Financial Planning

Posted on by Devesh Deepak Asset Allocation, Equity, Investment, Macro-economy, Personal Finance, Prudent Investment, Sensex, Valuation

Valuation: Cyclically adjusted PE Ratio

P/E Ratio is one of the simplest valuation multiples and that is also its main shortcoming. The ratio of current price to recent last four quarters earnings is a simple but very effective tool to evaluate a stock, portfolio or market since the beginning of the stock market. The lower the PE, the less you are paying for future earnings. It’s quick and easy, hence popular. The criticism for P/E ratio is that it doesn’t account for the cyclical nature of a business or the different phases of the business cycle. Thus, P/E ratio can’t be extrapolated as price and earning of one era can’t be compared with price and earning of a different era.

The famous value investors Benjamin Graham and David Dodd, in the early 1930s in the book Security Analysis, argued that a single year’s earnings would be too volatile to evaluate a company’s real value in the marketplace. To control for cyclical effects, Graham and Dodd recommended dividing price by a multi-year average of earnings and suggested periods of five, seven or ten years. Based on that idea, Robert J. Shiller and John Y. Campbell in 1998 developed a cyclically adjusted price-to-earnings ratio (CAPE), which puts the current market price in relation to the average inflation-adjusted profits of the previous 10 years. The purpose of the 10-year observation period is to ensure that the profits are averaged over more than one earnings cycle. Shiller and Campbell’s research found a negative correlation between the CAPE ratio and the stock market performance over the next ten years. A high current CAPE ratio meant poor future stock returns.

cape

The cyclically-adjusted price-to-earnings (CAPE) ratio of a stock market is one of the standard metrics used to evaluate whether a market is overvalued, undervalued, or fairly-valued. This metric was popularized during the Dotcom Bubble when Robert Shiller, a Yale University Professor of Economics and Noble Prize winner, correctly argued that equities were highly overvalued.  For that reason, it’s also referred to as the “Shiller PE”, meaning the Shiller variant of the typical price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of stock.

Does the Shiller PE predict the future returns? In his book “Irrational Exuberance,” Shiller shows that CAPE is correlated to the subsequent 20-year annualized return after inflation. A low P/E bodes well for the next 20 years of investing, whereas a higher ‘PE 10’ suggests a lower expected return.

The GuruFocus.com has a nice article on Shiller PE – A Better Measurement of Market Valuation in which they write:

If we assume that over the long term, the Shiller PE of the market will reverse to its historical mean of $mean, the future market return will come from three parts:

  1. Contraction or expansion of the Schiller P/E to the historical mean
  2. Dividends
  3. Business growth

The investment return is thus equal to:

cape1

cape2

We don’t have much Sensex data prior to 1990 hence can’t compare our finding with the US data. Still, the above graph shows a remarkable correlation close to 80% between implied return and the actual 3 years return. For calculation, the business growth is taken as average annual GDP growth since 2000. We believe the real earning growth of composite or large-cap index tends to align with GDP growth over long-term.

Despite its value in projecting future returns over long periods of time, the Shiller PE is often misused when applied to any periods other than long ones. The elevated Shiller PE is in no way an indication that investors should sell their equities. In reality, the Shiller PE has almost no predictive value in determining where the market will go in the next year or other shorter term periods. We must emphasize the fact that valuation metrics are not a market timing tools.

In terms of shortcomings, Shiller PE is based on the false premise that earnings can be normalized using inflation only. Population growth, productivity growth, interest rates, and dividend payout ratios are all key ingredients in earnings growth and they are neglected by this ratio.

No valuation ratio is ever going to explain the market fullest. Every multiple has some positives and some negatives but the Cyclically Adjusted Price-to-Earnings ratio or “CAPE” has shown remarkable ability at least in the US market for assessing long-term future returns. However there are situations when the earnings growth is higher for reasons other than inflation, Shiller PE may give a false reading, and it will show much higher value than the reality.

Posted on by Devesh Deepak Asset Allocation, Investment, Personal Finance, Prudent Investment, Risk, Valuation

The Market Valuation: A Primer

“A cloud does not know why it moves in just such a direction and at such a speed, it feels an impulsion…this is the place to go now.

But the sky knows the reason and the patterns behind all clouds, and you will know, too, when you lift yourself high enough to see beyond horizons.”

A quote by Richard Bach

The market valuation is a topic which creates a great divide among the academician, practitioners, and investors. The market is a collection of a great number of companies, engaged in a different sector of the economy, having different financial size and their business cycles are not calibrated. We all know the stock market does not follow a pattern, the stock price movement is random and still, we want to put a number to summarise it.

Valuation is not about pricing and certainly not about market timing. But it’s equally true whatever is valued can be priced and vice versa. And the price is a factor of value and time. Valuation multiples tell you a story in numbers and how you interpret it is certainly up to you.

The valuation multiples what we are going to discuss in this blog are well-known and you will find plenty of reading materials over internet and publications. The idea of this blog is to summarise those ratios in the context of Indian stock market.

Price-to-Earning Ratio

PE ratio is simply price divided by earnings. There are a number of ways to define the ratio. It is all based on how the price and earnings are defined. Here, we defined the price as the current price of BSE Sensex and Earnings as the weighted EPS (earning per share) of the Sensex companies in most recent four quarters. Thus the ratio we are talking about is better known as trailing PE ratio.

The PE Ratio is the first and still the foremost valuation tool. The history of PE is as old as that of the markets. When the first stock exchange starts working, the market PE multiple was born. PE is based on the present value of future cash flows from companies. In non-financial terms, the inverse of PE is earnings yield, the amount you are expected to receive by investing Rs.100 in the market. Higher the PE ratio, lower the earning yields.

When we look back across the last three decades of BSE Sensex, we see a rollercoaster cycle of the market PE—vacillating from peaks above 50 in during Harshad Mehta time to troughs just above 10 in October 1998. Since stock price movements are random hence PE cycles are not symmetrical, but they are pronounced and recurring. One aspect is very clear higher the PE; lower will be the forward earning. Historically, the cut-off is 23x, beyond that even your 3 to 5 years forward returns is very dismal.

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Price-to-Book Value Ratio

Price to book value is a financial ratio used to compare a company’s book value to its current market price. The book value of an asset is the value at which the asset is carried on a balance sheet and calculated by taking the cost of an asset minus the accumulated depreciation. Book value is also the net asset value of a company, calculated as total assets minus intangible assets (patents, goodwill) and liabilities.

Value investors were always looking for low P/B ratio. Low P/B ratio not only shows low valuation but together with Return on Equity (ROE) become a potent indicator of market valuation. The ‘B’ in P/B ratio and ‘E’ in RoE are the same. You can calculate ROE by dividing net income by book value.

Return on equity (ROE) is one measure of how efficiently a company uses its assets to produce earnings. The high P/B ratio does not necessarily indicate high ROE but on an index level, the weighted average value shows a positive correlation.

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A market with a high P/E and a low P/B would be a rare combination. On an aggregate basis, the book value of the Sensex companies has risen almost twice since March 2010, whereas the total earnings of the Sensex companies have risen by only one-and-a-half times. It shows the credibility of Indian market and Economy among knowledgeable investors is high and that increase its stock price before this is reflected in quarterly earnings reports. This somewhat strange combination of ratios may indicate a still undervalued stock in the Sensex that will enjoy a substantial price run-up going forward.

BEER Ratio

The Bond Equity Earnings Yield Ratio (BEER) is a metric used to understand the relationship between bond yields and earnings yields in the stock market.

BEER = Bond Yield / Earnings Yield

Bond Yield is the yield of 10 years G-Sec and Equity yield is the inverse of the Sensex price-to-earnings ratio.

The thumb rule is to invest in stocks when BEER is less than 1 as equity yield is more than bond yield. Similarly, if BEER is more than 1, invest in bonds. Thus, a BEER of one would indicate equal levels of perceived risk in the bond market and the stock market.

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The Bond Equity Earnings Yield Ratio above 1 is not necessarily because of low earning yield from equities, it might be because of high bond yield owing to high inflation and other macro factors. In the Indian context, the bond yield is always higher than the equity yield except during the period 2002-04 and briefly in Oct 08-Apr 09, and we all know what phenomenal returns it has generated thereafter.

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The high bond yield is not just an Indian phenomenon, even in the US from 1982 till 2004; the US bond yield was above the earning yield of S&P 500.

Blog_val_5Source: CNBC

Market Cap to GDP ratio

Market Cap to GDP ratio was made famous by the legendary investor Warren Buffet. According to him, it is probably the best single measure of where valuations stand at any given moment.

This ratio in the Indian context is very nascent. Though the Bombay stock exchange has published market capitalization data since FY 2001-02 it was just end of the year value. The monthly/daily data was published only from FY 2013-14. Similarly, the quarterly GDP data is only available from FY 2004-05.

It is assumed that the price movement of stocks reflects the future earnings of the companies. Similarly, consolidated earnings of the companies reflected in the growth of country’s GDP. Hence this ratio gives an indication whether the stock market is running ahead of the curve or it is lagging behind. The fair value of this ratio is one. Any value near one is considered to be fair value.

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The average value in last 15 years is 75 pct and in last ten years, the market remains in the 60-100 pct band.

Conclusion

The major criticisms in using these multiples for valuation of a stock, asset or market are:

  • They are too simplistic and they hide more than what they divulge.
  • There is no standardization. It is defined in different ways by different users.
  • The numerator and denominator are not at the same time and space. Though price data is recent there is at least a lag of a quarter in earning, book value and GDP data.
  • No multiple captured all the four prime factors – Price, earning, interest rate and inflation.
  • These multiple are relative in nature and it has to be interpreted not with its own historical value but also in relation with other macro factors especially the fundamentals which drives these multiples.

As we said in the beginning, Valuation multiples tell you a story in numbers and how you interpret it is certainly up to you.

Lastly, as Burma born British writer H.H. Munro, better known by his pet name Saki, in his short story “Clovis on The Alleged Romance of Business” has said, “a little inaccuracy sometimes serves tons of explanation”.

 

Posted on by Devesh Deepak Asset Allocation, Diversification, Investment, Mutual Fund, Risk

Diversification – A lesson from Cricket

Indians treat Cricket not just a game but we eat, sleep and breathe cricket.  Cricketers are as popular as a movie star and every victory in the field is a festival for the masses. Since cricket is so much entrenched in our psyche that we think there is no better way but Cricket to explain the benefit of diversification in your investment portfolio. The cricket is the most watched sports in India and every other Indian claim to be the bona fide expert of the game. Even the youngster will tell, “I know my cricket as my mamma knows her household.”

But for few tyro, Wikipedia explain the game as – Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a cricket field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard-long pitch with a wicket (a set of three wooden stumps) at each end. One team bats, attempting to score as many runs as possible, whilst their opponents field. Each phase of play is called an innings. After either ten batsmen have been dismissed or a fixed number of overs have been completed, the innings ends and the two teams then swap roles. The winning team is the one that scores the most runs, including any extras gained, during their innings.

So what are the basics, there are eleven players on the field for each team during a match and every member of the team has an assigned role to play. The top order players are the batsman, the middle order consists of wicket keeper and all-rounders and lower order players are bowlers. The team has to score runs and restrict the opposition team to score as many runs as they have scored to win the match. The players who score runs are called batsman and the players who restrict the opposition team to score are called bowlers. Hence the reward is to score as many as runs you can and risk is the rival team can score more run than what you have scored.

If scoring the runs is the most important aspect of the game then why we can’t have a team with eleven specialist batsmen to maximize the rewards or eleven specialist bowlers to minimize the risk? If you ask this question even to somebody who wasn’t a big cricket fan, they could probably tell you that everyone has a job to do during any given match. If you don’t have a bowler in your team, your risk will magnify and it would be difficult for your team to restrict opponent to score more run than your team. Similarly, the team consisting of only bowlers can’t expect to score many runs and thus lose out to the opposition. This exactly explains the reason for having a diversified portfolio – as in cricket, every asset class has a specific job to do within the portfolio.

So if you are an investor trying to build a portfolio, let see what Cricket can teach you.

Go for Diversification

Holding several investments in a single asset class doesn’t mean a portfolio is well-diversified. Generally, diversification may lower risk when investments are negatively correlated, meaning their prices typically move in opposite directions. Your portfolio should be diverse enough to weather all sorts of markets – a mix of aggressive and defensive assets, such as stocks and bonds, may reduce the general risk of investing in the market. Dividend-paying blue chip stocks or mutual funds could be the core of your portfolio, while smaller growth stocks can give your portfolio speed and agility.

Diversification doesn’t mean sacrificing return

A well-balanced cricket team with six specialist batsmen and five specialist bowlers will have greater chance to win. A good all-rounder only adds the strength. Similarly, diversification may boost returns while lowering risk when compared to a single asset class. It’s possible at times that a portfolio holding separate asset classes produces a total return greater than the respective returns of each individual asset class. Since the portfolio is not subject to the volatility of a single asset class and covariance among the assets also lower the portfolio risk.

Build a core for Long Term Success

A team works best when they are built for a long period of steady success rather than a single, brilliant season. The best teams build a talented core group of players and only make changes when they need to address weaknesses in the team. M S Dhoni and Saurav Ganguly was the most successful captain of the Indian cricket team and both back their players to the hilt and gradually built a core which remains constant throughout their captaincy.

It’s the same in your portfolio. Rather than constantly rebalancing your portfolio and guessing the next winner, find some mutual funds that you like and plan to hold them for long time period. You should not obsess over whether your portfolio is up or down on a given day. Plan for the long-term; it’s better to have your portfolio perform above average over years than to have a few big years but performing sub-optimally in most of the other years.

Identify and stick with steady Manager

In the first decade of this century, we have two very successful coaches – John Wright and Gary Kirsten. In between, we also have Greg Chappell. The records of these coaches speak for themselves. Rather than firing the players after disappointing performances, the successful coaches kept faith in their long-term ability to win and stuck with them, even in the bad times. Whereas, Greg Chappell’s firing policy proves a disaster for Indian cricket team.

An investor should do well to analyse the performance of the fund house instead concentrating on a single scheme. One should not quit a fund if it is going through a rough patch. A steady, successful fund management team always pull out of rubbles and steer the fund back to its winning way by adhering to winning strategies, putting up good numbers in the long run. The track record matters and investing in a hotshot new manager with no track record can be risky.

Conclusion

The great team doesn’t build in a jiffy; it takes years and load of patience. Even the best team loses sometime hence one should not lose sleep if your portfolio gives negative returns when market capsizes. We all are well aware of the history of US stock market crash of 1929. Some investors must have first-hand experiences during market meltdown in 1999 and 2008. The reality is that some market crashes are so sudden that even the most diversified portfolios suffer. Risk can only be minimised, can’t be wished away. However, portfolio diversification may stabilise risk to help lower a portfolio’s sensitivity to market volatility.

 

 

Posted on by TeamGenus Asset Allocation, Investment, Mutual Fund, Risk

White Paper – Investment Plan

One of the parts of developing a comprehensive financial plan is the development of an investment plan. Investment Planning is the process of finding the right mix of investment option based on your future goals, time horizon, and risk profile. There are six steps that you should follow when you are developing your investment plan.

The Means to Invest

In order to even begin this portion of your financial plan, you must determine that you are ready to invest. In this step, you will determine if you are going to use the money for some good or service (spend it), or if you will invest or save the money.

Investment Time Horizon

In this step, you will be determining how long you plan to invest and when you will need the funds to meet your financial objective(s). You must decide, based on the time horizon of your objectives, among short-term investments, long-term investments or some combination. In this step, you are going to be determining what you will be saving for, which should give some indication of your time horizon.

Risk and Return

You will need to determine what your level of risk tolerance is. As the level of risk tolerance increases so does the potential for higher returns as well as larger losses.

Investment Selection

Based on 1, 2 and 3 above, investments should be selected to meet your goals. These investments must satisfy your time horizon and your risk tolerance.

Evaluate Performance

Once investments are chosen and expectations are established, the performance of your investments should be determined by comparing the actual realized returns against the expected returns. The returns should also be compared to a benchmark, such as the Sensex or Nifty index. In addition, the investments should be reevaluated to determine if they continue to meet your investment criteria.

Adjust Your Portfolio

Your portfolio should be adjusted to maintain your goals and your investment criteria. If your goals change, your investments should be reviewed to determine if they continue to meet your objectives.

Benefits of Investment Planning

 Investment planning helps you:

  • Generate income and/or capital gains.
  • Enhance your future wealth.
  • Strengthen your investment portfolio.
  • Save on taxes.

Investment Strategies – Passive vs. Active Strategy

Passive

Passive strategies do not seek to outperform the market but simply to do as well as the market. The emphasis is on minimizing transaction costs and time spent in managing the portfolio because any expected benefits from active trading or analysis are likely to be less than the costs. Passive investors act as if the market is efficient and accept the consensus estimates of return and risk, accepting the current market price as the best estimate of a security’s value.

A buy-and-hold strategy means exactly that – an investor buys fund or stock and basically holds them until some future time in order to meet some objective. The emphasis is on avoiding transaction costs, additional search costs, and so forth. The investor believes that such a strategy will, over some period of time, produce results as good as alternatives that require active management whereby some securities are deemed not satisfactory, sold, and replaced with other securities. These alternatives incur transaction costs and involve inevitable mistakes.

Active

An active strategy involves shifting sector weights in the portfolio in order to take advantage of those sectors that are expected to do relatively better and avoid or de-emphasize those sectors that are expected to do relatively worse. Investors employing this strategy are betting that particular sectors will repeat their price performance relative to the current phase of the business and credit cycle.

Most of the Mutual funds in India are actively managed. The goal of active management is to beat a particular benchmark. Because the markets are inefficient, the anomalies and irregularities in the capital markets are exploited by the active fund manager. Prices react to information slowly enough to allow skillful investors to systematically outperform the market.

Building an Investment Portfolio

Asset Allocation

Investors often consider the investment decision as consisting of two steps:

  1. Asset allocation
  2. Fund selection

The asset allocation decision refers to the allocation of portfolio assets to broad asset markets; in other words, how much of the portfolio’s funds are to be invested in stocks, how much in bonds, money market assets, and so forth. Each weight can range from zero percent to 100 percent.

The asset allocation decision may be the most important decision made by an investor.

The rationale behind this approach is that different asset classes offer various potential returns and various levels of risk, and the correlation coefficients may be quite low.

Portfolio construction involves the selection of securities or mutual funds to be included in the portfolio and the determination of portfolio weights. The Modern Portfolio theory provides the basis for a scientific portfolio construction that results in efficient portfolios. An efficient portfolio is one with the highest level of expected return for a given level of risk or the lowest risk for a given level of expected return.

Asset Classes

Portfolio construction begins with the basic building blocks of asset classes, which are the following major categories of investments:

  • Cash (or cash equivalents such as money market funds)
  • Stocks
  • Bonds
  • Real Estate (including Real Estate AIF)
  • Commodity, bullion or others

Each investor must determine which of these major categories of investments is suitable for him/her. The next step is to determine which percentage of total investable assets should be allocated to each category deemed appropriate.

Risk Reduction in the Portfolio

Diversification

One has to remember that no investment is Risk-free. Every investment has the potential gain as well as losses. The diversification is not a guarantee against any potential loss. Based on your goals, time horizon, and tolerance for volatility, diversification may provide the potential to improve returns for that level of risk.

A diversified portfolio is built by a judicious mix of assets—stocks, bonds, cash, or others—whose returns haven’t historically moved in the same direction, and to the same degree. This way, even if a portion of your portfolio is declining, the rest of your portfolio, hopefully, is growing. The intention of using this strategy is that the loss incurred due to the negative performance of a particular asset class is partially or wholly offset by gains via the positive performance of another asset class. Another important aspect of building a well-diversified portfolio is that you try to stay diversified within each type of investment.

Modern Portfolio Theory

Covariance is a measure of the co-movements between securities returns used in the calculation of portfolio risk. We could analyze how security returns move together by considering the correlation coefficient, a measure of association learned in statistics.

As used in portfolio theory, the correlation coefficient is a statistical measure of the relative co-movements between security returns. It measures the extent to which the returns on any two securities are related; however, it denotes only association, not causation. It is a relative measure of association that is bounded by +1.0 and -1.0, with

Pi,j = +1.0, perfect positive correlation

Pi,j = -1.0, perfect negative (inverse) correlation

Pi,j = 0.0, zero correlation

With perfect positive correlation, the returns have a perfect direct linear relationship. Knowing what the return on one security will do allows an investor to forecast perfectly what the other will do.

With perfect negative correlation, the securities’ returns have a perfect inverse linear relationship to each other.

With zero correlation, there is no relationship between the returns on the two securities. Knowledge of the return on one security is of no value in predicting the return of the second security.

Rupee Cost Averaging

The systematic investment with mutual funds, along with consistent periodic new purchases of the mutual fund, creates risk reduction by creating a lower cost per unit owned over time. This is known as rupee cost averaging. This strategy allows one to take away the guesswork of trying to time the market. You invest a fixed amount of money at a regular interval, regardless of whether the market is high or low. By doing so, you buy fewer units when the prices are high and more units when the prices are low. Because rupee cost averaging involves regular investments during periods of fluctuating prices, you should consider your financial ability to continue investing when price levels are low. However, this approach reduces the effects of market fluctuation on the average price you pay for your shares. Additionally, it helps you maintain a regular investing plan.

Conclusion

Even the best-laid investment plan will fail if you can’t control your behaviour.  That’s one of the biggest reasons for keeping your disciplined investment strategy as simple as possible.

It’s much easier to control how you behave with a simple strategy since you won’t be tempted to jump in and out of the market or find the next best investment trend.  And basing your decisions on complex and structured products won’t keep you in your plan when turmoil hits.

There is enough statistical evidence to suggest that if you invest regularly for a long term, your money will grow on a consistent basis.

References

  1. Investments: Analysis and Management by  Charles P. Jones

  2. US SEC