Diversification overrated? Not a chance by Jason Zweig
For anyone with a sustainable ability to identify the hottest investment of the moment, diversification is a mistake. But if you really believe you’ve got that ability, you’re not just mistaken. You need to be hauled off in a straitjacket to the Institute for the Treatment of Investment Insanity.
Exactly right. As we posted previously Warren Buffett’s diversification thoughts are similar
You have to remember when Warren Buffett says “professional and have confidence” he doesn’t really mean just what those words say. He mean if you are Charlie Munger, George Soros, Jimmy Rodgers and maybe 10 other people alive today (maybe I am too restrictive, maybe he would include 50 more people alive today, but I doubt it).
Related: Dilbert on Investing – investment risks – Curious Cat Investing and Economics Search Engine
How to thrive when this bear dies by Jim Jubak
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In the case of the 2000-02 bear, the initial rush after the end of the bear delivered a huge share of the 101% gain for the bull market that ran from October 2002 through October 2007. In the 16 months from the Oct. 9, 2002, low through Feb. 9, 2004, the S&P 500 gained 47%. The gains from the remaining years of the “great” bull market of the “Oughts” were rather anemic: just 9% in 2004, 3% in 2005 and 14% in 2006.
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If I’m right about the arrival of a secular bear, emerging economies and their stock markets will deliver higher returns, despite relatively slow growth, than the even more slowly growing developed economies. If I’m wrong about the secular bear, emerging economies will still deliver stronger growth than the world’s developed economies. Under either scenario, investors want to increase their exposure to the world’s emerging economies, which deliver more performance bang for less risk than most investors think.
Jim Jubak is one of my favorite investing writers. He can of course be wrong but he provides worthwhile insight, backed with research, and specific suggestions. I am also positive on the outlook for stocks (though what the next year or so hold I am less certain) and on emerging markets.
Related: Why Investing is Safer Overseas – Rodgers on the US and Chinese Economies – Beating the Market – The Growing Size of non-USA Economies – Warren Buffett’s 2004Annual Report
S&P 500 Payout Tops Bond Yield, a First Since 1958 (site broke the link, so I removed it):
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Treasuries routinely had higher yields than stocks before 1958, according to Bernstein. When this relationship came to an end, yields were near their current levels. The S&P 500 dividend yield fell 0.58 percentage point, to 3.24 percent, in the third quarter of 1958. The 10-year yield rose about the same amount, 0.6 point, to 3.80 percent.
Two explanations later emerged for the reversal, he wrote. One held that the economy’s recovery from the 1957-58 recession showed “investors could finally put to rest the widely held expectation of an imminent return to the Great Depression.” The second was the increasing popularity of investing in growth stocks, or shares of companies whose sales and earnings rose at a relatively fast pace. Because of their expansion, the companies often paid below-average dividends.
Reversal of Fortunes Between Stocks and Bonds
Arnott takes it a step further. “In a world of deleveraging, both for the financial services arena and for the economy at large, growth is less certain,” he says. “And with the economy eroding sharply, so is inflation. If stocks don’t deliver nominal growth in dividends and earnings, then their yield ‘must’ exceed the Treasury yield, in order to give us any sort of risk premium.”
Related: Corporate and Government Bond Rates Graph – Highest Possible Returns – posts on interest rates – investing strategy
Financial Markets with Professor Robert Shiller (spring 2008) is a fantastic resource from Open Yale courses: 26 webcast (also available as mp3) lectures on topics including: The Universal Principle of Risk Management, Stocks, Real Estate Finance and Its Vulnerability to Crisis, Stock Index, Oil and Other Futures Markets and Learning from and Responding to Financial Crisis (Guest Lecture by Lawrence Summers).
Robert Shiller created the repeat-sales home price index with Karl Case that is known as the Case-Shiller home price index.
Related: Berkeley and MIT courses online – Open Access Education Materials – Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog open access posts – Paul Krugman Speaks at Google
With the recent turmoil in the financial market this is a good time to look at Dollar cost averaging. The strategy is one that helps you actually benefit from market volatility simply.
You actually are better off with wild swings in stock prices, when you dollar cost average, than if they just went up .8% every single month (if both ended with stocks at the same price 20 years later). Really the wilder the better (the limit is essentially the limit at which the economy was harmed by the wild swings and people decided they didn’t want to take risk and make investments.
Here are two examples, if you invest $1,000 in a mutual fund and the price goes up every year (for this example the prices I used over 20 years: 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 30, 33, 36,39) you would end up with $40,800 and you would have invested $20,000. The mutual fund went from $10 a share to $39 over that period (which is a 7% return compounded annually for the share price). If you have the same final value but instead of the price going up every year the price was volatile (for example: 10, 11, 7, 12, 16, 18, 20, 13, 10, 16, 20, 15, 24,29, 36, 27, 24, 34, 39) you end up with more most often (in this example: $45,900).
You could actually end up with less if the price shot up well above the final price very early on and then stayed there and then dropped in the last few years. As you get close to retirement (10 years to start paying close attention) you need to adopt a strategy that is very focused on reducing risk of investment declines for your entire portfolio.
The reason you end up with more money is that when the price is lower you buy more shares. Dollar cost averaging does not guaranty a good return. If the investment does poorly over the entire period you will still suffer. But if the investment does well over the long term the added volatility will add to your return. By buying a consistent amount each year (or month…) you will buy more share when prices are low, you will buy fewer shares when prices are high and the effect will be to add to your total return.
Now if you could time the market and sell all your shares when prices peaked and buy again when prices were low you could have fantastic returns. The problem is essentially no-one has been able to do so over the long term. Trying to time the market fails over and over for huge numbers of investors. Dollar cost averaging is simple and boring but effective as long as you chose a good long term investment vehicle.
Investing to your IRA every year is one great way to take advantage of dollar cost averaging. Adding to your 401(k) retirement plan at work is another (and normally this will automatically dollar cost average for you).
Related: Does a Declining Stock Market Worry You? – Save Some of Each Raise – Starting Retirement Account Allocations for Someone Under 40 – Save an Emergency Fund
Would the Dow Dump General Motors?
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At this point, it’s not clear if the government will be willing to take on the horribly mismanaged automaker. It’s one thing to save a financial firm that continues to make money and another thing to rescue a business that for decades has been unable to control labor and legacy costs or deliver a product that consumers want. GM could be allowed to declare bankruptcy.
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But for some reason nostalgic Americans refuse to let the carmakers take a hit and learn from their mistakes. A bailout seems to be preferred. It worked so well for Chrysler.
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Is it important to the Dow editors to keep an auto presence in the index?
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And since the Dow is meant to be a barometer of the U.S. market, Toyota and Honda can’t be considered. Then again maybe they should leave a bankrupt company in the Dow. It might be the most accurate barometer of the market yet by tracking all the blue chips that have gone bankrupt.
I discussed dropping GM from the Dow Jones Industrial Average in December of 2005: “I agree removing GM makes sense, though I see no reason to wait.”
Related: Dow Jones Industrial Average Changes – Another Great Quarter for Amazon (July 2007) – Stop Picking Stocks – Curious Cat Investing Web Search
In his blog Scott Adams, author of Dilbert, provides often quite intelligent and interesting thoughts. In a recent post he wrote on investing and Diversification:
I didn’t own much in the way of stocks for the past several years, thanks to not using professional advisors. A big chunk of my money has been in California Municipal bonds of various types, and all are insured.
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In order to diversify more, I started migrating money over to the stock market during this recent plunge. The market could go a lot lower still, but this is either the beginning of the end of the United States as we know it, in which case it doesn’t matter how I invested, or it is a once-in-a-lifetime stock buying opportunity. It was an easy decision.
Related: Stock Market Decline – Warren Buffett on Diversification – Investment Allocations Make A Big Difference
On Tuesday the United States Treasury department purchased $125 billion of bank stocks becoming one of the largest stockholders in the world instantly.
$25 billion was invested in Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo.
$15 billion was invested in Bank of America and $10 billion in Merrill Lynch (which is being acquired by Bank of America).
$10 billion was invested in Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. And the treasury department invested $3 billion in Bank of New York Mellon $2 billion in State Street.
Related: Goldman Sachs Rakes In Profit in Credit Crisis (Nov 2007) – Warren Buffett Webcast on the Credit Crisis – Rodgers on the US and Chinese Economies (Feb 2008) – Credit Crisis
Buy American. I Am. by Warren Buffett:
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A simple rule dictates my buying: Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful. And most certainly, fear is now widespread, gripping even seasoned investors. To be sure, investors are right to be wary of highly leveraged entities or businesses in weak competitive positions. But fears regarding the long-term prosperity of the nation’s many sound companies make no sense.
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Let me be clear on one point: I can’t predict the short-term movements of the stock market. I haven’t the faintest idea as to whether stocks will be higher or lower a month — or a year — from now. What is likely, however, is that the market will move higher, perhaps substantially so, well before either sentiment or the economy turns up.
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Today people who hold cash equivalents feel comfortable. They shouldn’t. They have opted for a terrible long-term asset, one that pays virtually nothing and is certain to depreciate in value. Indeed, the policies that government will follow in its efforts to alleviate the current crisis will probably prove inflationary and therefore accelerate declines in the real value of cash accounts.
Equities will almost certainly outperform cash over the next decade, probably by a substantial degree.
Yet more great advice from Warren Buffett. I must admit I think buying stocks from the USA and elsewhere is wise, but there isn’t any reason to listen to me instead of him.
Related: Financial Markets Continue Panicky Behavior – Great Advice from Warren Buffett – Stock Market Decline – Warren Buffett’s 2004 Annual Report – Does a Declining Stock Market Worry You?
| Jim Rogers webcast: Fannie Mac and Freddie Mac should not have been bailed out. Jim Rogers is one of the most successful investors in the last 50 years. He and George Soros (together with the Quantum Fund) and then separately along with Warren Buffett have made the most as investors (that I know of – I could easily be wrong).
How you want to accept their opinions on the current crisis is up to you. I believe they are worth listening to – more than anyone else. That does not mean I believe they are totally right. To me the long term track record of each is very impressive. Especially Jim Rodgers and George Soros have been making big investment gains largely on macro economic predictions in the last 20 years. |
In The Dollar is Doomed (July 2008) Jim Rogers predicts the United States Federal Reserve is so badly run it will be gone in a decade or two. I disagree with that sentiment. He certainly has much more expertise than I do but in evaluating such a comment you need to look at what really matters to him. He doesn’t need the Federal Reserve to actually cease to exist to make profitable trades based on his prediction that the Federal Reserves policies are dooming the dollar.
Another thing to note with Rogers and Soros is they will make strong statements and take huge positions but will change their mind when conditions change (often quickly). So you can’t assume what they said awhile back is still their belief today.
Related: Jim Rogers: Why would anybody listen to Bernanke? – investment books – Rodgers on the US and Chinese Economies – A Bull on China