Fed shuffles from ZIRP to NIRP

Inflation is fading; the economies of Asia, South America and Europe are collapsing; the people have tasked the central banks with fixing all things economic. Yet, reports by Fed economists show that the recent rounds of money printing through QE and low interest rates for six haven’t had the intended effect. They have certainly failed in Japan and the Big EZ (Euro Zone). What can they do to turn the world’s economies around? The answer from mainstream economists at the world’s central banks is more of the same. But if continuing to do the same thing while expecting different results is a sign of insanity?

Target date funds need good vibrations

Another fad in investing, like “smart” beta, is target date funds that allocate assets in an investor’s portfolio by the investor’s age. Target date funds follow an ancient concept: put most of your money, say 90%, in the stock market while you’re young because you’ll have the time to recover from market collapses. But as you get older you have less time to recover so you reallocate to bonds and cash while keeping just half your funds in the market. In the past, most advisers recommended getting completely out of stocks and into bonds, but the ridiculously low returns on bonds has forced older people to take greater risks and stay in the stock market longer.

Good management makes for great investing

Investors with the time will want to imitate Warren Buffet and invest in a few good companies rather than put up with a host of losers in an index fund, but analyzing individual companies in the way that Ben Graham taught is time consuming. Several experts have developed algorithms that examine financial data that helps weed out the worst.

But if an investor is going to marry a business he must become familiar with the quality of its management. Good management can turn a bad company around and value investors often want to buy shares in a company when it has hit rock bottom and has the potential to turn around.

Currency wars round three

I finally got around to reading James Rickards’ 2011 book Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis and really enjoyed most of it.

The best parts are the history of the currency wars, Currency War I (1921-1936), Currency War II (1967-1987) and the launch of Currency War III in 2010 that still rages. War III will likely finish in the same way that the previous ones did but Rickards suggests far more disastrous results.

As Rickards explains, currency wars are a continuation of the ancient mercantilist economics that Adam Smith tried to drive a silver stake into the heart of but failed. Like vampires, mercantilism will live forever by hibernating in the dark places of economic thought and springing to life in tragedies, and that vampire has bitten most mainstream economists.

Myths of discounted cash flow

Discounted cash flow (DCF) is the adjustable wrench of modern financial mechanics. Essentially, the analyst forecasts the revenue and costs for several years out and applies an appropriate discount, or interest rate, to calculate what those future dollars are worth today. The process is supposed to provide a hard number for the current worth of the company.

But as many of us recognized in college, there is a lot of room for wiggle in the process. Forecasting revenues and costs is tricky and always based on assumptions. An optimistic analyst might generate a rosy forecast while a pessimist may predict gloom and doom. Usually, analysts just assume the future will look like the past, which is always a dangerous assumption. How many oil analysts saw the recent collapse in oil prices as a result of projecting the past into the future?

New York manufacturing stumbles

In the Ricardo Effect, Hayek’s chief contribution to the Austrian business-cycle theory (ABCT), the turning point in the cycle from expansion to recession happens when the makers of consumer goods and services employee more workers and buy less equipment. Equipment makers face plummeting sales and rising costs for materials and labor, and therefore a profits squeeze. So they cut back on production.

Signs of that may have appeared in New York. The New York Federal Reserve released its August 2015 Empire State Manufacturing Survey reporting that the index fell to -14.9, its lowest level since 2009 in the depths of the latest recession. Naturally, economists had expected the number to be +3.86. A positive number suggests growth ahead and you can guess what negative numbers mean.

Don’t drink the Schwab Kool-Aid

The Schwab Center for Financial Research recently published an article intended to tranquilize investor nerves after the latest volatility and keep them shoveling funds into the stock market. “Schwab’s Perspective on Recent Market Volatility” begins with “Global markets may have swung wildly in recent days, but we think the recent selloff in stocks and commodities is not a sign of imminent global recession.”

I’m picking on Schwab because they are big and can take it, but they have said nothing that almost all mainstream financial service firms aren’t saying. Also, Schwab put their piece in nice bullet points that are easy to address. I’ll take them on one at a time:

1. The basics of investing have not changed.

They should change because the received wisdom is to always buy, never sell and just swallow the bitter pill of a major market decline. Instead, investors should try to time the market by getting out of stocks before a recession hits.