February Market Update: Politics and Portfolios

February Market Update: Politics and Portfolios

 

00:00:06 – 00:05:03

 

Welcome to Wealthy Behavior, talking money and wealth with Heritage Financial. The podcast that digs into topics strategies and behaviors that help busy successful people build and protect their personal wealth. I’m your host, Sammy Azzouz president and CEO of Heritage Financial, a Boston based wealth management firm working with business owners, executives, and retirees for longer than 25 years. Now, let’s talk about the wealthy behaviors that are key to a rich life.

 

Welcome to the February investment edition of the wealthy behavior podcast where I talk to heritage financial’s chief investment officer Bob Weiss about what’s going on in the markets and investment universe right now. We’re recording this on the afternoon of February 1st after the fed decided and announced that it was raising rates by a quarter percent or 25 basis points and we saw the markets reaction, which was initially favorable, Bob, the markets were negative and then turned positive and are ending the day positive. So, by all accounts, initially, the market had a favorable response. Does that matter to you? Or is it, you know, one day or one-half day and let’s wait and see. More of the latter, it’s one day, a bit of a roller coaster of a day. It looks like the Dow is ending about flat. NASDAQ up 2%, S&P up 1%, looking at U.S. markets. So yeah, there was it was widely expected that the fed was going to raise rates by 25 basis points, which is what they did. And Powell’s press conference, he was friendly. Friendly to the markets you mean. Yes, friendly to the markets. I think what markets liked hearing was that he recognized that inflation is slowing. He’s seeing that impacts of policy changes are slowing inflation and that’s been the big battle. As opposed to a head in the sand and upward, we’re still out and we have a long ways to go. It’s more like we’re making good progress here a couple more rate hikes. I think the those were his words. So maybe two more 25 basis point rate hikes and we’re done, so just seeing the fed raising rates is slow and inflation has intended their recognize in it. I guess it made markets happy a little bit. So different than the Jackson hole speech that you and I talked about from last summer where basically we kind of characterized it at you was pretty hawkish and it was a verbal rate hike and you’re saying this time around he struck a different tone. The Jackson Hall I think was intentional. I’m going to spook people and cause pain. I’m going to cause pain and wanted to shake things up. I don’t know that he was trying to be as they would call it dovish and push markets up. To be honest, he’s probably not pleased with market spin up after him speaking, I think, in general he probably wants a flat response. Why would that be Bob? Well, just in general, he doesn’t want to be moving markets, but if he does right now, he is trying to be more restrictive. He’s trying to slow things down. Tighten financial conditions is a term, so tightening financial conditions is higher interest rates as lower money supply is lower stock prices is lower home prices. That’s what the fed’s trying to do. They’re trying to tighten monetary conditions. So, Bob, just sorry. I understand the first two as to why they would be tighter financial conditions. Why would stock market prices being higher or home prices being higher? Go against the tighter monetary policy that they’re pursuing. The wealth effect. So, your house is worth more your portfolio is worth more. Research shows you’re more inclined to spend money. And same with your portfolio, obviously. Okay, sorry, I interrupted you there. Please go on. They’re in a tightening mode and seeing markets go up. That’s kind of pushing in the opposite direction that’s loosening financial conditions. Since the last time we talked, the market had a strong January. And it wasn’t only January. I don’t know if we’ve how much we’ve talked about this, but you know the markets had a strong run really since toward the end of October. And I think not just U.S. equities, international equities, fixed income, doing better. There’s a possibility, there’s a debate, you know, are we in a new bull market that the market bottoms out in October or are we retesting the lows? But what are the numbers Bob showing you that the market’s done since that so far October low that continued well into a strong January? Yeah, the markets have been strong and looking at trailing three-month returns. The U.S. market is up 5.6%. The world ex U.S. So, this is developed international is up 19.88%. And emerging markets are up 22.16%. So, it just rounding those U.S.

 

 

00:05:03 – 00:10:02

 

6, developed international 19 and emerging markets 22. So, there’s been some really strong returns seen overseas in the last three months. So that’s been really good to see. That has been good to see. I think it’s important to get balance in global equity returns. Why do you see that happening? What do you think is the case for the international outperformance lately? I think part of its valuation driven, but we went into 2022. So, rewinding 13 months or so with some areas of the U.S. market in particular that were quite expensive, like tech that we’ve been talking about. But oversea markets were fairly valued, then everything sells off and you end up with foreign markets being cheap compared to historical averages. Whereas U.S. market is more average ish. So then as things normalize, they have more room to run up to recoup the declines from 2022. And China reopening does that impact anything in your mind, the emerging markets, China is definitely a big part of that story. China’s done quite well. I think we talked about that like one or two months ago. Yeah, China reopening, and that market got really cheap. We talked about that, I think, in October, where it got down to book value, which is just putting no value on the operations of the business, businesses, companies, and seeing really good returns out of China since then. In our 2023 market outlook podcast with your colleague Michael Waldron, we did talk about the fact that the emerging markets are a source of potentially higher returns than the U.S. and developed international, but also higher volatility. So, you do need to put a governor on them in building a portfolio developed internationals doing quite well. Do you need to put as much of a governor on your developed international exposure or do they have volatility more in line with the U.S. market? Closer to in line with the U.S. market, you are taking currency risk there. So as a U.S. investor dollar-based investor currency risk is really the main difference for added risk. But otherwise, you’re looking at developed established companies in Europe. If you’re looking at a BMW versus Ford which company has more risk, they’re both large automakers and established countries. Got it. In terms of bonds, Bob, what are you seeing in the fixed income markets? Yeah, fixed income markets look good. Yields rose several hundred basis points last year. So, we’re getting attractive yields and municipal bonds. Treasury bonds. The securitized market yields are good. So, in addition to seeing strong yields, which we acted on by increasing our bond allocation late last year, yields have started to come down a little bit as other investors have also said, oh, well, these are attractive yields. So, when yields are going down, that means the price is going up. So, year to date, bond investors are looking at returns at around 3 to 4%. So totally in a month. So, in a month, three to 4% in bonds in month of January has been good to see. Quite a nice reversal from their worst year ever last year. Yes. They do have catching up to do. Is the yield curve still inverted? Very much so. Explain that. And then I do have a question on that because, you know, with your ability to get a higher yield in shorter term instruments, I guess I’ll just ask the question, why would anybody go out longer on the curve and not just lock in the two-year rates? Yeah, so just read off some yields looking at the yield curve, the high point I’m looking at 7 different points on it is the 6-month 6-month treasury bill yields 4.77%. The two year is 4.09 and the ten year is 3.41. So 4.77 for a 6 month and 3.41 for ten years. So that’s 1.36% lower in yield for the ten year. What the market is doing is it takes and consideration where the fed funds rate will be over time. And the fact that the rates that we have today on the short end from fed raising rates aren’t going to be there forever. That’s why you have a higher yield on the short term because that’s basically what you’re getting that the current short rate long term markets are expecting the fed to eventually cut. Got it. So, you could set the money market right now and get that 4% yield, but that yield will be going down. So that’s kind of the initial read of it. That’s the initial read of why it’s inverted.

 

 

00:10:03 – 00:15:00

 

Yeah, just explaining what it is. But then thinking a little bit more, okay, so now where do you want to be positioned on it? When you see an inverted yield curve, it’s saying. The fed will be cutting rates. So, they’re temporarily elevated. Well, what will change course? Why aren’t rates going to stay at this level forever? And it’s because the fed’s going to cut rates. Why will the fed cut rates? They have a dual mandate. And that is stable employment. And price stability. So, when they’re fighting price stability inflation, which is what they’re doing now, that leads elevated rates. When they think that the concern is more on the employment side and unemployment goes up, that’s when they start cutting rates. When you see an inverted yield curve like this is saying that a fed rate cut is coming. And that typically lines up with a recession. So, this is how economic cycles work, where you get too hot, fed hikes rates, and hiking rates, they invert the yield curve, then unemployment shoots up as you had a recession, and they cut rates. When they cut rates, you typically will see more of a parallel shift in the curve. Well, I guess not a perfectly parallel shift, but you will see rates move across the board, okay? So, you will see rates move down across the board. Down across the board. And the way the math of bonds works is that the duration is higher and longer term bonds. So, a .5% reduction in the yield of a ten year treasury is much higher increase in price than a .5% change on a 6 month T Bill. So, you’ll get better price returns and long-term bonds when the fed cuts rates. Got it. No, that’s a great answer as a long answer, but it’s a perfect answer because I followed it. And it made a lot of sense. Thank you, Bob. So basically, your positioning a portfolio, if you added duration recently, which we did for eventual rate decreases, which will help prices on longer term bonds, more than shorter term bonds, even though the yield on the shorter term ones right now is much higher. Higher, I guess. Okay. Is that what they also call reinvestment rate risk on the shorter side? Yes. Sure, you can get those yields right now, but then what are you going to do 6 months to two years from now? And that instance would reinvestment rate risk fears push you towards owning something a little bit more long term? Yes. The two main risks that people speak about us included with fixed income are credit risk and rate risk. So, credit risk risk a default rate risk the relationship of changes in interest rates reinvestment risk is a third risk. That’s not as commonly talked about that you brought up, so reinvestment risk because that’s Bond investor. Bonds mature you’re going to get your cash back. Bonds pay dividends. You’re going to get cash. You’re constantly getting cash flow. What yield are you going to get on it? I know what the yields are today, but you don’t know what the yields will be in the future. So, in the future, if yields are lower, that’s a risk to let downside. So, by buying longer term bonds, you’re taking less reinvestment risk and when yields are attractive when they’re at what I’d consider acceptable levels were more inclined to take more of that term risk to reduce the reinvestment risk. So that we don’t get stuck in a world where bonds yield and 1 to 2% again. And it gets hard to deliver returns for clients who want to live off a portfolio that’s returning 6 or 7% when bonds are only going to give you one. So, when we can get three and a half to four, just out of treasuries, and then with spread product, get 6s, 7s, and the yield we’re looking to take it right now. So so far this year, asset classes, traditional asset classes, U.S. stocks, international stocks, bonds, doing well and really you shared over the last three months, how well global stocks are doing, we talked about something like this. I think over the summer when there was concern that maybe we had a rally and that the market was getting quote unquote ahead of itself. Do you have any fears that that is happening right now? A little bit. Something I think worth bringing up this morning, there’s a jobs report out. Jolts, job opening, labor, turnover survey. The number of job openings. So, think of help wanted signs out on the Internet for job openings. It’s up to 11 million. And that was a surprise to the upside a big numbers. It had been on the decline. And then it just jumped back up. So, there’s a lot of job openings. What Powell talks about is the ratio of job openings to people looking for work.

 

 

00:15:01 – 00:20:01

 

And that ratio right now is about 1.9. So, for every one person who’s unemployed and looking for work, there’s 1.9 jobs. So, when you think about inflation and what you’d want in a balanced economy, you’d want more like a one to one ratio. Like, oh, that’d be perfect. There’s one person looking for work, and there’s one job for that person. So, when you have a 1.9 to one ratio, what happens is kind of the negotiating power ends up with the employee and you get wage growth. That can push inflation. So, it’s tough for companies to hire than they have to raise wages when you raise wages. That is an inflationary action. So that’s something that the fed is looking at closely. That’s a headwind for them bringing inflation back down to 2% when you have 11 million job openings. So, bringing it back to your concern, the market may be getting ahead of itself if the fed decides to respond more aggressively to a stubbornly attractive job market. Yeah, Powell said in the press conference that there’s imbalance in the jobs market. So, when you think these things, there are sometimes there are a bit of a head scratcher just to get comfortable with it. But they want that if you could make those 11 million jobs turn into 8 million. They probably would. And that’s more balanced. That makes from an academic standpoint. Looking at numbers, that makes them happy. But what does that mean? That just made 3 million jobs go away. And how do you make 3 million jobs go away? Well, you slow down company growth. More you put companies out of business. And that gets to very real consequences. And you take their tools of raising interest rates and tightening financial conditions and demand destruction, things like that. That’s your economic pain scenario where you make 3 million jobs go away. And then they’re happy. And that’s the scenario that they claim and everybody hopes that they’re trying to avoid, right? So, engineering the soft landing instead of the recession and taking pain to the labor market. Yeah, it’s hard to do. It’s just hard to see that happening in your eyes because of how stubbornly, again, attractive, that the jobs market is. And it’s just how connected they are. How do you make 3 million jobs go away? Pretty much a lot of companies do have to go out of business. How is that not painful? I feel like that is the big issue that’s yet to be resolved and it was a little disappointing to see that number come in this morning, how it came in high. We’re moving in the right direction, like housing prices are down 5 months in a row. That’s great to see from an inflationary standpoint. It’s deflationary. But this jobs market is stubbornly strong, so that’s the big risk that you see out there for investors in the short term that the job market does not change course and the fed needs to maintain its hawkish stance for longer, which obviously the market would not react favorably to. Correct. That makes a lot of sense. And so, something else that has been raised as a concern and a fear for 2023 by investors and people we talk with is this debt ceiling situation. And I know we’ve shared some information on it internally. We’ve shared some information with our clients. The debt ceiling is this goofy construct that seems to come back and haunt us politically every few years. What are your thoughts on the risk to investors of this debt ceiling debate? Risk is low. It’s just a frustrating exercise where politicians use the debt ceiling, it’s like red button that they can push that would cause some real destruction and financial markets that they won’t, but will threaten. So, I think it just is going to get a lot of headlines, but eventually they’ll raise the debt ceiling as they should. And treasury won’t default. Because you play it out, the consequences of the treasury defaulting on the debt. It’s just, it’s nonsense. It’s way too severe. So, I just explained, I mean, technically, treasury defaulting on its debt. What does that mean? To everyday people like, what would that look like? So first mechanically, what does it mean? It’s like there are treasury bonds outstanding and maturity from bills that mature tomorrow to 30-year bonds and interest payments. So, it means that they’re not paying back the principal on treasuries that mature. They’re not paying the interest. They’re not paying federal workers. It’s all of those and so to connect it to reality.

 

 

00:20:02 – 00:25:00

 

The social security trust fund is held in treasury debt. So, if you want the social security trust fund just to go to zero, you start playing things out like that, like all money markets are very heavily cash reserves are in treasury. So, you become a deadbeat borrower basically. You’re the company that are the person that’s not making their credit card payments or not making their bond payments and people just can’t get what they loaned back from you and also you talked about the consequences to other things like paying workers and social security payments. So obviously that would be catastrophic for the economy we have a tremendous benefit from being a world reserve currency and just people investing in our treasury market. So, you see it as low risk that that would ever happen, I tend to agree doesn’t mean low risk from short term volatility, right? As we kind of muddle through this, yes. Definitely short-term volatility risk, and two fronts. One rational and one irrational. Markets move based on emotion and sentiment. And that type of stuff can maybe you don’t need to put it through a calculator to change the intrinsic value in stock prices, but people get spooked and prices can go down. So, but that’s, I chalk that up to noise and just something that investors are best ignoring as much as they can. Just muddle through. And that tends to be a lot closer to what in this go around would be considered the June deadline that they’ve come up with. Historically, we have months before we need to worry about the volatility and the nervousness increasing. Right. So, your message to investors is ignore the debt ceiling debate. Yeah, really with politics. And anything related to politics and financial markets, it’s just disconnect the two. I’m just there’s just so much nonsense in Washington and don’t listen to that and think about your portfolio at the same time. That’s probably the best advice we could give today. Bob, what’s going on in the private markets? We don’t talk about it a lot, but we do invest for clients selectively and private equity, private credit, private real estate, a lot of those publicly traded markets last year struggled. We’ve talked about that AD nauseum. How did the private markets do in 2022 when do you have concerns there or are these good opportunities that are being created now in this environment? Any thoughts on private investing? Yeah, with private equity, we’ve seen markdowns in prices, which were actually I almost want to say, pleased to see, it means they’re being priced fairly. So stocks go down broadly of every flavor and color in 2022 and private equity, private business valuations got marked down too. So, no big surprise there. What we have not seen is much of a markdown in private real estate. And that gets a little tricky because when you think about the real estate market, like residential real estate, which is not what we own single-family homes, but the value of your home probably went up last year. So, with inflation being high real estate has gone up, but probably went up last year because there were good months before you mentioned the 5 in a row down months that bled into this year. Right, so yeah, if you’re looking at monthly markings, if you have them and you probably went up and then down, but you’re still up on the whole. But a challenge that the real estate market in general, real estate investors, which fits more like commercial real estate, private real estate are going to have to deal with is interest rates at current levels. So, we look at treasury yields in the 4’s, spread product. So, like if you’re making a loan to a real estate investor, like mortgages, you’re looking at 6s and 7s. Problem with real estate prices not decline in last year is say you entered last year with the term the equivalent of yield in real estate is basically called cap rate. The cap rate of 4% or yield of 4% a year ago, you buy a property that’s cash flow in your 4%. You finance it at 3% to put some leverage on it to juice up your return a little bit. So, your yield was in excess of your cost of capital, your finance rate at 3%. Now when financing rates are at 6 or 7 and the yield still four because the price hasn’t changed, leverage doesn’t work.

 

 

00:25:02 – 00:30:00

 

And real estate is almost all about leverage. That’s the beauty of real estate as an investor. You put half down or less and you put leverage and you paid on principle and income over time and you build equity and in addition to getting cash flow and when we’re looking at rates around 6 or 7% and cap rates are only at four, the math doesn’t work. So, we do have some concerns that there needs to be a price adjustment there. Yields going up in real estate means price going down. We’ve significantly trimmed our exposure to that market that I’m speaking about, which is really core real estate. So, we don’t have much exposure there, but within the private markets that’s the one that we’re most concerned about. Okay. But everything else you feel like is tracking according to expectations and what you consider the opportunity set in private markets hasn’t really been altered because of 2022. No. Great. Any other thoughts on your mind, Bob as we look at where the markets are on this February 1st? The only other thing you mentioned to me, we had a listener question about dividends. We did have a listener question about dividends. And as a reminder, we would love to answer any questions that you have in future episodes and if you do have questions, please email them to wealthybehavior@heritagefinancial.net. And we did have a question that came in the other day about why would you or would you not target a high dividend investing strategy in your portfolio? Yeah, so it’s a good question. When you look at corporate governance, which is basically companies looking at what to do with capital, paying out a dividend is an option. Another thing that companies can do with profits is buy back shares. So, if you just put those two examples in isolation next to each other and say, okay, a company has profits with some of the profits would you rather them issue a dividend, or buy back shares, personally, I’d rather them buy back shares. Because when they buy back shares, there’s fewer shares outstanding, so you as a shareholder who’s being passive. You now own more of the company that they’re making shares disappear. Your ownership of the company grows your ownership of profits grow. And what’s nice about that is it’s a nontaxable event. When they buy back shares, it doesn’t lead to a tax consequence for you. When they pay a dividend, you have to pay taxes on the dividend if it’s hard on a tax bill account. So, dividends are tax inefficient, one of the reasons why Warren Buffett Berkshire Hathaway doesn’t pay cash dividends. So, but on the flip side, it is nice to see that they’re returning some money to end investors. But the way we look at it is not measuring it based on dividend payout or dividends, but just profits. And we look at companies that are profitable and that gets to be in value investors. So, companies can do different things with their profits, so measuring a company based on its profits and balance sheet. So, seeing good book value, those are areas that we’d prefer rather than focusing on forced dividend payout policy. So that gets to my follow-up question that I was going to ask you and I’m still going to ask you because I think I am more of a fan of dividend investing than you are. And what you’re basically saying is what makes a good company that’s able to pay a dividend. I think this is what you’re basically saying. What makes a good company that’s able to pay a sustainable dividend and not a forced high dividend because it’s investors are expecting it is that it’s profitable, has strong cash flow. It’s financially healthy and they have excess capital to return to investors and they’ve just chosen to return it to investors in the way of a dividend. So, you can get the attributes of dividend paying stocks or quality dividend paying stocks in other ways without purely locking into only looking at those names. That’s right. Yeah. And then I think why the question comes up with a lot of investors is because you talked about the inefficiency of distributing a dividend and the tax inefficiency of distributing a dividend. But a lot of times the question does come from people who are already making portfolio withdrawals? And so in essence, they’re saying, throw out the yield from the portfolio, give it to me and my account through dividend paying stocks and then there’s less transactions that you’ll have to make to free up cash monthly when I need it. Is there anything to that in your mind? Just basically focusing a little bit more on income. It gets to building a you can build a portfolio to generate income today or you can build a portfolio to deliver the highest total return.

 

 

00:30:00 – 00:34:56

 

And then we’ll sell and find ways to get you the cash. And we do prefer the total return path. So if you look at the portfolio, it maybe even accompany names like looking at if you look at a fund that targets dividends. Some of the underlying companies that you’ll see that have high dividend payouts, like Comcast, telephone companies, cable companies, utilities, and a lot of people are cutting the cord. Getting rid of their cable. So that might get you a good dividend today. But does that make it a good investment for the next ten years? And I wouldn’t want to be building a portfolio in these kind of old dying companies that yes still have cash today, but what are they going to look like in 5 years and ten years and over time might get a subpar return, but you’ll get a good dividend in year one. So, it’s more you look at Google who’s also buying back stock and growing and maybe someone’s cutting their Comcast cord to go to YouTube TV. But frankly, on both of them. Rather than just go all in one. So, you’re still talking about essentially not reducing your opportunity set and being dogmatic in terms of the types of stocks that you’re looking for. Perfect. And if you do that, the expectation, at least under our philosophy is that you’ll have a higher expected return and that’s ultimately what matters in the portfolio. Yes. Nice. All right, so Bob, I appreciate that. You jumped the gun on asking the question. I was going to ask you one more thing because I know how you love some of these fake signals, real signals that come from the market you mentioned, the Super Bowl effect once on our podcast. So I wanted to ask you about one that I saw the other day and it was basically when the S&P is up during the Santa Claus rally, so during the end of the year and then for the first 5 days of the year and in January, the market historically does very well and it’s up 90% of the time in that calendar year that started with the January. Does that matter to you? One of the things that’s silly with some of those stats. Is when you’re measuring for a year and you say you’re up in January, well, of course you have a higher likelihood of having a good year because you’re including January and the calculation. I’d be interested in what that 90% number would be if it’s a starting point of February 1st. Because if it’s like, you start off the year up 6%, then yeah, you’re probably on track for an above average year. But you can’t get that 6% back today. So, I don’t put too much on that. There is momentum does kind of have some research that proves that one just keep one in and Bob, but don’t worry, I was worried that you changed your stripes on me and saying, oh, that sounds very reasonable. I kind of like that. I wish I had seen that myself. Anytime you see these markets are up most of the time type stats or what they’re because the market historically is up. Every month on average, you have more than a 50% chance I believe of being up every year. You have a high likelihood of being up. I don’t know what they do or what the markets do around the holidays. But, you know, you put a bunch of positive things together and you say it tends to lead to positive years in the market. It’s like, yeah, that’s because the market’s trendline is up. Yeah. Anyway, I thought you’d have fun with that one. Thank you, Bob. I really appreciate your insight today. I know the markets have been keeping you busy. We made a lot of portfolio changes in December to prepare ourselves for this higher yielding environment. And I appreciate your thoughts on stocks, bonds, the private markets, what the fed is doing. And I’m sure our listeners are getting a lot out of it. Thanks, Sammy. Thank you, Bob. And thank you all for listening.

 

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Check out my personal finance blog at thebostonadvisor.com. Wealthy behavior is produced by Kristin Castner and Michele Caccamise. This educational podcast is brought to you by Heritage Financial Services, LLC located in the greater Boston area. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are that of the speaker, are subject to change and do not constitute investment advice or a recommendation regarding any specific product or security. There is no guarantee that any investment or strategy discussed will be successful or will achieve any particular level of results. Investing involves risks including the potential loss of principle. *This automated transcript may contain grammatical errors.