January 2019 Data Update 2: The Message from Bond Markets!

I must admit that I don't pay as much attention to fixed income markets, as I do to equity markets, other than to use numbers from the markets as inputs when I value companies or look at equity markets. This year, I decided to look at bond market movements, both in the sovereign bond and corporate bond markets for two reasons. First, bond markets offer predictive information about future economic growth and inflation, and since one of the big uncertainties for equities going into the new year is whether the economy could go into recession, it is worth paying attention to what bond investors are telling us. Second, one of the stories in the equity market during 2018 was that the price of risk, in the form of an equity risk premium, rose and became more volatile, and it makes sense to look at whether the price of risk in the bond market, taking the form of default spreads, also exhibited the same characteristics. Bear in mind, though, that the bond market is not my natural habitat and if you are a fixed income trader or an interest rate prognosticator or even a Fed Watcher, you may find my reasoning to be simplistic and perhaps even wrong.

The US Treasury Market

The place to start any assessment of interest rates is the US treasury market, with it range of offerings, both in terms of maturity (from 1 month to 30 year) and form (nominal and real). When valuing equities on an intrinsic value basis, it is the long term US treasury that is your opportunity cost (since your cash flows on equity are also long term in intrinsic value) and the ten-year US treasury bond rate is my input. (The 30-year US treasury may actually be better suited to equities, from a maturity perspective, but has less reliable history, more illiquid and subject to behaving in strange ways). The path of the US 10-year T. Bond on a daily basis is captured in the graph below:

At the start of the year, I had argued that there was a good chance that the 10-year T. Bond would hit 3.5% over the course of the year, but after reaching 3.24% on November 8, the rate dropped back in the last quarter, to end the year at 2.69%.  

Returns on T. Bonds and Historical Premiums

If you bought ten-year treasury bonds on January 1, 2018, the rise in the T.Bond rate translated into a price drop of 2.43%, effectively wiping out the coupon you would have earned and resulting in a return for the year of -0.02%. The consolation price is that you would have still done better than investing in US stocks over the year and generating a return of -4.23%. Updating the historical numbers for the United States, here is the updated score on what US stocks have earned, relative to T.Bonds and T.Bills over time:

Download historical annual returns

There is no denying that historically stocks have delivered higher returns that treasuries, but as we saw in the last quarter this year, it is compensation for the risk that you face. 

The Yield Curve Flattens

The big story over the course of the year was the flattening of the yield curve, with short term rates rising over the course of the year; the 3-month T.Bill rate rose from 1.44% on January 1, 2018 to 2.45%on December 31, 2018 and the 2-year US treasury bond rate rose from 1.92% on January 1, 2018 to 2.42% on December 31, 2018. The yield curve flattening is shown in the graph below:

By December, a portion of the yield curve inverted, with 5-year rates dropping below 2-year and 3-year rates, leading to a flood of stories about inverted yield curves predicting recessions. I did post on this question a few weeks ago, and while I will not rehash my arguments, I noted that the slope of the yield curve and economic growth are only loosely connected.

The TIPs Rate and Inflation

Finally, I  looked at the rate on the inflation protected 10-year US treasury bond over the course of the year, in relation to the US 10-year bond. 

Note that the difference between these 10-year T.Bond rate and the 10-year TIPs rate is a market measure of expected inflation over the next ten years. Over the course of 2018, the "expected inflation" rate has stayed within a fairly tight bound, ranging from a low of 1.70% to a high of 2.18%. In fact, if the return on inflation was on investor minds, the memo seems to have not reached this part of the bond market, with expected inflation decreasing over the course of the year.

What now?

At the start of last year, when investors were expecting much stronger growth in the economy and had just seen a drop in corporate tax rates, the debate was about how much the US treasury bond rate would climb over the course of 2018. As we saw in the section above, the 10-year US treasury bond rate did rise, but only moderately so, perhaps because there was a dampening of optimism about future growth in the last quarter. That said, the Federal Reserve and its chair, Jerome Powell, are still the focus of attention for some investors, obsessed with what the central bank will or will not do next year.  

Intrinsic Riskfree Rates

As some of you have read this blog know well, I am skeptical about how much power the Fed has to move interest rates, especially at the long end of the spectrum, and the economy. To get perspective on the level and direction of long term interest rates, I find it more useful to construct what I call an intrinsic risk free rate by adding together the inflation rate and real GDP growth rate each year. The figure below provides the long term comparison of the actual treasury bond rate and the intrinsic version of it:

Download raw data

There are two versions of the intrinsic risk free rate that I report, one using just the current year;'s inflation and real growth and one using a ten-year average of inflation and real GDP growth, which I will termed the smoothed intrinsic risk free rate. This graph explains the main reasons why interest rates dropped after 2008, very low inflation and anemic growth. As growth and inflation have picked up in the last two years, the treasury bond rate has stayed stubbornly low, and for those who blame the Fed for almost everything that happens, this was a period during which the Fed was raising the Fed Funds rate, the only interest rate it directly controls, and scaling back on quantitative easing. At the end of 2018, the treasury bond rate (2.68%) lagged the contemporaneous intrinsic risk free rate (5.54%) by 2.86% and the smoothed rate (3.58%) by 0.90%.

Reading the Tea Leaves

What does this all mean? I am no bond market soothsayer, but I see two possible explanations. One is that the bond market is right and that expected growth in the next few years will drop dramatically. The other is that bond market investors are being much too pessimistic about future growth, and that rates will rise as the realization hits them.  I believe that the truth falls in the middle. Nominal growth in the US economy will drop off from its 2018 levels, but not to the levels imputed by the bond market today, and treasury bond rates will rise to reflect that reality. In the absence of a crystal ball, I will hazard a guess that the US 10-year treasury bond rate will rise to 3.5%, the smoothed out intrinsic rate, by the end of the year, and that GDP growth will drop by a percent (in nominal and real terms) from 2018 levels. As with all my macroeconomics predictions, this comes with a  money back guarantee, which explains why I do this for free.

The US Corporate Bond Market

If the government bond rate offers signals about future inflation and expected growth in the economy, the corporate bond market sends its own messages about the economy, and specifically about risk and its price. In particular, the spread between a US $ corporate bond and the US Treasury bond of equivalent maturity is the price of risk in the bond market. To see how this measure moved over the course of the year, I looked at the yields on a Aaa. Baa and Can 10-year corporate bonds (Moody's) relative to the US 10-year treasury  bond over the course of the year:

As with the equity risk premium, default spreads widened over the course of the year for all bond ratings classes, but more so for the lower ratings. Also, similar to the pattern in equity markets, all of the widening in the equity risk premium happened in the last quarter of 2018. In fact, the intraday volatility of default spreads increased in October, mirroring what was happening in the equity market. In a later update, I will be looking at country risk, using sovereign default spreads as one measure of that risk. These default spreads also widened in 2018, setting the stage for higher country risk premiums. All in all, 2018 saw the price of risk go up in both the equity and debt markets, and not surprisingly, companies will see higher costs of capital as a consequence.

Bottom Line

For the most part, the bond and stock markets were singing from the same song book this year. Both markets started the year, expecting continued strength in the economy, but both became less upbeat about economic prospects towards the end of the year. For stock markets, this translated into expectations of lower earnings growth and stock prices, and for bond markets, its showed up as lower treasury bond rates and higher default spreads. Investors in both markets became more wary about risk and demanded higher prices for taking risk, with higher equity risk premiums in the stock market and higher default spreads in the bond market. 

YouTube Video

Datasets

1. Historical Returns on Stocks, T. Bonds and T.Bills - 1928 to 2018
2. T. Bond Rates, Inflation and Real Growth - 1953 to 2018
3. Corporate Bond Default Spreads - Start of 2019

January 2019 Data Updates

1. Data Update 1: A Reminder that equities are risky, in case you forgot!
2. Data Update 2: The Message from Bond Markets
3. Data Update 3: Playing the Numbers Game
4. Data Update 4: The Many Faces of Risk
5. Data Update 5: Of Hurdle Rates and Funding Costs!
6. Data Update 6: Profitability and Value Creation!
7. Data Update 7: Debt, neither poison nor nectar!
8. Data Update 8: Dividends and Buybacks - Fact and Fiction!
9. Data Update 9: Playing the Pricing Game!

Read More

Is there a signal in the noise? Yield Curves, Economic Growth and Stock Prices!

The title of this post is not original and draws from Nate Silver's book on why so many predictions in politics, sports and economics fail. It reflects the skepticism with which I view many 'can't fail" predictors of economic growth or stock markets, since they tend to have horrendous track records. Over the last few weeks, as markets have gyrated, market commentators have been hard pressed to explain day-to-day swings, but that has not stopped them from trying. The explanations have shifted and morphed, often in contradictory ways, but few of them have had staying power. On Tuesday (December 4), as the Dow dropped 800 points, following a 300-point up day on Monday, the experts found a new reason for the market drop, in the yield curve, with an "inverted yield curve", or at least a portion of one, predicting an imminent recession. As with all market rules of thumb, there is some basis for the rule, but there are shades of gray that can be seen only by looking at all of the data.

Yield Curves over time

The yield curve is a simple device, plotting yields across bonds with different maturities for a given issuing entity. US treasuries, historically viewed as close to default free, provide the cleanest measure of the yield curve,  and the graph below compares the US treasury yield curve at the start of every year from 2009 to 2018, i.e., the post-crisis years:

Treasury.gov: Daily Treasury yield curve

The yield curve has been upward sloping, with yields on longer term maturities higher than yields on short term maturities, every year, but it has flattened out the last two years. On December 4, 2018, the yields on treasuries of different maturities were as follows:

Treasury.gov: Daily Treasury yield curve

The market freak out is in the highlighted portion, with 5-year rates being lower (by 0.01-0.02%) than 2-year or 3-year rates, creating an inverted portion of the yield curve. 

Yield Curves and Economic Growth: Intuition

To understand yield curves, let's start with a simple economic proposition. Embedded in every treasury rate are expectations of expected inflation and expected real real interest rates, and the latter

Interest Rate = Expected Inflation Rate + Expected Real Interest Rate

Over much of the last century, the US treasury yield curve has been upward sloping, and the standard economic rationalization for it is a simple one. In a market where expectations of inflation are similar for the short term and the long term, investors will demand a "maturity premium" (or a higher real interest rate) for buying longer term bonds, thus causing the upward tilt in the yield curve.  That said, there have been periods where the yield curve slopes downwards, and to understand why this may have a link with future economic growth, let's focus on the mechanics of yield curve inversions. Almost every single yield curve inversion historically, in the US,  has come from the short end of the curve rising significantly, not a big drop in long term rates. Digging deeper, in almost every single instance of this occurring, short term rates have risen because central banks have hit the brakes on money, either in response to higher inflation or an overheated economy. You can see this in the chart below, where the Fed Funds rate (the Fed's primary mechanism for signaling tight or loose money) is graphed with the 3 month, 2 year and 10 year rates:

Interest Rate Raw Data

As you can see in this graph, the rises in short term rates that give rise to each of the inverted yield curve episodes are accompanied by increases in the Fed Funds rate. To the extent that the Fed's monetary policy action (of raising the Fed funds rate) accomplishes its objective of slowing down growth, the yield slope metric becomes a stand-in for the Fed effect on the economy, with a more positive slope associated with easier monetary policy. You may or may not find any of these hypotheses to be convincing, but the proof is in the pudding, and the graph below, excerpted from a recent Fed study, seems to indicate that there has been a Fed effect in the US economy, and that the slope of the yield curve has operated as proxy for that effect:

Federal Reserve of San Francisco

The track record of the inverted yield curve as a predictor of recessions is impressive, since it has preceded the last eight recessions, with only only one false signal in the mid-sixties. If this graph holds, and December 4 was the opening salvo in a full fledged yield curve invasion, the US economy is headed into rough waters in the next year.

Yield Curves and Economic Growth: The Data

The fact that every inversion in the last few decades has been followed by a recession will strike fear into the hearts of investors, but is it that fool proof a predictor? Perhaps, but given that the yield curve slope metrics and economic growth are continuous, not discrete, variables, a more complete assessment of the yield curve's predictive power for the economy would require that we look at the strength of the link between the slope of the yield curve (and not just whether it is inverted or not) and the level of economic growth (and not just whether it is positive or negative).

To begin this assessment, I looked at the rates on  three-month and one-year T.Bills and the two, five and ten-year treasury bonds at the end of every quarter from 1962 through the third quarter of 2018:

Interest Rate Raw Data

Following up, I look at five yield curve metrics (1 year versus 3 month, 2 year versus 3 month, 5 year versus 2 year, 10 year versus 2 year and 10 year versus 3 month), on a quarterly basis from 1962 through 2018, with an updated number for December 4, 2018. 

Interest Rate Raw Data

For the most part, the yield curve metrics move together, albeit at different rates. I picked four measures of the spread, one short term (1 year versus 3 month), one medium term (5 year versus 2 year) and two long term (10 year versus 2 year, 10 year versus 3 month) and plotted them against GDP growth in the next quarter and the year after. 

Interest Rate Raw Data

The graph does back up what the earlier Fed study showed, i.e., that negatively sloped yield curves have preceded recessions, but even a cursory glance indicates that the relationship is weak. Not only does there seem to be no relationship between how downwardly sloped the yield curve is and the depth of the recessions that follow, but in periods where the yield curve is flat or mildly positive, subsequent economic growth is unpredictable. To get a little more precision into the analysis, I computed the correlations between the different yield curve slope metrics and GDP growth:

Taking a closer look at the data, here is what I see;

1. It is the short end that has predictive power for the economy: Over the entire time period (1962-2018), the slope of the short end of the yield curve is positively related with economic growth, with more upward sloping yield curves connected to higher economic growth in subsequent time periods. The slope at the long end of the yield curve, including the widely used differential between the 10-year and 2-year rate not only is close to uncorrelated with economic growth (the correlation is very mildly negative).
2. Even that predictive power is muted: Over the entire time period, even for the most strongly linked metric (which is the 2 year versus 1 year), the correlation is only 29%, for GDP growth over the next year, suggesting that there is significant noise in the prediction. 
3. And 2008 may have been a structural break: Looking only at the last ten years, the relationship seems to have reversed sign, with flatter yield curves, even at the short end, associated with higher real growth. This may be a hangover from the slow economic growth in the years after the crisis, but it does raise red flags about using this indicator today.

How do you reconcile these findings with both the conventional wisdom that inverted yield curves are negative indicators of future growth and the empirical evidence that almost every inversion is followed by a recession? It is possible that it is the moment of inversion that is significant, perhaps as a sign of the Fed's conviction, and that while the slope of the yield curve itself may not be predictive, that moment that the yield curve inverts remains a strong indicator. 

Yield Curves and Stock Returns

As investors, your focus is often less on the economy, and more on stock prices. After all, strong economies don't always deliver superior stock returns, and weak ones can often be accompanied by strong market performance. From that perspective, the question becomes what the slope of the yield curve and inverted yield curves tell you about future stock returns,  not economic growth. I begin the analysis by looking at yield curve metrics over time, graphed against return on US stocks in the next quarter and the next year:

Interest Rate Raw Data

If you see a pattern here, you are a much better chart reader than I am. I therefore followed up the analysis by replicating the correlation table that I reported in the economic growth section, but looking at stock returns in subsequent periods, rather than real GDP growth:

As with the economic growth numbers, if there is any predictive power in the yield curve slope, it is at the short end of the curve and not the long end. And as with the growth numbers, the post-2008 time period is a clear break from the overall numbers.

What does all of this mean for investors today? I think that we may be making two mistakes. One is to take a blip on a day (the inversion in the 2 and 5 year bonds on December 4) and read too much into it, as we are apt to do when we are confused or scared. It is true that a portion of the yield curve inverted, but if history is any guide, its predictive power for the economy is weak and for the market, even weaker. The other is that we are taking rules of thumb developed in the US in the last century and assuming that they still work in a  vastly different economic environment. 

Bottom Line

There is information in the slope of the US treasury yield curve, but I think that we need to use it with caution. In my view, the flattening of the yield curve in the last two years has been more good news than bad, an indication that we are coming out of the low growth mindset of the post-2008 crisis years. However, I also think that the stalling of the US 10-year treasury bond rate at 3% or less is sobering, a warning that investors are scaling back growth expectations for both the global and US economies, going into 2019. The key tests for stocks lie in whether they can not only sustain earnings growth, in the face of slower economic growth and without the tailwind of a tax cut (like they did last year), but also in whether they can continue to return cash at the rates that they have for the last few years.

YouTube Video


Data

1. Raw data on US treasury rates, GDP growth and Stock Returns

Read More

Interest Rates and Stock Prices: It's Complicated!

Jerome Powell, the new Fed Chair, was on Capitol Hill on February 27, and his testimony was, for the most part, predictable and uncontroversial. He told Congress that he believed that the economy had strengthened over the course of the last year and that the Fed would continue on its path of "raising rates". Analysts have spent the next few days reading the tea leaves of his testimony, to decide whether this would translate into three or four rate hikes and what this would mean for stocks. In fact, the blame for the drop in stocks over the last four trading days has been placed primarily on the Fed bogeyman, with protectionism providing an assist on the last two days. While there may be an element of truth to this, I am skeptical about any Fed-based arguments for market increases and decreases, because I disagree fundamentally with many about how much power central banks have to set interest rates, and how those interest rates affect value.

1. The Fed's power to set interest rates is limited

I have repeatedly pushed back against the notion that the Fed or any central bank somehow sets market interest rates, since it really does not have the power to do so. The only rate that the Fed sets  directly is the Fed funds rate, and while it is true that the Fed's actions on that rate send signals to markets, those signals are fuzzy and do not always have predictable consequences. In fact, it is worth noting that the Fed has been hiking the Fed Funds rate since December 2016, when Janet Yellen's Fed initiated this process, raising the Fed Funds rate by 0.25%. In the months since, the effects of the Fed Fund rate changes on long term rates is debatable, and while short term rate have gone up, it is not clear whether the Fed Funds rate is driving short term rates or whether market rates are driving the Fed.

It is true that post-2008, the Fed has been much more aggressive in buying bonds in financial markets in its quantitative easing efforts to keep rates low. While that was  started as a response to the financial crisis of 2008, it continued for much of the last decade and clearly has had an impact on interest rates. To those who would argue that it was the Fed, through its Fed Funds rate and quantitative easing policies that kept long term rates low from 2008-2017, I would beg to differ, since there are two far stronger fundamental factors at play - low or no inflation and anemic real economic growth. In the graph below, I have the treasury bond rate compared to the sum of inflation and real growth each year, with the difference being attributed to the Fed effect:

Download spreadsheet with raw data

You have seen me use this graph before, but my point is a simple one. The Fed is less rate-setter, when it comes to market interest rates, than rate-influencer, with the influence depending upon its credibility. While rates were low in the 2009-2017 time period, and the Fed did play a role (the Fed effect lowered rates by 0.77%), the primary reasons for low rates were fundamental. It is for that reason that I described the Fed Chair as the Wizard of Oz, drawing his or her power from the perception that he or she has power, rather than actual power. That said, the Fed effect at the start of 2018, as I noted in a post at the beginning of the year, is larger than it has been at any time in the last decade, perhaps setting the stage for the tumult in stock and bond markets in the last few weeks. 

To examine more closely the relationship between moves in the Fed Funds rate and treasury rates, I collected monthly data on the Fed Funds rate, the 3-month US treasury bill rate and the US 10-year treasury bond rate every month from January 1962 to February 2018. The raw data is at the link below, but I regressed the changes in both short term and long term treasuries against changes in the Fed funds rate in the same month:

Looking at these regressions, here are some interesting conclusions that emerge:

1. Short term T.Bill rates and the Fed Funds rate move together strongly: The result backs up the intuition that the Fed Funds rate and the short term treasury rate are connected strongly, with an R-squared of 56.5%; a 1% increase in the Fed Funds rate is accompanied by a 0.62% increase in the T.Bill rate, in the same month. Note, though, that this regression, by itself, tells you nothing about the direction of the effect, i.e., whether higher Fed funds rates lead to higher short term treasury rates or whether higher rates in the short term treasury bill market lead the Fed to push up the Fed Funds rate. 
2. T.Bond rates move with the Fed Funds rate, but more weakly: The link between the Fed Funds rate and the 10-year treasury bond rate is mush weaker, with an R-squared of 6.7%; a 1% increase in the Fed Funds rate is accompanied by a 0.19% increase in the 10-year treasury bond rate. 
3. T. Bill rates lead, Fed Funds rates lag: Regressing changes in Fed funds rates against changes in T.Bill rates in the following period, and then reversing direction and regressing changes in T.Bill rates against changes in the Fed Funds rate in the following period, provide clues to the direction of the relationship. At least over this time period, and using monthly changes, it is changes in T.Bill rates that lead changes in Fed Funds rates more strongly, with an R squared of 23.7%, as opposed to an R-squared of 9% for the alternate hypothesis. With treasury bond rates, there is no lagged effect of Fed funds rate changes (R squared of zero), while changes in T.Bond rates do predict changes in the Fed Funds rate in the subsequent period. The Fed is more a follower of markets, than a leader. 

The bottom line is that if you are trying to get a measure of how much treasury bond rates will change over the next year or two, you will be better served focusing more on changes in economic fundamentals and less on Jerome Powell and the Fed.

2. The relationship between interest rates and stock market value is complicated

When interest rates go up, stock prices should go down, right? Though you may believe or have been told that the answer is obvious, that higher interest rates are bad for stock prices, the answer is not straight forward. To understand why people are drawn to the notion that higher rates are bad for value, all you need to do is go back to the drivers of stock market value:

As you can see in this picture, holding all else constant, and raising long term interest rates, will increase the discount rate (cost of equity and capital), and reduce value. That assessment, though, is built on the presumption that the forces that push up interest rates have no effect on the other inputs into value - the equity risk premium, earnings growth and cash flows, a dangerous delusion, since these variables are all connected together to a macro economy.

Note that almost any macro economic change, whether it be a surge in inflation, an increase in real growth or a global crisis (political or economic) affects earnings growth, T.Bond rates and the equity risk premiums, making the impact on value indeterminate, until you have worked through the net effect. To illustrate the interconnections between earnings growth rates, equity risk premiums and macroeconomic fundamentals, I looked at data on all of the variables going back to 1961:

Download spreadsheet with raw data

The co-movement in the variables and their sensitivity to macro economic fundamentals is captured in the correlation table. Higher inflation, over this period, is accompanied by higher earnings growth but also increases equity risk premiums and suppresses real growth, making its net effect often more negative than positive. Higher real economic growth, on the other hand, by pushing up earnings growth rate and lowering equity risk premiums, has a much more positive effect on value.

3. Value has to be built around a consistent narrative

In my post from February 10, right after the last market meltdown, I offered an intrinsic valuation model for the S&P 500, with a suggestion that you fill in your inputs and come up with your own estimate of value. Some of you did take me up on my offer, came up with inputs, and entered them into a shared Google spreadsheet and, in your collective wisdom, the market was overvalued by about 3.34% in mid-February. While making assumptions about risk premiums, earnings growth and the treasury bond rate, I should have emphasized the importance of narrative, i.e., the macro and market story that lay behind your numbers, since without it, you can make assumptions that are internally inconsistent. To illustrate, here are two inconsistent story lines that I have seen in the last few weeks, from opposite sides of the spectrum (bearish and bullish).

• In the bearish version, which I call the Interest Rate Apocalypse, all of the inputs (earnings growth for the next five years and beyond, equity risk premiums) into value are held constant, while raising the treasury bond rate to 4% or 4.5%. Not surprisingly, the effect on value is calamitous, with the value dropping about 20%. While that may alarm you, it is unclear how the analysts who tell this story explain why the forces that push interest rates upwards have no effect on earnings growth, in the next 5 years or beyond, oron  equity risk premiums.
• In the bullish version, which I will term the Real Growth Fantasy, all of the inputs into value are left untouched, while higher growth in the US economy causes earnings growth rates to pop up. The effect again is unsurprising, with value increasing proportionately. 

While neither of these narratives is fully worked through, there are three separate narratives about the market that are all internally consistent, that can lead to very different judgments on value.

• More of the same: In this narrative, you can argue that, as has been so often the case in the last decade, the breakout in the US economy will be short lived and that we will revert back the low growth, low inflation environment that developed economies have been mired in since 2008. In this story, the treasury bond rate will stay low (2.5%), earnings growth will revert back to the low levels of the last decade (3.03%) after the one-time boost from lower taxes fades, and equity risk premiums will stay at post-2008 levels (5.5%). The index value that you obtain is about 2250, about 16.4% below March 2nd levels.

  

  Download spreadsheet

• The Return of Inflation: In this story line, inflation returns, though how the story plays out will depend upon how much inflation you foresee. That higher inflation rate will translate into higher earnings growth, though the effect will vary across companies, depending upon their pricing power, but it will also cause T. Bond rates to rise. If the inflation rate in the story is a high one (3% or higher), the equity risk premium may also rise, if history is any guide. With an inflation rate of 3% and an equity risk premium of 6%, the index value that you obtain is about 2133, about 20.7% below March 2nd levels.

  

  Download spreadsheet

• The Growth Engine Revs Up: In this telling, it is real growth in the US economy that surges, creating tailwinds for growth in the rest of the world. That higher real growth rate, while pushing up earnings growth for US companies (to 8% for the near term), will also increase treasury bond rates (to 3.5%), as in the inflation story, but unlike it, equity risk premiums will drift back to pre-2008 levels (closer to 4.5%). The index value that you obtain is about 3031, about 12.7% above March 2nd levels.

  

  Download spreadsheet

• A Melded Version: I believe in a melded version of these stories, where inflation returns (but stays around 2%) and real growth in the economy increases, but only moderately. That will translate into higher treasury bond rates (my guess would be 3.5%), with a proportionate increase in earnings growth (at least in steady state) and an equity risk premium of 5%, splitting the difference between pre-crisis and post-crisis periods. The index value that I obtain, with these assumptions, is about 2610, about 3.1% below March 2nd levels.

Download spreadsheet

You can see, even from this limited list of scenarios, that to assess how stock prices will move, as interest rates change, you have to also make a judgment on why interest rates are moving. An inflation-driven increase in interest rates is net negative for stocks, but a real-growth driven increase in interest rates is a net positive. In fact, the scenario where interest rates go down sees a much bigger drop in value than two of three scenarios, where interest rates rise. 

The Bottom Line

When macro economic fundamentals change, markets take time to adjust, translating into market volatility. During these adjustment periods, you will hear a great deal of market punditry and much of it will be half baked, with the advisor or analyst focusing on one piece of the valuation puzzle and holding all else constant. Thus, you will read predictions about how much the market will drop if treasury bond rates rise to 4.5% or how much it will rise if earnings growth is 10%. I hope that this post has given you tools that you can use to fill in the rest of the story, since it is possible that stocks could actually go up, even if rates go up to 4.5%, if that rate rise is precipitated by a strong economy, and that stocks could be hurt with 10% earnings growth, if that growth comes mostly from high inflation. I also hope that, after you have listened to the narratives offered by others, for what markets will or will not do, that you start developing your own narrative for the market, as the basis for your investment decisions. You've seen my narrative, but I will leave the feedback loop open, as fresh data on inflation and growth comes in, and I plan to revisit my narrative, tweaking, adjusting or even abandoning it, if the data leads me to. 

YouTube Video

Data Links

1. T.Bond Rates, Inflation and Real GDP Growth - 1954-2017
2. Fed Funds Rate and Treasury Rates - 1962-2017
3. T.Bond Rates, Earnings Growth Rates and ERP - 1961- 2017

Spreadsheet Links

1. Intrinsic Valuation Spreadsheet for S&P 500
2. More of the Same: Spreadsheet
3. The Return of Inflation: Spreadsheet
4. The Growth Engine Revs Up: Spreadsheet
5. The Melded Version: Spreadsheet

Blog Post Links

1. Testing Times: Market Turmoil and Investment Serenity

Read More

Negative Interest Rates: Impossible, Unnatural or Just Unusual?

In the years since the 2008 crisis, there is no question in finance that has caused more angst among investors, analysts and even onlookers than what to do about "abnormally low" interest rates. In 2009 and 2010, the response was that rates would revert back quickly to normal levels, once the crisis had passed. In 2011 and 2012, the conviction was that it was central banking policy that was keeping rates low, and that once banks stopped or slowed down quantitative easing, rates would rise quickly. In 2013 and 2014, it was easy to blame one crisis or the other (Greece, Ukraine) for depressed rates. In 2015, there was talk of commodity price driven deflation and China being responsible for rates being low. With each passing year, though, the conviction that rates will rise back to what people perceive as normal recedes and the floor below which analysts thought rates would never go has become lower. Last year, we saw short term interest rates in at least two currencies (Danish Krone, Swiss Franc) become negative and this year, the Japanese Yen joined the group, with rumors that the Euro may be the next currency to breach zero. While it has been difficult to explain the low interest rates of the last few years, it becomes doubly so, when they turn negative. I would be lying if I said that negative interest rates don't make me uncomfortable, but I have had to learn to not only make sense of them but also to live with them, in valuation and corporate finance. This post is a step in that direction.

Setting the table
There are a handful of currencies that have made the negative interest rate newswire, but it is worth noting that the rates that are being referenced in many of these stories are rates controlled by central banks, usually overnight rates for banks borrowing from the central bank. In March 2016, there were two central banks that had set their controlled rates below zero (Switzerland and Sweden) and two more (ECB and Bank of Japan) that had set the rate at zero. (Update: The ECB announced that it would lower its rates below zero on March 10.)

February 2016

Note that these are central bank set rates and that short and long term market interest rates in these currencies can take their own path. To provide a contrast, consider the Japanese Yen and Euro, two currencies where the central banks have pushed the rates they control to zero. In both currencies, short term market interest rates have in fact turned negative but only the Yen has negative long term interest rates:

In a post from earlier this year, I looked at long term (ten-year) risk free rates in different currencies, starting with government bond rates in each currency and then netting out sovereign default spreads for governments with default risk. Updating that picture, the government bond rates across currencies on March 9, 2016, are shown below:

Ten-year Government Bond Rates - March 9, 2016

Joining the Japanese Yen is the Swiss Franc in the negative long term interest rate column. Why make this distinction between central bank set rates, short term market interest rates and long term interest rates? It is easier to explain away negative central bank set rates than it is to explain negative short term interest rates and far simpler to provide a rationale for negative rates in the short term than negative rates in the long term. Thus, there have been episodes, usually during crises, where short term interest rates have turned negative, but this is the first instance that I can remember where we have faced negative long term rates on two currencies, the Swiss Franc and the Japanese yen, with the very real possibility that they will be joined by the Euro, the Danish Krone, the Swedish Krona and even the Czech Koruna in the near future.

Interest Rates 101

I am not a macroeconomist, have very little training in monetary economics and I don't spent much time examining central banking policies. Keep that in mind as you read my perspective on interest rates, and if you are an expert and find my views to be juvenile, I am sorry. That said, I have to process negative interest rates, using my limited knowledge  of what determines interest rates.

Intrinsic and Market-set Interest Rates
When I lend money to another individual (or buy bonds issued by an entity), there are three components that go into the interest rate that I should demand  on that bond. The first is my preference for current consumption over future consumption, with rates rising as I value current consumption more. The second is expected inflation in the currency that I am lending out, with higher inflation resulting in higher rates. The third is an added premium for any uncertainty that I feel about not getting paid, coming from the default risk that I see in the borrower. When the borrower is a default-free entity, there are only two components that go into a nominal interest rate: a real interest rate capturing the current versus future consumption trade off and an expected inflation rate.

Nominal Interest Rate = Real Interest Rate + Expected Inflation Rate

This is, of course, the vaunted Fisher equation.  There is an alternate view of interest rates, where the interest rate on long term bonds is determined by the demand and supply of bonds, and it is shifts in the demand and supply that drive interest rates:

How do you reconcile these two worlds? To the extent that those demanding bonds are motivated by the need to earn interest that covers the expected inflation and generate a real interest rate, you could argue that in the long term, the intrinsic rate should converge on the market set rate.

In the short term, though, as with any financial asset, there is a real chance that the market-set rate can be lower or higher than the intrinsic rate. What can cause this divergence? It could be investor irrationality, where bond buyers overlook their need to cover inflation and earn a real rate of return. It could be a temporary shock to the supply or demand side of bonds that can cause the market-set rate to deviate; this is perhaps the best way to think about the "flight to safety" that occurs during every crisis, resulting in lower market interest rates. There is one more reason and one that many investors seem to view as the dominant one and I will address it next.

The Central Bank and Interest Rates
In all of this discussion, notice that I have studiously avoided bringing the central bank into the process, which may surprise you, given the conventional wisdom that central banks set interest rates. That said, a central bank can affect interest rates in one of two ways:

• The first and more conventional path is for the central bank to signal, through its actions on the rates that it controls what it thinks about inflation and real growth in the future, and with that signal, it may alter long term rates. Thus, the Fed lowering the Fed funds rate (a central bank set rate that banks can borrow from the Fed Window) will be viewed as a signal that the Fed sees the economy as weaken and expects inflation to stay subdued or even non-existent, and this signal will then push expected inflation and real interest rates down. This will work only if central banks are credible in their actions, i.e., they are viewed as acting in good faith and with good information and are not gaming the market. 
• The second channel is for the central bank to actively enter the bond market and buy or sell bonds, thus affecting the demand for bonds, and interest rates. This is unusual but it is what central banks in the United States and the EU have done since 2008 under the rubric of quantitive easing. For this to have a material effect on interest rates, the central bank has to be a big enough buyer of bonds to make a difference. 

Thus, as you read the news stories about the Japanese central bank and the ECB considering negative interest rates, recognize that they cannot impose these rates by edict and that all they can do is change the rates that they control and let the signaling impact carry the message into bond markets.

Measuring the Fed Effect
Just ahead of the Federal Open Market Committee meetings last year, as debate about whether the Fed would ease up on quantitative easing, I argued that we were over estimating the effect that the Fed had on market set rates and that while it has contributed to keeping rates low for the last six years, an anemic economy was the real reason for low interest rates. To compute the Fed effect, I chose to track two numbers:

• An intrinsic interest rate, computed by adding together the actual inflation each year and the real growth rate each year, two imperfect proxies for expected inflation and the real interest rate.
• The ten-year US treasury bond rate at the start of each year, set by the bond market, but affected by expectation setting and bond buying by the Fed.

The graph below captures both numbers, updated through 2015:

Note how closely the US treasury bond has tracked my imperfect estimate of the intrinsic interest rate, and how low the intrinsic rate has become, post-crisis. At the risk of repeating myself, the Fed has, at best, had only a marginal impact on interest rates during the last six years and it is my guess that rates would have stayed low with or without the Fed during this period.

Negative Interest Rates
Turning to the question at hand, is it possible for nominal interest rates to be negative, based upon fundamentals? The answer is yes, but with a caveat. If the preference for current consumption over future consumption dissipates or gets close to zero and you expect deflation in a currency, you could end up with a negative interest rate. In fact, that is the common thread that runs through the economies (Japan, the Euro Zone, Switzerland) where rates have become negative.

Now, comes the caveat. If you have nominal negative interest rates, why would you ever lend money out, since you have the option of just holding on to the money as cash. Historically, that has led many to believe that the floor on nominal rates should be zero. As rates go below zero, it is time to reexamine that belief. One way to reconcile negative interest rates with rational behavior is to introduce costs to holding cash and there are clearly some to factor in, especially in today's economies. The first is that while the proverbial stuffing cash under your mattress option is thrown around as a choice, you will increase your exposure to theft and may have to invest in security measures that are costly. The second is that there are some transactions that are extraordinarily cumbersome to get done with cash; imagine buying a million dollar house and counting out the cash for the payment. The Danish, Swiss and Japanese governments are embarking on a grand experiment, perhaps, of how much savers will be willing to pay for the convenience of staying cashless. In effect, the lower bound has shifted below zero but there is still one. To those who are convinced that negative interest rates have nothing to do with fundamentals and that they are entirely by central bank design, I would argue that the only reason that these central banks have been able to push rates below zero, is because real growth and inflation have become so low in their economies that the intrinsic rate was close enough to zero to begin with. There is no chance that the Brazilian and Indian central banks will follow suit.

Interest Rates, Financial Assets and the Real Economy

When central banks in these currencies strongly signal their intent to drive interest rates to zero and below, what could be the motivation? Put simply, it is the belief that lower interest rates lead to higher prices for financial assets and more real investment in the economy, either through the mechanism of "lower" hurdle rates for investments or a weaker currency making businesses more competitive globally. In this central banking heaven, where central banks set rates and the world meekly follows, this is what unfolds:

So, why has it not worked? As interest rates in the US, Europe and Japan have tested new lows each year for the last few, we have not seen an explosion in real investment in these countries, and while stock prices have risen, the rise has had as much to do with higher earnings and cash flows, as it has to do with lower interest rates. In my view, the fundamental miscalculation that central banks have made is in assuming that their actions not only affect other pieces of this puzzle but are also read as signals of the future.  In particular, central bankers have failed to incorporate three problems: that interest rates do not always follow the central bank lead, that risk premiums on equity and debt may increase as rates go down and that exchange rate effects are muted by other central banks acting at the same time. In this reality-based central banking universe, the lowering of rates by central banks can have unpredictable and often perverse consequences, lowering financial asset prices, reducing real investment and making a currency stronger rather than weaker.

This is all hypothetical, you may say, but there is evidence that markets have become much less trusting of central banking and more willing to go their own ways. For instance, as the risk free rate has dropped over the last few years, note that the expected return for stocks has stayed around 8% during that period, leading to higher and higher equity risk premiums.

While bond markets initially did not see this phenomenon, last year default spreads on bonds in every ratings class widened, even as rates dropped. Interestingly, the most recent ECB announcement that they would push the rates they control lower was accompanied by news that they would enter the bond market as buyers, hoping to keep default spreads down. That is an interesting experiment and I have a feeling that it will not end well.

Dealing with Negative Interest Rates
My interests in negative interest rates are primarily in the context of valuation and corporate finance. In both arenas, the hurdle rates we use to pick investments and value businesses build off a long term risk free rate as a base and having that base become a negative value is disconcerting to some. There are two choices that you have:

1. Switch currencies: You can value Danish companies in Euros or US dollars, where long term rates are still positive (albeit very low). This evades the problem, but you can run but you cannot hide. At some point in time, you will have to work in the negative interest rate currency.
2. Normalize risk free rates: This is a practice that has become more prevalent in both the US and Europe, where risk free rates have dropped to historic lows. To compensate, analysts are using the average rate across long periods as a normalized risk free rate. I have problems with this approach at three levels. The first is that normal is in the eye of the beholder and what you call a normal 10-year T.Bond rate is more a function of your age than scientific judgment. The second is that given that the risk free rate is where you plan to put your money if you don't make your real investment, it seems singularly dangerous for this to be a made-up number. The third is that using a normalized risk free rate with the high equity risk premiums that are prevalent today will lead to too high a hurdle rate, since the latter are primarily the result of low risk free rates.
3. Leave the risk free rate negative: So, what if the risk free rate is negative? In valuation, you almost never use the risk free rate standing alone, but only in conjunction with a risk premium. If you can update those risk premiums, they may very well offset the effect of having a negative risk free rate and yield a cost of equity and/or debt that does not look different from what it did prior to the negative interest rate setting. There is one other adjustment that I would make. In stable growth, I have been a proponent of using the risk free rate as your cap on the stable growth rate. With negative risk free rates, I would stick with this principle, since, as I noted earlier in this post, negative interest rates signify economies with low or no real growth combined with deflation and the growth rate in perpetuity for stable companies in these economies should be negative for those same reasons.

What Real Negative Interest Rates Signify

When interest rates of from being really small positive numbers (0.25% or 0.50%) to really small negative numbers (-0.25% to -0.50%), the mathematical consequences are small but I do think that breaching zero has consequences and almost all of them are negative.

1. The economic end game: For those who ultimately care about real economic growth and prosperity, negative interest rates are bad news, since they are incompatible with a healthy, growing economy. 
2. Central banks insanity, impotence and desperation: As I watch central bankers preen for the cameras and hog the limelight, I am reminded of the old definition of insanity as trying the same thing over and over, expecting a different outcome. After six years of continually trying to lower rates, with the expectation of economic growth just around the corner, it is time for central banks to perhaps recognize that this lever is not working. By the same token, the very fact that central banks revert back to the interest rate lever, when the evidence suggests that it has not worked, is a sign of desperation, an admission by central banks that they have run out of ideas. That is truly scary and perhaps explains the rise in risk premiums in financial markets and the unwillingness of companies to make real investments. 
3. Unintended consequences: As interest rates hit zero and go lower, there will be some investors, in need of fixed income, who will look in dangerous places for that income. A modern-day Bernie Madoff would need to offer only 4% in this market to attract investors to his fund and as I watch investors chase after yieldcos, MLPs and other high dividend paying entities, I am inclined to believe that is a painful reckoning ahead of us. 
4. An opening for digital currencies: In a post a few years ago, I looked at bitcoin and argued that there will be a digital currency, sooner rather than later, that meets the requirements of trust needed for a currency in wide use. The more central bankers in conventional currencies play games with interest rates, the greater is the opening for a well-designed digital currency with a dependable issuing authority to back it up.

In the next few weeks, I am sure that we will read more news stories about central banks professing to be shocked that markets have not done their bidding and that economies have not revived. I am not sure whether I should attribute these rantings to the hubris of central bankers or to their blindness to market realities. Either way, I feel less comfortable with the notion that central bankers know what they are doing and that we should trust them with our economic fates.

YouTube Video

Datasets

1. Central Bank Rates & Government Bond Rates - March 10, 2016
2. Intrinsic and Actual T.Bond Rates - 1954- 2015
3. Risk Premiums on Stocks and Bonds - 1960-2015

Read More

The Fed, Interest Rates and Stock Prices: Fighting the Fear Factor

If it feels like you are reading last year’s business stories in today's paper, there is a simple reason. The Federal Reserve's Open Markets Committee (FOMC) meeting date is approaching, and in a replay of what we have seen ahead of previous meetings, we are being told that this is the one where the Fed will lower the boom on stock markets, by raising interest rates. While this navel gazing may keep market oracles, Fed watchers and CNBC pundits occupied, I think that the Fed’s role in setting interest rates is vastly overstated, and that this fiction is maintained because it is convenient both for the Fed and for the rest of us. I think that there are multiple myths about the Fed’s powers that have taken hold of our collective consciousness, and led us into an investing netherworld. So at the risk of provoking the wrath of Fed watchers everywhere, and repeating what I have said in earlier posts, here are my top four myths about central banks.

1. The Fed sets interest rates

Myth: The Federal Reserve (or the Central Bank of whichever country you are in) sets interest rates, short term as well as long term. In my last post on this topic, I mentioned my tour of the Federal Reserve Building, with my wife and children, and how sorely tempted I was to ask the tour guide whether I could see the interest rate room, the one where Janet Yellen sits, with levers that she can move up or down to change our mortgage rates, the rate at which companies borrow from banks and the market and the rates on US treasuries. 

Reality: There is only one rate that the Federal Reserve sets, and it is the Fed Funds rate. It is the rate at which banks trade funds, that they hold at the Federal Reserve, with each other. Needless to say, not only is this an overnight rate, but it is of little relevance to most of us who don't have access to the Fed windows. While there is a tenuous link of Fed Funds rate to short term market interest rates,  that link becomes much weaker when we look at long term rates and their derivatives.

Why preserve the myth: Giving the Fed the power to set interest rates gives us all a false sense of control over our economic destinies. Thus, if rates are high, we assume that the Fed can lower them by edict and if rates are too low, it can raise it by dictate. If only..

2. Low interest rates are the Fed’s doing

Myth: Interest rates are at historic lows not just in the United States but in much of the developed world, and it is central banking policy that has kept them there, through a policy of quantitative easing The myth acquires additional sheen when accompanied by acronyms such as QE1 and QE2, which bring ocean liners to my mind and a nagging fear that the next Fed move will be titled the Titanic!

Reality: The Fed has had a bond-buying program that is unprecedented and large, but only relative to the Fed's own history. Relative to the size of the US treasury bond market (about $500 billion a day in 2014), the Fed bond-buying (about $60-$85 billion a month) is modest and unlikely to have the influence on interest rates that is attributed to it. So, what has kept rates low? At the risk of rehashing a graph that I have used multiple times, it is far simpler and more fundamental, and it lies in the Fisher equation, which decomposes the nominal interest rate into its expected inflation and real interest rate components:

Nominal Interest Rate = Expected Inflation + Expected Real Interest Rate

If you make the assumption that in the long term, the real interest rate in an economy converges on real growth rate, you have an equation for what I call an intrinsic risk free rate.  In the graph below, I graph out the actual US 10-year treasury bond rate against this intrinsic risk free rate and you can make your own judgment on why rates have been low for the last five years.'

To me, the answer seems self evident. Interest rates in the US (and Europe) have been low because inflation has been non-existent and real growth has been anemic, and it is my guess that rates would have been low, with or without the Fed’s exertions. In fact, the cumulative effect of the Fed's exertions can be measured as the difference between the intrinsic risk free rate and the US treasury bond rate, and during the entire quantitative easing period of 2008-2014, it amounted to about 0.13%. It is true that the jump in US GDP in the most recent quarter  has widened the difference between the treasury bond rate and the intrinsic interest rate, but it remains to be seen whether this increase is a precursor to more healthy growth in the future, or just an one-quarter aberration. 

Why preserve the myth: I think it is much more comforting for developed market investors to think of low interest rates as an unmitigated good, pushing up stock and bond prices, rather than as a depressing signal of future growth and low inflation (perhaps even deflation) in much of the developed world. That problem will not be fixed by Fed meetings and is symptomatic of shifts in global economic power and a re-apportioning of the world economic pie.

3. The reason stock prices are so high is because rates are low

Myth: Stock prices are high today because interest rates are at historic lows. If interest rates revert back to normal levels, stock prices will collapse. 

Reality: Low interest rates have been a mixed blessing for stocks. The low rates, by themselves, make stocks more attractive relative to the alternative of investing in bonds. But if the low rates are symptomatic of low inflation and low real growth, they do have effects on the cash flows that can partially or completely offset the effect of low rates. One way to decompose the effects is to compute forward-looking expected returns on stocks, given stock prices today and expected cash flows from dividends and buybacks in the future to see how much of the stock price effect is fueled by interest rates and how much by cash flow changes. If this bull market has been entirely or mostly driven by the drop in interest rates, the expected return on stocks should have declined in line with the drop in interest rates. In my most recent update on this number at close of trading on August 31, 2015, I estimated an expected return of 8.50%, almost unchanged from the level in 2009 and higher than the expected return in 2007. 

At least based on my estimates, the primary driver of stock prices has been the extraordinary fountain of cash that companies have been able to return in the last few years, combined with a capacity to grow earnings over the same period. By the same token, if you are concerned about cash flows, it should be with the sustainability of these cash flows, for two reasons. The first is that earnings will be under pressure, given the strength of the dollar and the weakness in China, and this is starting to show up already, with 2015 earnings about 5-10% below 2014 levels.  The second is that companies will not be able to keep returning as much as they are in cash flows; in 2015, the cash returned to stockholders stood at 91% of earnings, a number well above historic norms. In the table below, I check to see how much the index, which was at 1951.13 at the close of trading on September 3, would be affected by an increase in interest rates (increasing the US 10-year T.Bond rate from the 2.27% on September 3, to 5%) as contrasted with a drop in cash flows (with a maximum drop of 25%, coming from a combination of earnings decline and reduced cash payout):

Base: S&P 500 on September 3= 1951.13, T.Bond rate = 2.27%; ERP = 6.34%, g=6.30%

If you hold cash flows constant, an increase in interest rates has a relatively small effect on stock prices, with stock prices dropping 8.76%, even if the US T.Bond rate rises to 5%.  In contrast, if cash flows drop, the index drops proportionately, even if interest rates remain unchanged. You are welcome to make your own "bad news" assumptions and check out the effect on value in this spreadsheet.

Why preserve the myth: For perpetual bears, wrong time and again in the last five years about stocks, the Fed (and low interest rates) have become a convenient bogeyman for why their market bets have gone wrong. If only the Fed had behaved sensibly and if only interest rates were at normal levels (though normal is theirs to define), they bemoan, their market timing forecasts would have been vindicated. 

4. The biggest danger to the Fed is that the market will react violently to a change in its interest rate policy

Myth: The biggest danger to the Fed is that, if it reverses its policy of zero interest rates and stops its bond buying, stock and bond markets will drop dramatically.

Reality: While no central bank wants to be blamed for a market meltdown, the bigger danger, in my view, is that the Fed does what it has been promising to for so long, and nothing happens. That is a good thing, you might say, and while I agree with you in the short term, the long-term consequences for Fed credibility are damaging and here is why. The best analogy that I can offer for the Fed and its role on interest rates is the story of Chanticleer, a rooster that is the strutting master of the barnyard that he lives in, revered by the other farm animals because he is the one who causes the sun to rise every morning with his crowing (or so they think). In the story, Chanticleer’s hubris leads him to abandon his post one morning, and when the sun comes up anyway, the rooster loses his exalted standing. Given the build up we have had over the last few years to the momentous decision to change interest rate policy, think of how much our perceptions of Fed power will change, if stock and bond markets respond with yawns to an interest rate policy shift.

Why we hold on to the myth: If you buy into the first three myths, this one follows. After all, if you believe that the Fed sets interest rates, that it has deliberately kept interest rates low for the last five years and that stock prices are high because interest rates are low, you should fear a change in that policy. Coupled with China, you have the excuses for your underperformance this year, thus absolving yourself of all responsibility for your choices. How convenient?

What next?
Over the last five years, we have developed an unhealthy obsession with the Federal Reserve, in particular, and central banks, in general, and I think that there is plenty of blame to go around. Investors have abdicated their responsibilities for assessing growth, cash flows and value, and taken to watching the Fed and wondering what it is going to do next, as if that were the primary driver of stock prices. The Fed has happily accepted the role of market puppet master, with Federal Bank governors seeking celebrity status, and piping up about inflation, the level of stock prices and interest rate policy. Market watchers, journalists and economists have found stories about the Fed to be great fillers that they can use to fill financial TV shows, newspaper and opinion columns.

I don't know what will happen at the FOMC meeting, but I hope that it announces an end to it's "interest rate magic show". I think that there is enough pent up fear in markets that the initial reaction will be negative, but I am hoping that investors move on to healthier, and more real, concerns about economic growth and earnings sustainability. If the Fed does make its move, the best news will be that we will not have to go through more rounds of obsessive Fed watching, second-guessing and punditry.

YouTube Video

1. The Fed did it!
2. Slides to accompany video

Past Posts

1. The Fed and Interest Rates: Lessons from Oz (June 21, 2013)
2. Dealing with Low Interest Rates: Investing and Corporate Finance Lessons (April 2015)

Data

1. Interest Rates, Stock Prices and Expected Returns

Spreadsheets

1. S&P 500 Intrinsic Value Calculator

Read More