And when government changes its spending habits, it’s a tectonic plate move. It really will change everything. We have to recognize, even as conservatives, that — and it pains me painfully to say this — Paul Krugman is right. In the short run, stimulus money will help increase GDP and that’s what the Keynesians always want to do.
They want to improve and inspire consumer spending and get the economy cranking again. And that works 90% of the time when you’re in a normal business cycle. What Keynes really said was then, when you get back going, start running surpluses and pay down the debt. But they kind of never got around to that part. The problem is when you’re at the end of the debt supercycle you can no longer borrow money. You’re running up against the limits.
Forbes: Credit card’s maxed out.
Mauldin: Credit cards maxed out. If you want to fight the interest rates and the bond vigilantes — which I think was happening with Greece and Ireland and Portugal and is going to happen in other countries. It’ll happen in Japan. And it will come to a shore near us here in the United States. Well, we have to recognize that cutting that government spending in the short run is going to reduce GDP as well. And by short run I mean three to four quarters. It’s something we absolutely, positively have to do. We have to hit the reset button.
Another Bank Bailout
Forbes: Now on QE2, we all thought that that was a device to goose the economy. You think it’s part of the Fed effort to bail out the banks. Can you explain?
Richard Lehmann, President of Income Securities Advisor, author of the Forbes/Lehmann Income Securities Investor newsletter and the Distressed Debt Securities newsletter: Well, after 2008 the banking industry was obviously in dire straits. So, they were terribly undercapitalized because of all the mortgage write-offs they had. And the Fed basically opted to give them an out. Rather than having to go dilute their capital tremendously by issuing new shares, they went and created this artificially low, short-term borrowing rate of 25 basis points.
And with long treasuries being about 4.5% at that time, a bank was able to, with leverage, basically earn over 4% rate of return, risk free, in U.S. treasuries. Of course, you can play that game. But the risk there is that if interest rates start to move up, you need to get out fast, if you’re leveraged.
Last November, Bernanke, in effect, said that inflation is coming. And without saying that they should be getting out of the carry trade, he was in effect saying, “We’re gonna make $600 billion available to the economy for buying treasuries,” which was a way of saying, “We’re going to deflate this carry trade bubble, so don’t everybody rush to the door here at the same time.”
And we see that that policy seems to be working pretty well. Rates have not gone up significantly since the initial round of this, where a few too many people did step up. So, we saw some uptick in the race. But effectively, he is deflating that carry trade bubble. But, of course, at the expense of buying back these treasuries at prices that are going to look pretty expensive in about six months after the program’s over.
Forbes: But even so, given the fact that banks have leverage if the long bond goes from 3.5% to 4.5% to 4.75%, that’s a huge loss, isn’t is?
Lehmann: It would be if they were still in that position. But the Fed has basically held the yield at a steady rate and is taking back those treasuries at those price levels so that they’ve locked in. You think about it: They’ve earned over 4% leverage ten times. So, they’ve earned 40% for about two years. That’s a heck of a nice return.
But there was another benefit to them of doing this in that, for two years the banks have been really occupied with resolving all the mortgage problems that they had on their books. And they didn’t have a labor force to really do that. And so, effectively, by the banks employing all their assets in treasuries, they freed all their own officers, as a work force, to straighten out the mortgage that was on their books. This is why the banks weren’t lending during that time period.
Forbes: And in terms of QE2, it expires in June. What’s going to happen to the ten-year and the 30-year bond then? Is it going to go up?
Lehmann: They’ll be rising. It depends on how quickly the banks get back to lending out that money because the velocity of money now is going to start increasing as the banks lend this money out. And we can expect that those long rates, which right now are being still managed by the Fed, will seek market levels. And that’s going to be higher.
Forbes: What? 6%, 8% yields?
Lehmann: Not this year. No, I think you may see that next year. But I think it’ll go up 1% or 2% this year. And I think that from there, it’s anybody’s guess.
Short Treasuries?
Forbes: And so, would you advise investors who have the stomach for it to short treasuries?
Lehmann: Well, that’s difficult for most people to do. What I have been advising is for people to basically, between now and the end of June, get out of all of the fixed rate type of securities that they have, in terms of bonds, munis and such and go into things that are more tied to the stock market, because that’s going to be able to adjust more rapidly. So, we’ve been saying buy blue chip high dividend stocks.
Bandwidth Plays
Forbes: For instance, what gets you drooling now?
Mauldin: Commodities. New copper plates. All sorts of technologies. I like bandwidth plays, because we all want more bandwidth. The people who are watching this, they’re watching this because they’ve got bandwidth. They’ve got access to bandwidth somehow.
And the one thing that’s almost universal with everybody is they want more bandwidth and they want it cheaper.
The Priceline Story
Forbes: Now, talking about the Cloud, you’ve said, obviously, Google has a good play on it. Baidu. Priceline. How do you get Priceline?
David Eiswert, Portfolio Manager, TD Ameritrade Global Technology Fund: Well, when I think about the story of Priceline — and my analyst will tell me that I’m not doing this justice — but the story of Priceline is really outside the United States. And, really, it has to do with how Priceline is able to create inventory for assets, hotels, and then distribute them. Europe is a much more fragmented market than the United States. And so, what Priceline has done, they’ve been able to build a business in Europe around being able to aggregate inventory and deliver it to customers and, basically, be the channel to fulfill sort of disaggregated inventory much better than anybody else.
So that’s really the story of Priceline, that they’ve been successful there. They’re moving that to Asia, as well. So the idea of online travel, the idea of the Cloud, it really is the same kind of concept. These different hotel assets aggregating their product and inventory up to the Cloud and then Priceline delivering it to consumers is another way that that sort of outsourcing or integrating things with information technology is creating value.
Avoid Tech ETFs
Forbes: And you would caution people against buying ETFs of technology?
Eiswert: Yeah.
Forbes: Because it includes companies you see who are kind of getting a little long in the tooth. They’re losing their old natural monopolies. And so, Dell, Intel, Cisco, Microsoft, you think people should be looking elsewhere? What’s this huge change you see taking place?
Eiswert: Well, to be clear, when I look at those big companies, they’re not growing. In many ways, some of their businesses are being disrupted. We are sensitive to valuation. I couldn’t work at T. Rowe Price if I didn’t do my valuation work. And so, there are cases for those big companies where we could make good investment theses.
But, in general, we think about those as trades. In general, we think we can play this stock from here to here, based on valuation or a thesis in that sense. But when we think about technology overall and the history of technology, it’s really about extreme outcomes. And those extreme outcomes are driven by change and disruption.
And so when you look at an ETF in tech, you really end up disproportionately weighted to what you would call the value or trading vehicles. And you have a big underweight in what you would call the more disruptive or open-ended kind of opportunities. And so, we think missing those — in active management, our job is to catch those big opportunities. So that’s how we think about that, the relationship between those.
Scandalous ETFs
Forbes: What’s your view of ETFs?
Bill Priest, co-founder and CEO, Epoch Investment Partners: ETFs, it depends on which ones we’re talking about. I think there’s probably a scandal at some point, embedded in some of the ETF structures — particularly the ones involving commodities. Because when you actually look at the performance of these ETFs, relative to the commodity, you didn’t get the performance of the commodity. And it’s the rollover risk and the rollover assumptions that are made very often.
ETFs continue to grow, though, in terms of the use by financial advisors. It’s a fact of life. I think in the end, you would prefer to have a portfolio of real companies managed by real people. Obviously, I have a self-interest in saying that. But it’s something I actually believe.
Hipsters and Nerdsters
Forbes: You’ve made the point that — in terms of a technology — you’ve mentioned Jim Michaels, our late editor, who liked to observe that usually the moneymakers are those who use the technology, not those who create the technology. You see companies today, whether you call them tech, or consumer, or tech-consumer, like Apple, that you think have a great run — Apple, Nokia, Dolby, Garmin?
Ken Fisher, founder, chairman and CEO of Fisher Investments, Forbes columnist: Well first, going back to Michaels. You know, your family did a genius thing when it put Jim Michaels into his position at Forbes. Jim Michaels was just one of the most precious jewels in the world, and I was really lucky to have him edit me for 15 years. And lots of things that Jim Michaels did and said rubbed off on me, and always for the better.
And Jim’s point that the real winners of technology are not the makers of technology, but those who creatively figure out how to use it to create something that we feel we must have, is a point that most people don’t fundamentally get. So a lot of the companies that people think of as tech companies are really not tech companies.
Tech companies create technology — semi-conductor companies, disk drive companies, laser companies. They make function faster, cheaper, new function that no one has ever had before. Companies like Apple are intelligent consumers of technology to create consumer products for people, and are fundamentally consumer discretionary stocks that are jazzy. The title of the column was, Hipsters and Nerdsters. The nerdsters are the ones that create the technology, the hipsters are the ones that come up with the slick product that we really have to have.
Like, my granddaughter’s musical rocking chair, where she can punch the button with her fingers, and keep changing the tunes. Right? All that is is cheap technology in a toy that that the toy company figures out. And you go into a nursery today and you see this abundantly, compared to when we had young folk. And when you think of that, a company like International Gaming Technology, a company like DreamWorks — these are Garmin, these are classic consumer discretionary companies that buy technology and make nifty product. I don’t think I could live without my Garmin. Although, I used to.
Load vs. No-Load
Forbes: Another one is that, load funds and no-loads. We all know no-loads do better, but perversely, because of the load, people don’t trade it as much.
Fisher: This is a unique part of this field of behavioral finance that I’ve put a fair amount of time into for a very long time. The load makes people feel like they’re locked in. I can’t sell it because I paid this load. Or, as is done in terms of redemption load, if I sell it too soon they’ll take the load away from me; they’ll charge me this, and therefore I hold on.
So the average no-load fund investor actually only holds their funds about 18 months. Which means they’re inning and outing a lot, and as they’re inning and outing, the more you in and out — unless you’re an exquisite timer, which most people aren’t – the more you’re prone to in and out at the wrong times. And those studies have been proven heavily.
The load fund investor has a much worse vehicle because of the cost of the load, but they hold it so much longer. They actually end up doing better with a worse investment vehicle. So, my argument’s always been — my argument as I’ve said it in Forbes, and said it in Debunkery, and said it in other places — is buy a no-load fund, but make a deal with your spouse where if you’re going to sell it before seven years, you give your spouse the equivalent of a load fee to do whatever your spouse wants to do with it, any way they want. Your spouse is going to love you, and you’re going to be a better investor.
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