Yield Shark. I’m really pleased that we can do so now. Tony was recently in Dallas, and we did a short video together so that I could introduce him. You can watch the video and learn more about Tony here. You will soon be receiving information from my partners about a new newsletter that Tony will also be writing, which we are tentatively calling The Rational Bear.

San Antonio, Washington DC, Chicago, and Boston

My respite from travel will be over in a few weeks as I head to the Casey Research Summit in San Antonio, September 17-21. It actually takes place at a resort in the Hill Country north of San Antonio, which is a fun place to spend a weekend with friends. Then the end of the month will see me traveling to Washington DC for a few days.

I'll be back in Dallas in time for my 65^th birthday on October 4, and then I get to spend another two weeks at home before the travel schedule picks back up. I will make a quick trip to Chicago, then swing back to Athens, Texas, before I head on to Cambridge, Massachusetts, for conferences. There are a few other trips shaping up as well.

My time at home has been well spent, as I’m catching up on all sorts of projects, spending more time in the gym, and just enjoying being home. Surprisingly, being at home has allowed me to see more friends than usual as they’ve come through town. Dennis Gartman was in yesterday, and we spent two pleasant hours catching up over lunch. He is one of the truly consummate gentlemen in our business and a bottomless reservoir of great stories. A perfect evening would be Dennis Gartman and Art Cashin holding court at the Friends of Fermentation after the market closes. You’d just sit there and scribble notes.

The other thing about being home is that it makes me want to get on a plane and go see even more friends! Yesterday I caught up with George and Meredith Friedman on the phone, and we realized it has been well over a year since we’ve seen each other, which is unusual for us. I really enjoy them, and they are their own source of endless stories. George and Meredith travel much more than I do, and all over the world at that, doing speeches and research and the like; but we agreed that sometime in October we will make a visit happen, whoever is doing the flying. I think one of the reasons that God made planes was so that friends could see each other more often.

A special hat tip goes to my associate Worth Wray for finding and creating most of the charts for this week. Plus helping me think through the letter. He has been a huge help this last year.
You have a great week and take a friend who tells great stories to lunch. It will do wonders for your outlook on life.

Your still can’t believe negative French interest rates analyst,

The article Thoughts from the Frontline: Europe Takes the QE Baton was originally published at mauldin economics.com.

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