Monday, December 29, 2008

Indian Newspaper

For those of you looking for non-mainstream news, here's an excellent Indian periodical:

http://www.indianexpress.com/

The North American August 8, 2008 edition had an informative insert called, "61 years of India."

Sunday, December 28, 2008

More on Madoff

A consistent 15% return over 25+ years, without any losses, is impossible without some illegal advantage, such as inside information. Thus, Madoff's investors could not have reasonably believed they were receiving 10 to 15% every year without some insider information. In fact, Madoff's position as Nasdaq chairman probably convinced investors they had access to information no one else did. Click on the link for more.

Madoff's investors should have diversified or at least done more due diligence. Their failure to follow the well-known and cardinal rules of investing--diversify and buy only what you understand--is the sine qua non of their current situation.

Also, most of Madoff's investors were not unsophisticated investors--most were educated, English-speaking, and affluent. This is why Madoff slept soundly at night--in his mind, even if someone invested a million dollars with him, s/he most likely had plenty of money left over. Madoff may have even believed himself to be a modern-day Robin Hood--stealing from the rich to give to the poor and the charities.

At the end of the day, the blame belongs on Madoff and the fiduciaries of charities and other entities who failed to diversify donor and investor money. Rather than excuse negligence, Madoff's investors should serve as an example to those who fail to diversify or who do not question impossible returns. Bailing them out would result in the following:

1. It would tell the world America will print money and devalue the dollar when its citizens--especially the rich and well-connected--make avoidable mistakes. If the Japanese, Chinese, Swiss, and British begin to question the U.S. dollar's integrity, it will be the beginning of the end for our entire country. We have major deficits and are currently dependent on foreign investors to finance our expenditures. When we have a surplus, we can afford to be generous. Right now, we can afford to be sympathetic only with our hearts, not with our wallets.

2. It would weaken faith in our country's sense of fairness. Any time a government gives money away arbitrarily, others not part of the largess rightly cry foul. What about all the other victims of investment fraud, like the Baptist Foundation of Arizona or Sunrise Equities Inc.? What about the mortgage brokers who ripped off ordinary Americans by submitting mortgage applications with false income information? (By the way, where's the perp walk for those people?)

To those of you who say I have no sense of compassion or morality, let me say this: if anyone ought to receive taxpayer money, it should be the families of Americans who were slain in Iraq. They are also victims of government inaction and negligence and have lost more than just money. The list of more deserving victims is endless, but if we go down that path, we will transform America into a land of sympathy-seekers, not strength. For a country that has been the symbol of hope for so many people worldwide, such an image shift is unacceptable.

Although I opposed the auto and bank bailouts, they will help hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans who had little power to avoid their current situation. Auto workers themselves did not cause their current financial mess--the banks, their unions and the Big Three did. In contrast, Madoff's investors failed to do due diligence, failed to diversify, and/or must have believed Madoff had inside information. As a result, they do not have clean hands.

Regulations resulting from the Madoff scandal, if any, should focus on requiring nonprofits and other charities to publicly disclose (preferably on a website) more than just basic financial information. Even in the absence of a law, donors should ask charities and nonprofits to disclose not only their P&L statements and budgets, but also where they are holding donations, and what specific investments they have bought. As long as taxpayer money is not involved, some good may come of this yet.

More on Madoff here:

1. "Capitalism without Failure is like Religion without Sin"

2. The one that started it all: Madoff the SIPC.

3. NY Times mentions Madoff (1/4/09).

Saturday, December 27, 2008

Clark Winter's The Either/Or Investor

I originally avoided Clark Winter's The Either/Or Investor because the title is uninspiring and brought back visions of Søren Kierkegaard. I am happy I reconsidered. Clark Winter isn't your ordinary Wall Street denizen. He dedicates his book to his "wife and family," which tells you right away he knows his priorities. You can almost imagine him zipping across the landscape in a Pontiac G8. He seems to admire GM and the car business--which is part of the problem, because he wrote his book before March 2008 and the auto industry's current woes. If you can ignore his sanguine predictions about car companies and auto usage (see page xxxiii, where he praises GM over Ford, and says, "Even rising fuel prices will probably not make much a difference, as American habits are extraordinarily ingrained." [p. 147]), the rest of his book is a joy to read. His comments on immigration are particularly timely, given America's increasing protectionist sentiments:

Despite the belief that immigrants don't contribute much to society besides low-level work, they are in fact instrumental in starting businesses that serve other immigrants. In the United States, individuals start more than 550,000 new businesses a month, according to the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. Latin American immigrants start more business[es] than any other group, following by immigrants in general. [p. 33]

On the whole, immigration is good for investors. It brings new customers, new incentives to innovate, new markets, new competitors, and new capital into the market. The savings rates of immigrants are higher than those of the native born, which adds to capital formation. What immigrants, legal or otherwise, take out of the system in terms of municipal services, they probably make in sales taxes on the goods they purchase. Immigrants start new businesses--and therefore are a greater source of new employment--than their native-born counterparts. Additionally, these new companies add to the capital stock of the community in another way. They bring their talents, hopes, dreams, and skills to countries that are increasingly postindustrial and therefore less inclined to do the jobs that those at the bottom rungs of the economic ladder are willing to take on. All in all, there are few reasons to oppose immigration from an investment perspective, much less a cultural one. [p. 35]

Most investing books have insightful or funny anecdotes and facts, and Mr. Winter's book is no exception. He talks about teaching his son economics while driving to grandma's house [p. 54]; Singapore's rise [p. 66]; the economic concepts of alpha and beta [p. 106]; sentiment's role in the markets [p. 70]; and the role of "expensive beef" in Argentina's rise and fall [p. 73]:

Poverty doubled from 27 percent to 54 percent, and millions of Argentines had their life savings wiped out...During all that time, the diet never changed. If it had, Argentines would have brought down their government. [p. 70]

Mr. Winter's main point is that ordinary investors can invest better simply by paying attention. He calls this "thematic investing," or concentrating on a subject whose outcome might be reasonably predictable [p. 72]. Although he doesn't explicitly say it, he favors momentum trading, because buy-and-hold investors are subject to the vagaries of geopolitical events and other events beyond their control:

You could always be a buy-and-hold investor, but that isn't likely to work, either, as you could lose a lot of money in the process. Markets can and do go to sleep for years, as they wait for geopolitical events to sort themselves out. [p. 72]

Going back to Argentina, if an investor understood or learned how important beef was in Argentina's traditional diet, s/he may have been able to profit. For instance, Mr. Winter's "reality-based" investor could have done well by trading beef/cattle futures, or perhaps by stockpiling beef before the Argentine peso collapsed. However, Mr. Winter supplies his own counterargument when he describes Macao as a good investment opportunity:

If Macao is a good enough investment for Steve Wynn or Sheldon Adelson, two of the most successful investors in Las Vegas real estate, it may be a safe bet for individual investors as well. [p. 77]

Unfortunately, Steve Wynn's Wynn Resorts (WYNN) and Sheldon Adelson's Las Vegas Sands (LVS) have been two of the worst-performing stocks this year. Both invested heavily in Macao. What's the lesson? Even if you know which direction the wind is blowing, it doesn't necessarily mean a beneficial storm will occur at the spot you predict. (Somewhere, John Bogle, an ardent buy-and-hold advocate, is smiling.)

Despite these "oops" moments, I learned a lot from Either/Or. Mr. Winter can explain complex ideas without sounding as if he's speaking down to his readers. On page 94, he explains why companies go public, despite the higher scrutiny (they want liquidity and access to more sources of funding). On pages 95-96, he discusses derivatives (you can almost hear the foreboding music in the background as you read):

[T]he variety of futures contracts available has increased dramatically and the number of contracts has increased exponentially. There are now many more futures contracts in oil traded than actual barrels of oil to be delivered...While futures are supposed to create more orderly markets, sometimes they can add disorder in the marketplace.

I also learned some more interesting facts. For example, Brazil is an oligarchy: "In Brazil, for example, twenty thousand families control 80% of the wealth." [p. 123] Also, the bottom of an oil barrel contains the most valuable liquid:

[W]hen the oil is refined, the lightest components become gasoline and kerosene and jet fuel, which sell for a couple of dollars per gallon. The next heaviest component becomes heating oil, which also sells for a dollar or two a gallon. What is left at the bottom of the barrel is the heavy, tarlike residue that is turned into thousands of different organic chemicals and pharmaceutical compounds...[these can] sell for anywhere from a few dollars a gallon to thousands of dollars a pound.

I'll leave you with Mr. Winter's investing rules:

1. Don't lose money
2. Don't invest where the big investors invest
3. Find a waterfall and put your bucket under it
4. Open your mind

Mr. Winter is obviously a man with both feet planted firmly on the ground. If you're skeptical of buy-and-hold investing, or if you just want to learn more about a different investment style, you may enjoy his book.

Friday, December 26, 2008

Education between the Genders

Greg Mortenson, in The Commonwealth (Jan 2009), tells us a beautiful proverb about education:

If we educate a boy, we educate an individual. But if we can educate a girl, we educate a community.

He is the co-founder of Central Asia Institute, and the co-author of Cups of Tea. In smaller communities, especially poorer ones, Mr. Mortenson is indeed correct.

Thursday, December 25, 2008

Ali Salem on Peace

In honor of X-Mas day, I give you some words from Ali Salem, an Egyptian playwright:

Peace will not come to you; you have to make it, you have to sculpt it...you know, business deals lead to peace, not "enlightenment" from writers and intellectuals. [SF Chronicle, 12/19/08, A24]

I have a soft spot in my heart for writers, especially blacklisted ones. Mr. Salem has the right idea--words alone are not enough for peace. Individuals must work together. We forget that racism and lynchings in America were not resolved through American courts, which affirmed both Dred Scott and Plessy v. Ferguson. From everything I've read, when white Americans had to serve with African-Americans in the military, only then did America's racial consciousness change. After all, it's hard to be racist when you spend time with someone and do productive and/or courageous activities together. On this day, I give thanks to human beings everywhere who make it possible for us to connect to other human beings all over the world. Thank you, eBay. Thank you, Doctors Without Borders. Thank you, Google. Thank you, Kiva. And most of all, thank you to the "people who do their jobs, raise their families and sacrifice so that we can gather here in peace."

An X-Mas Gift

On X-Mas Eve, I received my new passport. I love the new design. I realize the new passports are a privacy lover's worst nightmare because of the embedded chips. I was still very happy to receive what felt like a timely gift from the feds. I especially like the quotes from famous Americans, including Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr., on each page. Here's one I had not seen before:

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty. -- JFK

The passport also has blank sections where you can write in your address and other contact information. Use pencil when writing in the requested information. I made the mistake of writing my address and phone number in pen on the passport. That's my fault, of course--paragraph 5 told me to use pencil. The new passport also has two new pages titled, "Important Information." Most of the information is excellent and useful, but there is one interesting section--"Loss of U.S. Citizenship" (paragraph 13):

LOSS OF CITIZENSHIP. Under certain circumstances, you may lose your U.S. citizenship by performing any of the following acts: (1) being naturalized in a foreign state; (2) taking an oath or making a declaration to a foreign state; (3) serving in the armed forces of a foreign state; (4) accepting employment with a foreign government; or (5) formally renouncing U.S. citizenship before a U.S. consular officer overseas.

I admit I don't know which federal statute the above language comes from. (If someone does, please post a comment or email me the U.S.C. and/or CFRs directly.) Even so, most of the language seems overly vague and may therefore be unconstitutional.

For example, "Taking an oath or making a declaration to a foreign state?" That could encompass a lawyer writing a declaration in another country's court of law on a routine matter.

How about, "Serving in the armed forces of another state?" What about an Israeli citizen with dual citizenship? (Israel has mandatory military service.)

In short, Americans have allowed their government too much discretion if their new passports contain the direct language of a federal law. I am now having visions of Sir Thomas More appearing before Chancellor Cromwell, i.e., an innocent citizen before a government employee who twists the law to eliminate opposition. My country can do better in protecting all of its citizens from the vagaries of government discretion.

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Why Does Hilary Kramer Still Have a Job?

I don't usually watch television, but I happened to catch tonight's NBR. Analyst Hilary Kramer scared me out of my wits when she said she expected the market to drop 25%:

I believe in the first six months, everyone should be very careful, all investors. We could see the Dow dip to 7500. S&P could have another 25 percent downside...But don't just rush in or if you have some concern in the market, sell, hold out, wait for the real bottom to come...I think that gold could reach $1400 during 2009.

http://www.pbs.org/nbr/site/onair/transcripts/081224e/

I was absolutely frightened until I saw the following transcript, also from NBR:

http://www.pbs.org/nbr/site/onair/transcripts/080123c/

Ms. Kramer says,

I believe we have seen the bottom and we are going to now see a bull come back into Wall Street. We have formed a bottom and the reason we know that is that we finally had real buyers come in today. But we know it even more so because of what I saw this morning and yesterday, which is real fear. Fear took over and it over powered greed. Greed for so long was fueling the market, including as it was going down people buying into it.

The date? January 23, 2008. The DJIA was 12,270--now it's 8,468. The S&P was 1338--now it's 865.  Some "bull," eh?

The lesson? Analysts don't know squat. Trust your own instincts. Or at least listen to people who've been right before, like Barry Ritholtz.

Update:
gold did not reach $1400 in 2009, but on March 6, 2009, the Dow dipped to 6626, proving Ms. Kramer partially correct.