Free Download of Valuation and Common Sense Book

RISKVIEWS recently got the material below in an email.  This material seems quite educational and also somewhat amusing.  The authors keep pointing out the extreme variety of actual detailed approach from any single theory in the academic literature.  

For example, the table following shows a plot of Required Equity Premium by publication date of book. 

You get a strong impression from reading this book that all of the concepts of modern finance are extremely plastic and/or ill defined in practice. 

RISKVIEWS wonders if that is in any way related to the famous Friedman principle that economics models need not be at all realistic.  See post Friedman Model.

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Book “Valuation and Common Sense” (3rd edition).  May be downloaded for free

The book has been improved in its 3rd edition. Main changes are:

1. Tables (with all calculations) and figures are available in excel format in: http://web.iese.edu/PabloFernandez/Book_VaCS/valuation%20CaCS.html
2. We have added questions at the end of each chapter.
3. 5 new chapters:

Chapters	Downloadable at:
32 Shareholder Value Creation: A Definition	http://ssrn.com/abstract=268129
33 Shareholder value creators in the S&P 500: 1991 – 2010	http://ssrn.com/abstract=1759353
34 EVA and Cash value added do NOT measure shareholder value creation	http://ssrn.com/abstract=270799
35 Several shareholder returns. All-period returns and all-shareholders return	http://ssrn.com/abstract=2358444
36 339 questions on valuation and finance	http://ssrn.com/abstract=2357432

The book explains the nuances of different valuation methods and provides the reader with the tools for analyzing and valuing any business, no matter how complex. The book has 326 tables, 190 diagrams and more than 180 examples to help the reader. It also has 480 readers’ comments of previous editions.

The book has 36 chapters. Each chapter may be downloaded for free at the following links:

Chapters	Downloadable at:
Table of contents, acknowledgments, glossary	http://ssrn.com/abstract=2209089
1  Company Valuation Methods	http://ssrn.com/abstract=274973
2  Cash Flow is a Fact. Net Income is Just an Opinion	http://ssrn.com/abstract=330540
3  Ten Badly Explained Topics in Most Corporate Finance Books	http://ssrn.com/abstract=2044576
4  Cash Flow Valuation Methods: Perpetuities, Constant Growth and General Case	http://ssrn.com/abstract=743229
5   Valuation Using Multiples: How Do Analysts Reach Their Conclusions?	http://ssrn.com/abstract=274972
6   Valuing Companies by Cash Flow Discounting: Ten Methods and Nine Theories	http://ssrn.com/abstract=256987
7   Three Residual Income Valuation Methods and Discounted Cash Flow Valuation	http://ssrn.com/abstract=296945
8   WACC: Definition, Misconceptions and Errors	http://ssrn.com/abstract=1620871
9  Cash Flow Discounting: Fundamental Relationships and Unnecessary Complications	http://ssrn.com/abstract=2117765
10 How to Value a Seasonal Company Discounting Cash Flows	http://ssrn.com/abstract=406220
11 Optimal Capital Structure: Problems with the Harvard and Damodaran Approaches	http://ssrn.com/abstract=270833
12 Equity Premium: Historical, Expected, Required and Implied	http://ssrn.com/abstract=933070
13 The Equity Premium in 150 Textbooks	http://ssrn.com/abstract=1473225
14 Market Risk Premium Used in 82 Countries in 2012: A Survey with 7,192 Answers	http://ssrn.com/abstract=2084213
15 Are Calculated Betas Good for Anything?	http://ssrn.com/abstract=504565
16 Beta = 1 Does a Better Job than Calculated Betas	http://ssrn.com/abstract=1406923
17 Betas Used by Professors: A Survey with 2,500 Answers	http://ssrn.com/abstract=1407464
18 On the Instability of Betas: The Case of Spain	http://ssrn.com/abstract=510146
19 Valuation of the Shares after an Expropriation: The Case of ElectraBul	http://ssrn.com/abstract=2191044
20 A solution to Valuation of the Shares after an Expropriation: The Case of ElectraBul	http://ssrn.com/abstract=2217604
21 Valuation of an Expropriated Company: The Case of YPF and Repsol in Argentina	http://ssrn.com/abstract=2176728
22 1,959 valuations of the YPF shares expropriated to Repsol	http://ssrn.com/abstract=2226321
23 Internet Valuations: The Case of Terra-Lycos	http://ssrn.com/abstract=265608
24 Valuation of Internet-related companies	http://ssrn.com/abstract=265609
25 Valuation of Brands and Intellectual Capital	http://ssrn.com/abstract=270688
26 Interest rates and company valuation	http://ssrn.com/abstract=2215926
27 Price to Earnings ratio, Value to Book ratio and Growth	http://ssrn.com/abstract=2212373
28 Dividends and Share Repurchases	http://ssrn.com/abstract=2215739
29 How Inflation destroys Value	http://ssrn.com/abstract=2215796
30 Valuing Real Options: Frequently Made Errors	http://ssrn.com/abstract=274855
31 119 Common Errors in Company Valuations	http://ssrn.com/abstract=1025424
32 Shareholder Value Creation: A Definition	http://ssrn.com/abstract=268129
33 Shareholder value creators in the S&P 500: 1991 – 2010	http://ssrn.com/abstract=1759353
34 EVA and Cash value added do NOT measure shareholder value creation	http://ssrn.com/abstract=270799
35 Several shareholder returns. All-period returns and all-shareholders return	http://ssrn.com/abstract=2358444
36 339 questions on valuation and finance	http://ssrn.com/abstract=2357432

I would very much appreciate any of your suggestions for improving the book.

Best regards,
Pablo Fernandez

What is Too Big to Fail?

There seems to be various discussions going around about who needs to be considered Systemically important to qualify for “Special Attention” from regulators. Very large money managers are saying that they are not systemically important.

But it seems to me that there are quite a number of considerations. And everyone seems to be arguing solely from the part of that list that exempts them.

When thinking about money managers, I would think of the following:

1. How is their liquidity managed? Can they really raise funds fast enough to satisfy a run on the bank?
2. If they were to try to liquidate their funds, what would that do to the financial markets?
3. How interconnected are they to other financial firms? Do regulators now have information about that?
4. What about the future? (Isn’t that our concern, not the past or even the current situation?)

• Could they shift their liquidity practices to become much more illiquid?
• Their argument revolves around leverage, how much could they change their leverage under their current regulations? They can quickly leverage through derivatives as well as borrowing.
• Could they become the center of new risky financial behavior that would endanger the financial sector?

That last point is a major concern of regulators regarding the Insurance industry. And they have history on their side. The insurance industry helped the financial sector to blow the mortgage business up to 4 or 5 times the underlying.

All you need to do that is a big balance sheet and a willingness to take one side of a trade without balancing it with the other side. And the money managers as well as the insurance companies both have exactly those characteristics.

Commentary on Timeline of the Global Financial Crisis

Link to Detailed Timeline

The events of the past three years are unprecedented in almost all of our lifetimes.  One needs to go back and look at how much was happening in such a short time to get an appreciation of how difficult it must have been to be in the hot seats of government, central banks and regulators, especially during the fall of 2008.

On the other hand, it is pretty easy, with 20-20 hindsight, to point to events that should have made it clear that something bad was on its way.

The timeline that is posted here on Riskviews is an amalgam from 5 or 6 different sources, including the BBC, Federal Reserve and Wikipedia.  None of them seemed to be very complete.  Not that this one is.  My personal biases left out some items from all of the sources.

Let us know what was left out that is important.  This timeline was created over a one year period and there was little effort to go back and pick up items that did not seem important at the time, but that later were found to be early signals of later big problems.

The reaction that I have had when I used this timeline to make a presentation about the Financial Crisis is that it is pretty unfair to go pointing fingers about actions taken during the fall of 2008.  When you look at the daily earth shaking events that were happening, it is really totally overwhelming, even a year later.  If the events that occured daily were spread out one per month, then perhaps a case could be made that “they” should ahve done better.

Going back much further, I am not willing to be quite so kind.  This crisis was manufactured by collision of two deliberate government policies – home-ownership for all and deregulation of financial markets.  That collision was preventable.  Neither policy had to be taken to the extreme that it was taken – to what looks now like an absurd extreme in both cases.

And in addition, the financial firms themselves are far from blameless.  Greenspan’s belief that the bankers were capable of looking out for their shareholder’s best interest was correct.  They were capable.

Read the history.  See what happened.  Decide for yourself.  Let me know what I missed.

Link to Detailed Timeline

Black Swan Free World (8)

On April 7 2009, the Financial Times published an article written by Nassim Taleb called Ten Principles for a Black Swan Free World. Let’s look at them one at a time…

8. Do not give an addict more drugs if he has withdrawal pains. Using leverage to cure the problems of too much leverage is not homeopathy, it is denial. The debt crisis is not a temporary problem, it is a structural one. We need rehab.

George Soros has said that he believes that the GFC is the beginning of the unwinding of a fifty year credit buildup.  Clearly there was too much leverage.  But does anyone know what the right amount of leverage for a smoothly functioning capitalist system should be?

There is always a problem after a bubble.  Many people keep comparing things to how they were at the very height of the bubble.  Stock valuations are compared to the height of the market.  Employment is compared to the point where the most people had jobs.  But these are often not the right comparisons.  If in the month of May, for 30 days, I had an outstanding offer for my house of $300,000 and on one day a person flew in from far away and offered $3 million, and if I never made that sale, do I forever after compare the offering price for selling the house to $3 Million?

People talk about a “New Normal”.  Possibly, the new normal means nothing more than returning to the long term trend line.  Going back to where things would now be if everything had stayed rational.

That may seem sensible, but this new normal may be a very different economy than the overheated and overleveraged one that we had.

Taleb suggests that the only possible transition from excessive debt is cold turkey.  If Soros is right and we are going to transition to a new normal that is more like 50 years ago than 5 years ago, there that will be a long bout of DTs.

What we are seeing in the way of debt is the substitution of government debt for private debt.  While Taleb is probably too harsh, the Fed does need to be careful.   Careful not to go too far with the government debt.  The Fed should be acting like the football player who passes ahead of the teammate, not to where they are standing right now.  The amount of debt that they should be shooting for is a level that will make sense when the banks fully recover and again take up lending “like normal”.  That will keep enough money flowing in the economy to soften the slowdown to the economy from the contraction of bank lending.

However, if the Fed is shooting to put us back where we were at the peak, then we are in trouble and Taleb’s warning holds.  I would restate his warning as “Using too much leverage to combat the problem of too much leverage…” But using the right amount of leverage is just what is needed.

But that does mean learning to live with much less leverage.  It means that we need to better understand how much leverage is the right amount.  And we need to stop blaming the Chinese because they hold so much dollars and want to lend them to us.  We need to develop a structural solution to the global imbalance that the Chinese balances are a symptom of.

Like some of our other problems, the purely market based solutions will not work.  China is not playing by the market based rule book.  They are a mercantilist economy that is taking advantage of the global market economy systems.  We need to stop whining about that and develop strategies that work for everyone.

Black Swan Free World (7)

Black Swan Free World (6)

Black Swan Free World (5)

Black Swan Free World (4)

Black Swan Free World (3)

Black Swan Free World (2)

Black Swan Free World (1)

Coverage and Collateral

I thought that I must be just woefully old fashioned. 

In my mind the real reason for the financial crisis was that bankers lost sight of what it takes to operating a lending business. 

There are really only two simple factors that MUST be the first level of screen of borrowers:

1.  Coverage

2.  Collateral

And banks stopped looking at both.  No surprise that their loan books are going sour.  There is no theory on earth that will change those two fundamentals of lending. 

The amount of coverage, which means the amount of income available to make the loan payments, is the primary factor in creditworthiness.  Someone must have the ability to make the loan payments. 

The amount of collateral, which means the assets that the lender can take to offset any loan loss upon failure to repay, is a risk management technique that insulates the lender from “expected” losses. 

Thinking has changed over the last 10 – 15  years with the idea that there was no need for collateral, instead the lender could securitize the loan, atomize the risk, thereby spreading the specific risk to many, many parties, thereby making it inconsequential to each party.  Instead of collateral, the borrower would be charged for the cost of that securitization process. 

Funny thing about accounting.  If the lender does something very conservative (in terms of current standards) and requires collateral that would take up the first layer of loss then there will be no impact on P&L of this prudence. 

If the lender does not require collateral, then this charge that the borrower pays will be reported as profits!  The Banks has taken on more risk and therefore can show more profit! 

EXCEPT, in the year(s) when the losses hit! 

What this shows is that there is a HUGE problem with how accounting systems treat risks that have a frequency that is longer than the accounting period!  In all cases of such risks, the accounting system allows this up and down accounting.  Profits are recorded for all periods except when the loss actually hits.  This account treatment actually STRONGLY ENCOURAGES taking on risks with a longer frequency. 

What I mean by longer frequency risks, is risks that expect to show a loss, say once every 5 years.  These risks will all show profits in four years and a loss in the others.  Let’s say that the loss every 5 years is expected to be 10% of the loan, then the charge might be 3% per year in place of collateral.  So the banks collect the 3% and show results of 3%, 3%, 3%, 3%, (7%).  The bank pays out bonuses of about 50% of gains, so they pay 1.5%, 1.5%, 1.5%, 1.5%, 0.  The net result to the bank is 1.5%, 1.5%, 1.5%, 1.5%, (7%) for a cumulative result of (1%).  And that is when everything goes exactly as planned! 

Who is looking out for the shareholders here?  Clearly the deck is stacked very well in favor of the employees! 

What it took to make this look o.k. was an assumption of independence for the loans.  If the losses are atomized and spread around eliminating specific risk, then there would be a small amount of these losses every year, the negative net result that is shown above would NOT happen because every year, the losses would be netted against the gains and the cumulative result would be positive. 

Note however, that twice above it says that the SPECIFIC risk is eliminated.  That leaves the systematic risk.  And the systematic risk has exactly the characteristic shown by the example above.  Systematic risk is the underlying correlation of the loans in an adverse economy. 

So at the very least, collateral should be resurected and required to the tune of the systematic losses. 

Coverage… well that seems so obvious it doed not need discussion.  But if you need some, try this.

Black Swan Free World (7)

On April 7 2009, the Financial Times published an article written by Nassim Taleb called Ten Principles for a Black Swan Free World. Let’s look at them one at a time…

7. Only Ponzi schemes should depend on confidence. Governments should never need to “restore confidence”. Cascading rumours are a product of complex systems. Governments cannot stop the rumours. Simply, we need to be in a position to shrug off rumours, be robust in the face of them.

Hyman Minsky’s Financial Instability Hypothesis talks about the financial markets working in three regimes, Hedge, Speculative and Ponzi.   Under Hedge financing, investments generally have sufficient cashflow to pay both principle and interest.  Under Speculative financing, investments generally have cashflows sufficient to pay interest, but depend upon rolling over financing to continue.  Ponzi financing does not have sufficient cashflows to pay either interest or principle.  Ponzi financing requires that values will increase enough to pay both principle and interest to repay financing.

Speculative financing requires a belief that the value of the collateral will be stable to justify future refinancing or rolling over of the financing.  That belief could be called confidence.

Ponzi financing requires a belief that the value of collateral will grow faster than the interest rate charged.  That belief requires a significantly higher amount of confidence.

There are several other levels that a financial business could operate.  For example, the value of the collateral could be viewed in terms, not of its current value, but of its value in an adverse scenario.  A very conservative lender could then make sure that each investment used that adverse value as the actual amount of collateral granted.  In that situation, the investor does not want to rely upon the belief that the asset value will be stable.  A significantly more aggressive investor will want to make sure that their portfolio in total adjusts the value of collateral for the possible loss in an adverse situation, allowing for the effects of diversification in the portfolio.

Credit practices in the US have drifted against the path of having the borrower put up cash for that difference between adverse value and current value.  Instead, practice has changed so that the lender will hold capital against that adverse scenario and charge the borrowed the cost of holding that capital.

What has changed with that drift, is who will bare the losses in the adverse scenario.  That has shifted from the borrower to the lender.  So the loan transaction has changed from a simple credit transaction to a combined credit and asset value insurance transaction.  (Which makes me wonder if the geniuses who thought of this thought to charge appropriately for the insurance or if they just believed that if the market bought it when they securitized it, then the price must be right.)

This will look different from the former loan business where the borrowed bore the asset value risk because the lender will have fluctuations in their balance sheet when the adverse scenarios hit and the collateral value falls below the loan value.  And that is exactly what we are seeing right now.

In addition, as we are seeing now, when there is a extremely severe drop in the value of collateral, having the banks hold the risk of the decline in collateral value, then a drop in the collateral will have a significant impact on bank capital.  The impact on bank capital may have a major impact on the bank’s ability to lend which will impact on all of the rest of the economy that had no connection to the impaired asset class.

So to Taleb’s point about confidence,  it seems that he is stating that lending practices should revert to their prior level where collateral was valued under an adverse scenario.  Then there will be little if any confidence involved in the lending business.  And less chance that a steep drop in any one asset class will spill over to the rest of the economy.

So the dividing line would be that the financial firms that could be subject to future government bailouts would need to value collateral pessimistically and to avoid loans that are not fully collateralized.

Sounds SAFE.

But here is the problem with that proposal…

If any other firms, outside of that restriction are permitted to lend in the same markets, business will ultimately shift to those institutions.  They will be able to offer better loan terms and larger loans for the same collateral AND in most years, they will show much higher profits.

Bad risk management will drive out good.  The institutions that take the most optimistic view of risk, those who have the most confidence, will drive the firms with the more pessimistic view (whether that is their own view or the view imposed by the regulators) out of the market.

And then when the next crisis hits, regulators will find that the business has shifted to the non-regulated firms and they they will instead need to bail them out, unless they make it illegal for non-regulated firms to do any of the kinds of finance that is related to a government’s need to bailout.

Then the bank would almost always have real collateral and any drop in confidence could be resolved by assigning that collateral over to someone with cash and settling any needs for cash that the lack of confidence creates.

Taleb is not clear however whether he is referring to banks or the financial system in general or to the government with his statement.  The discussion above is about banks.

Trying to think about this idea in the context of the entire financial system, I wonder if he was suggesting a return to the gold standard.  When there was a gold standard, there was no need for confidence in the currency.  If you stay with the current currency regime, then the confidence idea, I suppose, relates to the question of inflating the currency.  If the government does seem to consistently hold the money supply at a reasonable level in proportion to the economy, then there will not be a problem.  However, I cannot think of any way of looking at the floating currency system that does not REQUIRE confidence that the government will hold inflation in check.

Applying the idea to the government, I would also say that confidence is required there as well.  A government that could be counted on to fund fully for spending programs would instill confidence, but there could be no surity, especially under the US system where the next congress could immediately trample on the good record of a all preceding governments.

Black Swan Free World (10)

Black Swan Free World (9)

Black Swan Free World (8)

Black Swan Free World (7)

Black Swan Free World (6)

Black Swan Free World (5)

Black Swan Free World (4)

Black Swan Free World (3)

Black Swan Free World (2)

Black Swan Free World (1)

Black Swan Free World (6)

On April 7 2009, the Financial Times published an article written by Nassim Taleb called Ten Principles for a Black Swan Free World. Let’s look at them one at a time…

6. Do not give children sticks of dynamite, even if they come with a warning . Complex derivatives need to be banned because nobody understands them and few are rational enough to know it. Citizens must be protected from themselves, from bankers selling them “hedging” products, and from gullible regulators who listen to economic theorists.

It is my opinion that many bubbles come about after a completely incorrect valuation model or approach becomes widely adopted.  Today, we have the advantage over observers from prior decades.  In this decade we have experienced two bubbles.  In the case of the internet bubble, the valuation model was attributing value to clicks or eyeballs.  It had drifted away from there being any connection between free cashflow and value.  As valuations soared, people who had internet investments had more to invest in the next sensation driving that part of the bubble. The internet stocks became more and more like Ponzi schemes.  In fact, Hyman Minsky described bubbles as Ponzi finance.

In the home real estate bubble, valuation again drifted away from traditional metrics, the archaic and boring loan to value and coverage ratio pair.  It was much more sophisticated and modern to use copulas and instead of evaluating the quality of the credit to use credit ratings of a structured securities of loans.

Goerge Soros has said that the current financial crisis might just be the final end of a fifty year mega credit bubble.  If he is right, then we will have quite a long slow ride out of the crisis.

There are two aspects of derivatives that I think were ignored in the run up to the crisis.  The first is the leverage aspect of derivatives.  A CDS is equivalent to a long position in a corporate bond and a short position in a risk free bond.  But few observers and even fewer principals considered CDS as containing additional leverage equal to the full notional amount of the bond covered.  And leverage magnifies risk.  Worse than that.

Leverage takes the cashflows and divides them between reliable cashflows and unreliably cashflows and sells the reliable cashflows to someone else so that more unreliable cashflows can be obtained.

The second misunderstood aspect of the derivatives is the amount of money that can be lost and the speed at which it can be lost.  This misunderstanding has caused many including most market participants to believe that posting collateral is a sufficient risk provision.  In fact, 999 days out of 1000 the collateral will be sufficient.  However, that other day, the collateral is only a small fraction of the money needed.  For the institutions that hold large derivative positions, there needs to be a large reserve against that odd really bad day.

So when you look at the two really big, really bad things about derivatives that were ignored by the users, Taleb’s description of children with dynamite seems apt.

But how should we be dealing with the dynamite?  Taleb suggests keeping the public away from derivatives.  I am not sure I understand how or where the public was exposed directly to derivatives, even in the current crisis.

Indirectly the exposure was through the banks.  And I strongly believe that we should be making drastic changes in what different banks are allowed to do and what different capital must be held against derivatives.  The capital should reflect the real leverage as well as the real risk.  The myth that has been built up that the notional amount of a derivative is not an important statistic and that the market value and movements in market value is the dangerous story that must be eliminated.  Derivatives that can be replicated by very large positions in securities must carry the exact same capital as the direct security holdings.  Risks that can change overnight to large losses must carry reserves against those losses that are a function of the loss potential, not just a function of benign changes in market values and collateral.

In insurance regulatory accounting, there is a concept called a non-admitted asset.  That is something that accountants might call an asset but that is not permitted to be counted by the regulators.  Dealings that banks have with unregulated financial operations should be considered non-admitted assets.  Transferring something off to the books to an unregulated entity just will not count.

So i would make it extremely expensive for banks to get anywhere near the dynamite.  Or to deal with anyone who has any dynamite.

Black Swan Free World (5)

Black Swan Free World (4)

Black Swan Free World (3)

Black Swan Free World (2)

Black Swan Free World (1)

Black Swan Free World (5)

On April 7 2009, the Financial Times published an article written by Nassim Taleb called Ten Principles for a Black Swan Free World. Let’s look at them one at a time…

5. Counter-balance complexity with simplicity. Complexity from globalisation and highly networked economic life needs to be countered by simplicity in financial products. The complex economy is already a form of leverage: the leverage of efficiency. Such systems survive thanks to slack and redundancy; adding debt produces wild and dangerous gyrations and leaves no room for error. Capitalism cannot avoid fads and bubbles: equity bubbles (as in 2000) have proved to be mild; debt bubbles are vicious.

Complexity gets away from us very, very quickly.  And at the same time, we may spend so much time worrying about the complexity, building very complex models to deal with the complexity, that we lose sight of the basics.  So Complexity can hurt us both coming and going.

So why do we insist on Complexity?  That at least is simple.  Most complexity exists to provide differentiation between financial products that otherwise would be pure commodities.  The excuse is that the Complex products are needed to match up with the risks of a complex world.  Another, even less admirable reason for the complexity is to create something that sounds like a simple risk relief product but that costs the seller much less to provide, by carving out the parts of the risk relief that are more expensive but less desirable or less well understood by the customer.

Generally, customers who are buying risk relief products like insurance or hedges have a simple objective.  If they have a loss they want something that will make a payment that will offset the loss.  Complexity comes in when the risk relief products are customized to potentially better meet customer needs. (according to the sales literature).

Taleb suggests that complexity also hides leverage.  That is ver definitely the case.  For example, a CDS can be replicated by a long position in a credit and a short position in a treasury.  A short position in a treasury is finance speak for a loan at a better rate than you can actually get.  And a loan is leverage.  THe amount of the leverage is the full notional amount of the CDS.  Fans of derivatives will scoff at the idea that the notional amount if of any interest to anyone, but in this case at least, anyone who wants to know how much leverage the buyer of a CDS has, needs to add in the full notional amount of all of the CDS.

Debt bubbles are vicious because of the feedback loop in debt.  If one borrows money to purchase an asset and the asset increases in value, then you can use that increased value as collateral to increase the debt and purchase more of the asset.  The increase in demand for the asset causes prices to rise and so it goes.

But ultimately the reason that may economists have a hard time identifying bubbles (other than they do not believe that bubbles really ever exist) is that they do not know the capacity of any asset market to absorb additional investment.  Clearly in the example above, if there is a fixed amount of the asset that becomes subject to a debt bubble, it will very, very quickly run into a bubble situation.  But if the asset is a business or more likely a sector, it is not so easy to know exactly when the capacity of that sector to efficiently use additional capital is reached.

Black Swan Free World (10)

Black Swan Free World (9)

Black Swan Free World (8)

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Black Swan Free World (6)

Black Swan Free World (5)

Black Swan Free World (4)

Black Swan Free World (3)

Black Swan Free World (2)

Black Swan Free World (1)

Unrisk – Part 3

From Jawwad Farid

Transition Matrix

Here is another way of looking at it. It is called a transition matrix. All it does is track how something rated/scored in a given class moves across classes over time

How do you link to profitability?

This is how profitability is calculated generally. Take the amount you have lent, multiply it by your expected adjusted return and voila, you have expected earnings. But that is not the true picture.

What you are missing is the impact of two more elements. Your cost of funds (the money you have lent is actually not yours. You have borrowed it at a cost and that cost needs to be repaid) and your best and worst case provisions. So true profitability would look something like this.

That is a pretty picture if I ever saw one. Especially when you compare the swing from the original projected number. Back to the question clients ask. Where do projected provisions come from? From transition matrices. And where do transition matrices come from. From applying your understanding of your distribution to your portfolio.

Remember these are not my ideas. They are hardly even original. The Goldman trader who first asked me about moment generating functions wanted to understand how well I understood the distributions that were going to rule my life on Fleet street?

Full credit for posing the distribution problem goes to our friend NNT (Nicholas Nassim Taleb) who first posed this as getting comfortable with the generating function problem. He wrote all of three books on the subject and then some. Rumor has it that he also made an obscene amount of money in the process (not with book writing, but with understanding the distribution). All he suggested was that before you took a punt, try and understand how much trouble could you possibly land in based on how what you are punting on is likely to behave in the future. Don’t just look at the past and the present, look the range, likely, unlikely, expected, unexpected.

UNRISK Part 1

UNRISK Part 2

Black Swan Free World (4)

On April 7 2009, the Financial Times published an article written by Nassim Taleb called Ten Principles for a Black Swan Free World. Let’s look at them one at a time…

4. Do not let someone making an “incentive” bonus manage a nuclear plant – or your financial risks. Odds are he would cut every corner on safety to show “profits” while claiming to be “conservative”. Bonuses do not accommodate the hidden risks of blow-ups. It is the asymmetry of the bonus system that got us here. No incentives without disincentives: capitalism is about rewards and punishments, not just rewards.

For many years, money managers were paid out of the revenue from a small management fee charged on assets.  The good performing funds attracted more funds and therefore had more gross revenue.  Retail mutual funds usually charged a flat rate.  Institutional funds charged a sliding scale that went down as a percentage of assets as the amount of assets went up.  Since mutual fund expenses were relatively flat, that meant that the larger funds could generate quite substantial profits.

Then hedge funds came along fifty years ago and established the pattern of incentive compensation of 20% of profits fairly early.  In addition, the idea of the fund using leverage was an early innovation of hedge funds.

Another innovation was the custom that the hedge fund manager’s gains would stay in the fund so that the incentives were aligned.  But think about how that works.  The investor puts up $1 million.  The fund gains 20%, the manager gets $400k and the investor gets $160k.  Then the fund drops 50%, the investor’s account is now worth $580k – he is down $420k.  The manager is down to $80k, but still up by that $80k.  The investor is creamed but the manager is well ahead.  Seems like that incentives need realignment.

Taleb may be thinking of a major issue with hedge funds – valuation of illiquid investments.  Hedge funds often make purchases of totally illiquid investments.  Each quarter, the manager makes an estimate of what they are worth.  The manager gets paid based upon those estimates.  However, with the recent downturn, even in funds that have not shown significant losses have had significant redemptions.  When these funds have redemptions, the liquid assets are sold to pay off the departing investors.  Their shares are determined using the estimated values of the illiquid assets and the remaining fund becomes more and more concentrated in illiquid assets.

If the fund manager had been optimistic about the value of the illiquid assets or simply did not anticipate the shift in demand that has ocurred with the financial crisis, there may well be a major problem brewing for the last investors out the door.  The double whammy of depressed prices for the illiquid assets as well as the distribution based upon values for those assets that are now known to be optimistic.

And over payment of the one sided performance bonuses to the manager were supported by the optimistic valuations.

Black Swan Free World (3)

Black Swan Free World (2)

Black Swan Free World (1)

Black Swan Free World (2)

On April 7 2009, the Financial Times published an article written by Nassim Taleb called Ten Principles for a Black Swan Free World. Let’s look at them one at a time…

2. No socialisation of losses and privatisation of gains. Whatever may need to be bailed out should be nationalised; whatever does not need a bail-out should be free, small and risk-bearing. We have managed to combine the worst of capitalism and socialism. In France in the 1980s, the socialists took over the banks. In the US in the 2000s, the banks took over the government. This is surreal.

Most assuredly the socialization of losses and privatization of gains is what has anyone outside of the banking sector furious. Within the sector, everyone seems to believe that they earned their share of the gains. Think about what you hear about the bonus scheme at the banks – the investment banks are said to be paying out about 50% of gains before bonus. I imagine that puts them approximately on par with the hedge funds, if the banks profit figure takes out overhead before calculating the 50% ratio. So the bank incentive comp is based upon the hedge fund incentive comp. Amazingly, the hedge fund managers manage to convince investors to give them their money and lenders to advance them funds to leverage without any hint of a bailout ever in their future. The hedge fund managers generally walk away from the fund when things go wrong and they are no longer have a chance for outsized gains.

Do the bank shareholders understand that they are really investing in a highly leveraged hedge fund? The folks getting those bonuses surely understand that.

Is this the worst of capitalism and socialism? Probably so.

How do we get out of this? It seems that rather than limiting compensation, we ought be assuring shareholders and debt holders of any firms that structure their compensation like hedge funds that they should expect to be treated like hedge funds in the event of failure. Goodbye, no regrets.

One way of looking at the compensation issue is to focus on time frame.  There are four time frames to consider:

1.  The employees – the recipients of the bonuses.  Their time frame looks backwards.  They want to be paid for the value that they created for the firm.  They want to be paid in cash for that value.

2.  The Short Term shareholders.  Their time frame is in quarters.  They are most interested in what will be posted as the next quarterly earnings.  They want to be able to cash out their investment at the point where they believe that the next quarter’s earnings will not grow enough to support future price increases.

3.  The Long Term shareholders.  Their time frame is in years – probably 3 – 5 years.  Which is the expected holding period for a long term shareholder.  They are looking for growth in value compared to share price and will usually sell when they believe that the intrinsic value of the firm starts to catch up with the market value.

4.  The public.  Our time frame is our lifetime.  We need to have a financial system that works our entire lifetime.   The public gets nothing from the changes in value of the financial system but ends up paying off the losses that exceed the capacity of the financial system.

The compensation and prudential capital for banks is a trade-off between the interests of all four of these groups.  In the run up to the crisis, the system tilted in the favor of employees and short term investors to the extreme detriment of the long term shareholders and public.

So the solution is likely to be best if the interests of the long term shareholders are made more important.  Right now, a large, possibly most of the long term shareholders are index funds.  Index funds are extremely unlikely to want to have any say in corporate governance or compensation.

So you could surmise that the compensation aspect of the crisis and the drift of all things corporate to fall under the sway of short term investors is a result of the prevalence of index funds.

Black Swan Free World (10)

Black Swan Free World (9)

Black Swan Free World (8)

Black Swan Free World (7)

Black Swan Free World (6)

Black Swan Free World (5)

Black Swan Free World (4)

Black Swan Free World (3)

Black Swan Free World (2)

DISLOCATION

Guest post from Mike Cohen

http://www.cohenstrategicconsulting.com/index.php

Dislocation: dis-lo-ca-tion (\,dis-(,)lō-’ka-shən): a disruption of an established order

The financial world has undergone a dislocation of epic proportions, one that is rivaled by only two such situations in our lifetimes: the Great Depression and to a lesser magnitude the interest spike and related chain of events of the early 1980’s. Financial institutions, and even more profoundly the world financial order, have been found to be standing on foundations of sand, and dynamics/financial behaviors/paradigms/systems that we took for granted are not effective, or at the very least stumbling along in a state of disarray and confusion.

As our ‘rose-colored glasses’ (spawned by over-optimism, greed, laziness, ignorance and unjustified trust) have been taken away and replaced with optical devices fitted with Coke-bottle lenses with Vaseline smeared on them, we are confronted with the critical endeavor of recreating nothing less than our way of life and arguably the most important underpinning of it, our financial system.

Our World Has Changed: This dislocation is different and more troubling than any other in history, in large part because it almost triggered the collapse of the world’s financial system.  The crisis we are faced with today was caused by widespread business practices where society’s hard learned lessons were ignored:

–       The financial system is based on trust (in people, in the system itself), and the resulting belief that it works; there has been a considerable amount of activity that almost any observer would describe as untrustworthy

–       Accurate, objective analysis is critical

–       Greed kills, sooner or later

Joseph Schumpeter, the famous Czechoslovakian economist, observed in the 1920’s:

Capitalism moves forward following a process of creative destruction. Inevitable cycles of expansion and retraction are not only survivable but are in fact the secret of capitalism’s extraordinary power to inspire innovation and progress.”

It would be completely inaccurate to describe the financial crisis that has occurred as the result of ‘creative destruction’. The root causes of this crisis are much darker.

How did we get to where we are?

–       Unjustifiably easy credit was offered to homebuyers who very logically couldn’t have been expected to be able to service their mortgage loans.  A substantial price bubble was created and inevitably burst, as many have before it, but this time the entire American society was hurt badly as opposed to individual investors in past bubbles.

–       Asset managers making ambitious claims about investment returns they said they couldn’t possibly achieve, and others committing outright fraud

–       Rating analysts not adequately analyzing securities, causing them to be overrated and underpriced

–       Investment bankers and others facilitating transactions built on elements that had not been properly vetted, and which have turned out to have crushing levels of risk and unforeseen financial liabilities

Macro Issues Abounded:

– The banking system almost collapsed, and may have had it not been for considerable government intervention, which has raised a host of other profound issues. An enormous amount of bad loans were made as the result of capricious underwriting, leading to huge amounts of bad assets on banks’ books and causing a paralyzing level of fear for making further loans.

– The financial markets ‘froze’. The flow of capital slowed to a trickle because lenders did not believe that borrowers were credit-worthy; ironically, the thought process evolved from lending money to anybody to lending money to no one. The markets are just beginning to thaw, a year later.

– Complicated financial instruments confused and overwhelmed the system, creating enormous risk. Counterparties, partners in transactions, did not understand these vehicles they were buying and selling (and in many cases how their counterparts were managing their own enterprises) … and the risks they were taking on. A certain notorious business operation has long held the notion that “Be close to your friends, and closer to your enemies”.

– The real estate market plunged into its worst cycle in decades, and possibly ever. This collapse was caused by a number of dynamics:

* Selling housing/making loans to individuals or companies whose financial positions were not strong enough to service their financial obligations

– The rating agencies have been called to task over their role in the current situation, and a number of vexing questions have been raised:

* How are they analyzing companies and investment vehicles?

* How are they to be paid for their rating services? Are there conflicts of interest imbedded in their client relationships?

* How will they be operating going forward?

* How will they be regulated?

– Consumer attitudes have been more negative than ever since they began being monitored in the 1960’s, although recently they have improved marginally as economic and financial stabilization is beginning to occur.  The widespread view is that the current situation is beyond a cyclical downturn and is perceived as a failure of the system. Uncertainty about the financial system, rising unemployment, restricted credit, and a depressed housing market have all contributed to plummeting consumer sentiment.

– Government responses in the form of rescue programs of various types are beginning to fix the problems within the financial system (banks and insurers) and key industries (automotive), and are gradually beginning to calm fears. Substantial efforts to revise the nation’s financial services regulatory infrastructure are underway, conceived to both address current issues and create a more shock-free system in the future. A number of vexing problems have arisen, however, that will be very difficult to solve:

* Well intentioned programs to interject capital to troubled sectors of the economy have been slow to take effect

* Massive budget deficits are building, which will lead to substantial debt servicing obligations in the future and consequentially depressed economic growth

* The government owns stakes in huge corporations (with the implication of socialistic-type government in the United States, for crying out loud!), and is being perceived as making broad decisions on which corporations will survive or fail.

* Understanding that things that can go wrong (either known or unknown), and making sure the adverse affects do not cause crippling and irreversible harm

* A fundamental question begging to be asked is “how did so many elements of this financial disaster occur that had aspects and implications of risk that no one either understood or quantified anywhere close to properly, or didn’t bother to look at?”

Animal Spirits Eating Green Shoots

Guest Post from David Merkel

http://alephblog.com/2009/09/01/animal-spririts-eating-green-shoots/

I have never liked Keynes concept of “animal spirits.” (I reread that piece, and though it is long, I think it is worth another read.  I try not to say that about my own stuff too often.)  Businessmen are generally rational, and take opportunities when they see them.  As for those that invest in the stock market, perhaps the opposite is true — panicking near bottoms, and buying near tops.

Most businessmen are risk-averse.  They do what they can to avoid insolvency.  But debt capital is cheap during the boom phase of an economic cycle, and businessmen load up on it then.  During the bear phase of the cycle, overly indebted businessmen pull in their horns and try to survive.  At bottoms, deals are too attractive for businessmen with spare cash to ignore — businessmen are rational, and seek deals that offer profitability with reasonable probability.

Unlike this article, I’m not convinced that the news does that much to affect behavior.  Movements in asset values are self-reinforcing not because of crowd opinion, but because of the accumulation and decumulation of debt and other financial claims.  As businessmen get closer to insolvency, they trim activity.  As their financial constraints get looser, they are willing to consider more investments with free cash.

As for the current situation, I am less confident of the “green shoots.”  Yes, inventory decumulation has slowed down.  So has the increase in unemployment, maybe.  Yes, financing rates have fallen.  We still face a situation where China is force feeding loans for non-economic reasons into its economy, and where the financial sector of the US is still weak due to commercial real estate loans, bank loans to corporations, and weak financial entities propped up by the US government.  Even residential real estate is not done, because of the number of properties that are inverted, and the increase in unemployment, which I think is likely to get worse.

Applications: I think it is more likely than not that there will be another crisis with the banks, and another round of monetary rescue from the government.  I also think that many speculative names like AIG have overshot, and the advantage now rests with the shorts for a little while.  Real money selling is overcoming day traders.

Be cautious in this environment.  After I put out my nine-year equity management track record, the next project is to dig deeper in the risks in my own portfolio, and make some changes.

Disclosure

This post is produced by David Merkel CFA, a registered representative of Finacorp Securities as an outside business activity. As such, Finacorp Securities does not review or approve materials presented herein. By viewing or participating in discussion on this blog, you understand that the opinions expressed within do not reflect the opinions or recommendations of Finacorp Securities, but are the opinions of the author and individual participants. Neither the information nor any opinion expressed constitutes a solicitation for the purchase or sale of any security or other instrument. Before investing, consider your investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses. Any purchase or sale activity in any securities instrument should be based upon your own analysis and conclusions. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Finacorp Securities is a member FINRA and SIPC.

Who wins with leverage?

Leverage increases apparent returns in best of times but Increases risk considerably in worst of times. Investors do not benefit from leverage over time. Managers benefit greatly from leverage. Derivatives are highly levered. Traders think that it is silly to spend any time thinking about notional amounts of derivatives. Insurers should learn that they need to pay attention to the notional amount of their insurance contracts. Owners of now highly diluted shares of banks (and AIG) now know that the leverage of those organizations did not in the end create value. Insurers, like banks, are by their fundamental nature highly leveraged with capital a tiny fraction of gross obligations. Insurers should take extreme caution when considering activity that increases leverage. And they should make an analysis of the true amount of leverage in their activities an important activity before entering a new activity and periodically as the world turns.

For example, if one investor puts his money in a 2/20 hedge fund that is 10 for 1 levered and that pays 10% interest on its funds. If the returns for the first four years are 20% per year, After 4 years, the investor is up over 400%! The hedge fund manager has been paid over 150% of the original investment and the debtholder has been paid 400%. But then in year 5, the investment loses 20%, giving back just one of those four years of outsized gains. All of a sudden, the investor is down to an 8% cumulative gain!!! while the manager and lender have slightly higher gains than after the four fat years.

The sister of this investor had the same amount of money to invest, but put it into an unlevered fund with the same types of investments and without the 20% profit share for the manager. After four fat years of 10% gains, the sister is up over 35% and the manager has been paid only 7% of the original fund value. Now the market drop hits sis’ fund with a 10% loss and she ends the five years up a respectable 19%. The fund manager gets about 9% of the original fund for his five years of work.

Leverage Illustration

Of course, the illustration can be manipulated to make anyone the supreme winner. But this scenario seems pretty telling. Leverage primarily benefits the fund manager, not the investor in this scenario. In many scenarios they both benefit, but there are no scenarios where the manager does poorly on a leveraged investment fund.

So when you die, pray to come back as a leveraged hedge fund manager.