Hi,
Swine flu is the big topic of the day and I thought I'd post a few pointers for those of you who are scratching your heads wondering what on earth to do. The path of least resistance is just to watch and see how this plays out, and I'm sure that's what the majority of people are doing. Unless of course you managed to pile into the pharmaceutical shares at the start of the week to jump on that predictable capital inflow bandwagon.
It isn't clear yet how deadly this virus is but given it has probably been around for a couple of months already and hasn't yet registered its first death in Europe, leads me to instinctively say that it won't be any where near as virulent as some of the more theatric media reports are suggesting. The media makes money from getting your attention, what better way to get your attention than the possibility of death by pig inspired influenza. Deaths will certainly come from this virus, and no doubt flu deaths are likely to spike above normal (for the UK normal is roughly 10,000 per year, ish, but these deaths never receive any media attention and are an accepted fact of daily life), but how far above normal is not an easy question to answer.
With markets flat lining, current popular opinion is that the flu will be largely a damp squib, not meriting the attention it is currently getting. Could we be surprised on the downside? It isn't impossible but I don't think so. Media attention is way overplaying the risk and unnecessarily alarming the public.
A few facts to keep in mind when considering what to do:
Firstly, the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 killed between 2 and 20% of all those infected, one of the symptoms being hemorrhaging from the ears and mouth. So far, the reports of the symptoms don't come anywhere close to those of the severity of the Spanish flu outbreak of 1918. Of course the virus could mutate into something more sinister but it certainly hasn't yet and there's no guarantee that it will. The first reason to be cheerful !
Secondly, the majority of those who died in 1918 did so of secondary bacterial infections brought on by the initial influenza outbreak. For those people living in countries with well funded health care systems, the majority of those bacterial infections are likely be avoided through antiviral drugs and antibiotics. The second reason to be cheerful. In 1918 all you had was the whiskey bottle and your own constitution.
Thirdly,with international travel over the last 20years through plane, train and automobile available to the masses on a scale never before seen in humanity's history, human beings are more interconnected than they have ever been before. As a result, flu viruses spread through society much more quickly than ever before. While this is a risk in the sense that, if a killer flu does come along, it will spread very quickly, it is also a defence; due to human interconnectivity we all get a whiff of every virulent flu strain every year and our immune systems are that much more efficient at fighting them off, even if they are a particularly nasty strain.
In summary, ignore the media hype. Flu is here to stay, occasionally flu deaths will spike but the threat of a flu pandemic is an unavoidable fact of human life and something we are better prepared for than ever before. I would suggest carrying on as normal, have bacon with your breakfast if that is your habit and, if you must, buy OTM equity puts in emerging market indices, especially if it looks like the virus has mutated into something more formidable. Look for reports from key medical agencies that list more severe symptoms to give you a head start on whether a malignant mutation has occurred or not.
Happy hunting,
Andy Shaw
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Monday, April 20, 2009
Stress testing and VaR models - finding the wood from the trees
Hi,
http://www.ft.com/reports/risk-management-april2009
Business is hotting up for us and I wasn't going to post anything until next week but the risk management report in the FT and the recent fretting about the Wall St stress tests has left me with some opinions I thought you'd find interesting.
VaR models come in for much criticism in the FT report but the pundits who are commenting on this are missing some basic issues and are still unable to see the wood from the trees. I've mentioned a number of times in recent blogs about the importance of understanding your risk models and their weaknesses. VaR continues to come in for much flak, especially the monte-carlo based models, however, the answer here isn't to throw them out and start building again, it is to adapt your models to the new environment, and make them 'future market proof'.
The scope of how to do this is too large for these pages but I stress, building again from scratch isn't needed if you have operational capacity to produce monte-carlo based VaR numbers. If you understand your model, you can easily adapt it to give you a much better guide on potential losses in future market scenarios. Now isn't the time to invest large sums of money in the alleged latest way to model financial risk. Now is the time for sound 'what if' analysis from your risk management department coupled with a smart hedging strategy.
This leads me neatly in to the Wall St stress tests which is the mother of all 'what if' projects. These numbers will undoubtedly influence share prices, but I suspect they will merely confirm what the market has decided in the past year. I don't think there will be a huge divergence in perceived health beyond that which has been implied already in the last two years of share price moves.
Pre-crisis, stress testing had been too lax with risk managers not able to make the conceptual leap from nonvolatile markets into possible future volatile ones. This is a classic human context mistake. If you are in a benign environment, it is very difficult for you to make the jump into a potential crisis enironment and come up with scenarios based off what a major increase in volatility would look like. Now that volatility has come, I'm sure that some of the possible future scenarios being suggested are the other way - much too conservative and apocalyptic. Despite the fact you may solve the context problem, assessing worst case scenario loss in chaotic markets and coming up with anything like meaningful numbers is an impossible job to do accurately. Stress scenarios are typically driven by liquidity issues and forced unwinds of a defaulted firms positions than assets jumping to certain fundamental levels which banks were able to anticipate in their stress analysis.
As a result, financial firms need to subtly change how they use this information to help to protect themselves in a downturn. They should consider dampening losses through a clever hedging strategy as any possible scenario, however comprehensively thought out, is exactly that - only a possible scenario. Of course then the challenge becomes how much to spend on your hedging strategy and how to apply it. Well, good risk managers are going to more than earn their money in the coming years, and the best of them will be the ones who can get the most bang for their company's buck in terms of hedging their business strategy. If you can get this right, it will have the potential to catapult your company's brand beyond your competition when the next wave of volatility hits the market as you will sail through it as opposed to being sunk.
Happy hunting,
Andy Shaw
http://www.ft.com/reports/risk-management-april2009
Business is hotting up for us and I wasn't going to post anything until next week but the risk management report in the FT and the recent fretting about the Wall St stress tests has left me with some opinions I thought you'd find interesting.
VaR models come in for much criticism in the FT report but the pundits who are commenting on this are missing some basic issues and are still unable to see the wood from the trees. I've mentioned a number of times in recent blogs about the importance of understanding your risk models and their weaknesses. VaR continues to come in for much flak, especially the monte-carlo based models, however, the answer here isn't to throw them out and start building again, it is to adapt your models to the new environment, and make them 'future market proof'.
The scope of how to do this is too large for these pages but I stress, building again from scratch isn't needed if you have operational capacity to produce monte-carlo based VaR numbers. If you understand your model, you can easily adapt it to give you a much better guide on potential losses in future market scenarios. Now isn't the time to invest large sums of money in the alleged latest way to model financial risk. Now is the time for sound 'what if' analysis from your risk management department coupled with a smart hedging strategy.
This leads me neatly in to the Wall St stress tests which is the mother of all 'what if' projects. These numbers will undoubtedly influence share prices, but I suspect they will merely confirm what the market has decided in the past year. I don't think there will be a huge divergence in perceived health beyond that which has been implied already in the last two years of share price moves.
Pre-crisis, stress testing had been too lax with risk managers not able to make the conceptual leap from nonvolatile markets into possible future volatile ones. This is a classic human context mistake. If you are in a benign environment, it is very difficult for you to make the jump into a potential crisis enironment and come up with scenarios based off what a major increase in volatility would look like. Now that volatility has come, I'm sure that some of the possible future scenarios being suggested are the other way - much too conservative and apocalyptic. Despite the fact you may solve the context problem, assessing worst case scenario loss in chaotic markets and coming up with anything like meaningful numbers is an impossible job to do accurately. Stress scenarios are typically driven by liquidity issues and forced unwinds of a defaulted firms positions than assets jumping to certain fundamental levels which banks were able to anticipate in their stress analysis.
As a result, financial firms need to subtly change how they use this information to help to protect themselves in a downturn. They should consider dampening losses through a clever hedging strategy as any possible scenario, however comprehensively thought out, is exactly that - only a possible scenario. Of course then the challenge becomes how much to spend on your hedging strategy and how to apply it. Well, good risk managers are going to more than earn their money in the coming years, and the best of them will be the ones who can get the most bang for their company's buck in terms of hedging their business strategy. If you can get this right, it will have the potential to catapult your company's brand beyond your competition when the next wave of volatility hits the market as you will sail through it as opposed to being sunk.
Happy hunting,
Andy Shaw
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Hedge funds, private equity and a retiring politician's bete noire - short selling.
As the politicians pick up the task of repairing the worlds financial system, one opinion that hasn't seemed to have filtered through is the idea that hedge funds and private equity firms have an important role to play. I guess in the current environment, it simply isn't good politics to voice support for an industry incorrectly held to blame for many of the problems we have seen.
Let me fly in the face of popular opinion - hedge funds and private equity firms are crucial to the future of the finance system if we want an efficient fair system. And I think I speak for everyone when I say, not only do we want an efficient and fair finance system, we desperately need one. However, hedge funds do need appropriate control and regulation, which has been lacking in recent years. This is all the more surprising when you think that LTCM's blow up over 10years ago almost brought the financial system to its knees - you'd have thought we'd have learnt some lessons from that debacle, but clearly not.
Perhaps the LTCM disaster was actually the point at which Gordon Brown felt that 'boom and bust' had finally ended and hence he stuck with his light touch regulation despite the evidence suggesting this wasn't the best of strategies? However, that's a blog topic for another day. So why are hedge funds so crucial and how should hedge funds be regulated without stifling innovation and liquidity and chasing them into offshore havens?
Pools of private capital willing to take risks more conservative investors shy away from, or expose flaws in the financial system, or help deflate asset bubbles to fair levels, are crucial to creating efficient liquid markets. Markets typically are far from efficient. Efficient markets should trade at levels considered by the market to reflect fair value. To do this they need a variety of investors who analyse assets in different ways, who innovate new valuation tools, and who are able to gamble on stock prices either rising or falling. If you restrict short selling, or indeed ban it altogether, you limit the scope for investors to force assets back to their fair value if they start to 'bubble'. This isn't so bad for stocks, as hedge fund investors can short names by buying CDS protection, or buying equity puts, but it can cause problems in markets like housing for example.
The straw that broke the US housing markets back, and most importantly destroyed value in subprime CDO's was the introduction of the ABX CDS product. This product effectively brought the first efficient method of shorting subprime mortgage pools in large size. Up until then, the financial markets didn't have the ability to efficiently short the subprime market. As a result, with a market only populated with buyers combined with a hopeless misunderstanding of CDO technology, the US subprime market started to bubble with no wily old hedge funds to bring asset levels back down to more realistic levels.
And then along came the ABX CDS product and give or take six months or so, the rest is history - the US housing market, particularly in subprime areas, collapsed. Had the ABX CDS product been launched 10 years earlier, the US housing market bubble arguably would never have happened or at the least been much smaller.
Hedge funds are the investors who have their fingers on the pulse of new innovations in markets and it is these innovations which help bring effeciency and fair valuation to assets.
Furthermore, hedgefunds and private equity firms also bring liquidity to projects which otherwise wouldn't see the light of day. This is key to encouraging a dynamic thriving economy. People need to find the innovation frontier in the economy in order to drive the discovery of new products and new markets. The only way to do this is in taking risk through entrepreneurs. So not only are hedge funds key for ensuring assets trade at fair prices, but they also help the economy grow and reinvent itself.
Hedge funds, and investors in general, should be given the whole range of products to trade all kinds of risks. The issue then becomes, ensuring the size of these risks remains appropriate for what the risk is.
For hedge funds to access liquid markets, they must typically do this through an investment bank or prime broker. Hedge funds need to be forced into having a prime broker so regulators can come to one investment bank and survey a hedge fund's entire assets. If the hedge fund has assets at multiple brokers, the regulators can't do this so easily. From here, the regulators need to decide appropriate sizes for risks at any one hedge fund. This also isn't an easy thing to do, but your goal is to ensure a hedge fund can default and be liquidated into the market without melting it. Fortunately there are now many examples of a hedge fund being liquidated to help guide this solution.
If you get the regulation right, and you help set up a virtuous circle which encourages investors and encourages an efficient financial system, you'll also make great strides in reducing systemic risk in the economic system. As the financial systems approaches some level of improved or 'peak' efficiency, you'll find that hedge funds strategies will get more varied and more and more diverse - this is the sign of a healthy financial system.
If hedge funds are all betting in the same direction in a particular market, you can bet your last dollar that they have probably all spotted a major inefficiency and they're simply waiting for the levee walls to breach.
I know some of these hedge fund managers who court publicity can be somewhat unpalatable. And the flaunting of their money too can be unpalatable. However, the more efficient the system gets, the less these people will get paid. Surely that's reason enough for encouraging them? And as for the politicians who want to ban short selling. If you look at the key people behind the drive, they are mostly at the end of their careers and at retirement age. They perhaps think, incorrectly, that a quick ban on short selling will save their pensions. Well, they're 10 years too late for that. They are, to some degree, reaping what they have sown.
Happy hunting,
Andy Shaw
Let me fly in the face of popular opinion - hedge funds and private equity firms are crucial to the future of the finance system if we want an efficient fair system. And I think I speak for everyone when I say, not only do we want an efficient and fair finance system, we desperately need one. However, hedge funds do need appropriate control and regulation, which has been lacking in recent years. This is all the more surprising when you think that LTCM's blow up over 10years ago almost brought the financial system to its knees - you'd have thought we'd have learnt some lessons from that debacle, but clearly not.
Perhaps the LTCM disaster was actually the point at which Gordon Brown felt that 'boom and bust' had finally ended and hence he stuck with his light touch regulation despite the evidence suggesting this wasn't the best of strategies? However, that's a blog topic for another day. So why are hedge funds so crucial and how should hedge funds be regulated without stifling innovation and liquidity and chasing them into offshore havens?
Pools of private capital willing to take risks more conservative investors shy away from, or expose flaws in the financial system, or help deflate asset bubbles to fair levels, are crucial to creating efficient liquid markets. Markets typically are far from efficient. Efficient markets should trade at levels considered by the market to reflect fair value. To do this they need a variety of investors who analyse assets in different ways, who innovate new valuation tools, and who are able to gamble on stock prices either rising or falling. If you restrict short selling, or indeed ban it altogether, you limit the scope for investors to force assets back to their fair value if they start to 'bubble'. This isn't so bad for stocks, as hedge fund investors can short names by buying CDS protection, or buying equity puts, but it can cause problems in markets like housing for example.
The straw that broke the US housing markets back, and most importantly destroyed value in subprime CDO's was the introduction of the ABX CDS product. This product effectively brought the first efficient method of shorting subprime mortgage pools in large size. Up until then, the financial markets didn't have the ability to efficiently short the subprime market. As a result, with a market only populated with buyers combined with a hopeless misunderstanding of CDO technology, the US subprime market started to bubble with no wily old hedge funds to bring asset levels back down to more realistic levels.
And then along came the ABX CDS product and give or take six months or so, the rest is history - the US housing market, particularly in subprime areas, collapsed. Had the ABX CDS product been launched 10 years earlier, the US housing market bubble arguably would never have happened or at the least been much smaller.
Hedge funds are the investors who have their fingers on the pulse of new innovations in markets and it is these innovations which help bring effeciency and fair valuation to assets.
Furthermore, hedgefunds and private equity firms also bring liquidity to projects which otherwise wouldn't see the light of day. This is key to encouraging a dynamic thriving economy. People need to find the innovation frontier in the economy in order to drive the discovery of new products and new markets. The only way to do this is in taking risk through entrepreneurs. So not only are hedge funds key for ensuring assets trade at fair prices, but they also help the economy grow and reinvent itself.
Hedge funds, and investors in general, should be given the whole range of products to trade all kinds of risks. The issue then becomes, ensuring the size of these risks remains appropriate for what the risk is.
For hedge funds to access liquid markets, they must typically do this through an investment bank or prime broker. Hedge funds need to be forced into having a prime broker so regulators can come to one investment bank and survey a hedge fund's entire assets. If the hedge fund has assets at multiple brokers, the regulators can't do this so easily. From here, the regulators need to decide appropriate sizes for risks at any one hedge fund. This also isn't an easy thing to do, but your goal is to ensure a hedge fund can default and be liquidated into the market without melting it. Fortunately there are now many examples of a hedge fund being liquidated to help guide this solution.
If you get the regulation right, and you help set up a virtuous circle which encourages investors and encourages an efficient financial system, you'll also make great strides in reducing systemic risk in the economic system. As the financial systems approaches some level of improved or 'peak' efficiency, you'll find that hedge funds strategies will get more varied and more and more diverse - this is the sign of a healthy financial system.
If hedge funds are all betting in the same direction in a particular market, you can bet your last dollar that they have probably all spotted a major inefficiency and they're simply waiting for the levee walls to breach.
I know some of these hedge fund managers who court publicity can be somewhat unpalatable. And the flaunting of their money too can be unpalatable. However, the more efficient the system gets, the less these people will get paid. Surely that's reason enough for encouraging them? And as for the politicians who want to ban short selling. If you look at the key people behind the drive, they are mostly at the end of their careers and at retirement age. They perhaps think, incorrectly, that a quick ban on short selling will save their pensions. Well, they're 10 years too late for that. They are, to some degree, reaping what they have sown.
Happy hunting,
Andy Shaw
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Obama's toxic asset giveaway
The toxic assets that continue to occupy the balance sheets of most key US banks, and that as a result make these firms a no go area for many investors, are still central to the continuing problem in the US financial system. Solutions have been slow in coming as the crisis is now entering its third year.
The idea that Obama and Geithner are pushing, in essentially enticing investors to take on the risk from the banks, is hardly revolutionary policy. However, given how CDO technology works, now is the very first time it has been sensible to push this solution - any time prior to this and the volatility of many of these assets would have scared away anyone but the most foolhardy of investors. Not to mention the banks themselves were struggling with generating a meaningful valuation. However, it seems that Obama's timing, by accident or design, is possibly perfect. The opportunity in this 'toxic' asset giveaway is a fabulous one for an investor willing to do a little homework now that the first grass shoots of stability in the US housing market have appeared.
There are three key hazards to negotiate before this opportunity becomes a good one. And if you do this properly, the opportunity could be an excellent one:
1. Do your homework on the mortgage pool - some 'subprime' pools are more rotten than others. Finding a subprime mortgage pool with a fundamental supporting market and solid reasons for a stabilising of house prices is key. Some subprime areas, where all the neighbours were borrowing money they couldn't afford, could well become ghost towns. Prices in areas like this are trapped in a race to the bottom. For these pools, any signs of recovery are more a pause before the downward march is resumed rather than a turnaround. Other pools, where subprime mortgages have a fundamental floor on account of solid surrounding economic support, are the pools you need to identify. This requires local analysis. If you can't find a pool you like, stop right there.
2. Once you feel you have a good idea how your chosen mortgage pool is likely to behave, you need to value the CDO derivative correctly. Conventional valuation tools do not work for these securities in volatile markets. Indeed, many CDO tranches generate an effect which is the opposite of diversity - hence why they are so risky. You need to develop a more fundamental approach to valuing these assets and play through some different scenarios from now to asset maturity to frame the risk you are taking on. If you use quantitative techniques you don't fully understand, it is likely they will lead you up the garden path.
3. The Treasury is committed to extending a floor to your asset - it is likely they will value this floor very generously giving you an asymmetric pay off. Governments are not always known for their financial acumen and they also need to price this stuff to sell. The value in this floor is a function of you fully understanding the last two hazards.
If you understand your mortgage pool, how your CDO will behave for different forward scenarios, and then combine this knowledge with a generous Treasury floor, these assets will be a fabulous opportunity. However, get on the wrong side of one of these issues, and it could be very painful one.
And bid low ! Let your scenario analysis drive the size of what you will pay for the asset ensuring that if your price is filled that you make money even if we see further house price falls and rising default rates from today. This is as much a giveaway as an auction. No-one will be bidding aggressively.
Happy hunting,
Andy Shaw
The idea that Obama and Geithner are pushing, in essentially enticing investors to take on the risk from the banks, is hardly revolutionary policy. However, given how CDO technology works, now is the very first time it has been sensible to push this solution - any time prior to this and the volatility of many of these assets would have scared away anyone but the most foolhardy of investors. Not to mention the banks themselves were struggling with generating a meaningful valuation. However, it seems that Obama's timing, by accident or design, is possibly perfect. The opportunity in this 'toxic' asset giveaway is a fabulous one for an investor willing to do a little homework now that the first grass shoots of stability in the US housing market have appeared.
There are three key hazards to negotiate before this opportunity becomes a good one. And if you do this properly, the opportunity could be an excellent one:
1. Do your homework on the mortgage pool - some 'subprime' pools are more rotten than others. Finding a subprime mortgage pool with a fundamental supporting market and solid reasons for a stabilising of house prices is key. Some subprime areas, where all the neighbours were borrowing money they couldn't afford, could well become ghost towns. Prices in areas like this are trapped in a race to the bottom. For these pools, any signs of recovery are more a pause before the downward march is resumed rather than a turnaround. Other pools, where subprime mortgages have a fundamental floor on account of solid surrounding economic support, are the pools you need to identify. This requires local analysis. If you can't find a pool you like, stop right there.
2. Once you feel you have a good idea how your chosen mortgage pool is likely to behave, you need to value the CDO derivative correctly. Conventional valuation tools do not work for these securities in volatile markets. Indeed, many CDO tranches generate an effect which is the opposite of diversity - hence why they are so risky. You need to develop a more fundamental approach to valuing these assets and play through some different scenarios from now to asset maturity to frame the risk you are taking on. If you use quantitative techniques you don't fully understand, it is likely they will lead you up the garden path.
3. The Treasury is committed to extending a floor to your asset - it is likely they will value this floor very generously giving you an asymmetric pay off. Governments are not always known for their financial acumen and they also need to price this stuff to sell. The value in this floor is a function of you fully understanding the last two hazards.
If you understand your mortgage pool, how your CDO will behave for different forward scenarios, and then combine this knowledge with a generous Treasury floor, these assets will be a fabulous opportunity. However, get on the wrong side of one of these issues, and it could be very painful one.
And bid low ! Let your scenario analysis drive the size of what you will pay for the asset ensuring that if your price is filled that you make money even if we see further house price falls and rising default rates from today. This is as much a giveaway as an auction. No-one will be bidding aggressively.
Happy hunting,
Andy Shaw
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Fundamentals vs Technicals
Hi,
A quick steer for those having trouble in this volatile market environment. When you buy an equity, you are in essence buying primarily 'speculation', particularly in a market like this. As the price of a stock evolves through time, solid fundamentals in a company will help push this speculation in your direction if you are long the equity. However, in a market as volatile as this, the equity will be moved less by fundamentals and more by technical flows whether they are driven by fear or speculation. In an environment as saturated in fear as we are, 'speculation' is a very volatile commodity to trade. The uncertainty around equities currently is huge and no matter how much homework you do, or how well you know a stock, you can never confidently predict the short term capital flows, or technicals, that will push the price of your stock around.
If you can cope with taking short term MTM losses then now is a great time to pick up some equity bargains in solid, fundamentally sound businesses. However, if the idea of 10 - 20% swings in price keeps you awake at night in sweats, and you want a more stable reward for doing your homework, your opportunities are to be found in shorter dated corporate bonds.
Shorter dated corporate bonds have their price anchored to a fundamental event on a definite date in the future - the bond's maturity date. If you know a stock well, you'll know the balance sheet well, and if you know the balance sheet well, you should be able to predict with accuracy whether or not the notional of the bond will be repaid. Beware companies with volatile business models that have a large percentage of their debt redeeming in the near future. If you are looking for a maturity sweet spot, try 2 - 3yrs with the total notional of debt redeeming inbetween now and then being less than 20% of the company total. For those with even less of a risk appetite, go for maturities less than 2yrs.
Using fundamentals to help you in an environment where technicals are causing huge swings in perceived company health is a savvy investment approach. The market will one day calm down, and the balance of what primarily moves stock prices will move back towards fundamental perfromance and away from panic selling. But not for a while.
One other option is to use equity derivatives to put boundaries in value around your investment. If you understand how derivatives work, they can be a very powerful tool in dampening uncertainty in your portfolio. But take caution, in the wrong hands, derivatives can cause more problems than they solve. Just ask a CDO salesman.
Happy hunting,
Andy Shaw
A quick steer for those having trouble in this volatile market environment. When you buy an equity, you are in essence buying primarily 'speculation', particularly in a market like this. As the price of a stock evolves through time, solid fundamentals in a company will help push this speculation in your direction if you are long the equity. However, in a market as volatile as this, the equity will be moved less by fundamentals and more by technical flows whether they are driven by fear or speculation. In an environment as saturated in fear as we are, 'speculation' is a very volatile commodity to trade. The uncertainty around equities currently is huge and no matter how much homework you do, or how well you know a stock, you can never confidently predict the short term capital flows, or technicals, that will push the price of your stock around.
If you can cope with taking short term MTM losses then now is a great time to pick up some equity bargains in solid, fundamentally sound businesses. However, if the idea of 10 - 20% swings in price keeps you awake at night in sweats, and you want a more stable reward for doing your homework, your opportunities are to be found in shorter dated corporate bonds.
Shorter dated corporate bonds have their price anchored to a fundamental event on a definite date in the future - the bond's maturity date. If you know a stock well, you'll know the balance sheet well, and if you know the balance sheet well, you should be able to predict with accuracy whether or not the notional of the bond will be repaid. Beware companies with volatile business models that have a large percentage of their debt redeeming in the near future. If you are looking for a maturity sweet spot, try 2 - 3yrs with the total notional of debt redeeming inbetween now and then being less than 20% of the company total. For those with even less of a risk appetite, go for maturities less than 2yrs.
Using fundamentals to help you in an environment where technicals are causing huge swings in perceived company health is a savvy investment approach. The market will one day calm down, and the balance of what primarily moves stock prices will move back towards fundamental perfromance and away from panic selling. But not for a while.
One other option is to use equity derivatives to put boundaries in value around your investment. If you understand how derivatives work, they can be a very powerful tool in dampening uncertainty in your portfolio. But take caution, in the wrong hands, derivatives can cause more problems than they solve. Just ask a CDO salesman.
Happy hunting,
Andy Shaw
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Risk management and statistical models
Hi,
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/columnists/article5871007.ece
More articles appearing in the press about risk management and the failings of financial risk models. I've addressed some of these topics in a previous blog already but thought I'd comment on this article specifically. The authors are barking up the right tree but are missing a few key issues.
Risk models don't make mistakes, risk managers make mistakes. This is a little like the maxim, "guns don't kill people, people kill people". You could have all the possible statistical models in the known universe but they will be of little help as you'll probably just confuse yourself in a fog of model output and make even more mistakes. The more models you have, especially if they are very technical, the more bogged down in maintaining the model's integrity you will become and the less time you will have for managing your risk. A sweet spot for the number of risk models you need is a maximum of 2, minimum of 1. Pick a couple of models you understand well rather than commissioning the latest unproven research from a crackpot, neural networking, aerodynamicist turned risk manager. If you don't understand how a model works, how can you undestand when to use its output or when to ignore it?
Once you have your tools, then you're ready to play. And this leads onto the next key point. The clue here is in the name, 'risk manager'. Risk managers aren't risk observers. They are risk 'managers'. There are a variety of instruments out there for them to manage risks with. Risk managers earn their money by deploying clever and cost effective hedging strategies which support the company's business strategy.
Remember, markets are the collective will of all those people able to deploy capital on any particular day. Or, in alternative terms, the market will move in response to the volume of buyers and sellers in any particular product. No model in the world will ever capture this effect accurately given the idiosyncratic whims and flaws of human nature.
So once you are efficiently hedged, it doesn't matter how irrationally crazy the rest of the investing world gets, and it can get pretty crazy when you look at some of the recent peaks and troughs of certain assets. Through clever hedging you have turned your downside from an unexpected unkown, based on the whim of the market, to a number you know regardless of whatever scenario the market throws up. And businesses love known knowns. Just ask Rummy Rumsfeld.
Simple huh. Yet I haven't seen one article out there that outlines this point.
Happy hunting
Andy Shaw
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/columnists/article5871007.ece
More articles appearing in the press about risk management and the failings of financial risk models. I've addressed some of these topics in a previous blog already but thought I'd comment on this article specifically. The authors are barking up the right tree but are missing a few key issues.
Risk models don't make mistakes, risk managers make mistakes. This is a little like the maxim, "guns don't kill people, people kill people". You could have all the possible statistical models in the known universe but they will be of little help as you'll probably just confuse yourself in a fog of model output and make even more mistakes. The more models you have, especially if they are very technical, the more bogged down in maintaining the model's integrity you will become and the less time you will have for managing your risk. A sweet spot for the number of risk models you need is a maximum of 2, minimum of 1. Pick a couple of models you understand well rather than commissioning the latest unproven research from a crackpot, neural networking, aerodynamicist turned risk manager. If you don't understand how a model works, how can you undestand when to use its output or when to ignore it?
Once you have your tools, then you're ready to play. And this leads onto the next key point. The clue here is in the name, 'risk manager'. Risk managers aren't risk observers. They are risk 'managers'. There are a variety of instruments out there for them to manage risks with. Risk managers earn their money by deploying clever and cost effective hedging strategies which support the company's business strategy.
Remember, markets are the collective will of all those people able to deploy capital on any particular day. Or, in alternative terms, the market will move in response to the volume of buyers and sellers in any particular product. No model in the world will ever capture this effect accurately given the idiosyncratic whims and flaws of human nature.
So once you are efficiently hedged, it doesn't matter how irrationally crazy the rest of the investing world gets, and it can get pretty crazy when you look at some of the recent peaks and troughs of certain assets. Through clever hedging you have turned your downside from an unexpected unkown, based on the whim of the market, to a number you know regardless of whatever scenario the market throws up. And businesses love known knowns. Just ask Rummy Rumsfeld.
Simple huh. Yet I haven't seen one article out there that outlines this point.
Happy hunting
Andy Shaw
Monday, March 2, 2009
The future of economics research - Chaos theory and behavioural psychology
Hi,
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/article5689642.ece
In recent weeks, journalists and market pundits, like Anatole Kaletsky at The Times, have predicted that economic research is going to branch out into a number of different areas, leaving behind the 'flawed' principles that have driven much of recent economic study. Bell curves/ normal distributions or Monte Carlo VaR models, as tools for risk managers, have come in for particular criticism. 'Chaos Theory' and 'behavioural psychology' are two of the more popular topics that have been suggested as new avenues for economists to explore. I'm not going to dwell on what Chaos Theory is, or any other new theory for that matter, (search on wikipedia if you'd like a general explanation) but what I am going to address is how these theories, and the implications taken from them, aren't actually new and have been used in a handful of areas of the financial system for a number of years now.
Recently, I've heard statements from Wall St. CEO's saying that the markets are in chaos. If markets are indeed 'chaotic', and 'Chaos Theory' will be to economics what The Theory of Relativity was to Physics, what implications does that have for real world practitioners? Pension funds still need to match assets and liabilities despite this chaos. Insurance firms who have minimum capital requirements remain exposed to risk but must meet these restrictions despite the huge amount of uncertainty flooding our economic system.
The good news is that you don't need to rewind all the way back to Poincare and restart your education in Economics from scratch. You also don't have to wait for new 'chaos' research to start being published to take advantage of the findings that will come out of this new research. The reason is this: the conclusions one can draw, given the fact that markets present as chaotic, and the conclusions one can draw from the fact that markets are driven by human beings rather than bell curves, have been utilised in certain pockets of the financial system by cutting edge risk managers for a number of years. These methods are relatively new and they have recently been thoroughly tested through the ravages of the credit crunch, and, put simply, they work. The expertise and the experts are already out there if you know where to look.
One problem, however, is that these new techniques were far from ubiquitous as the credit crunch struck. In fact, they were very rare. Had they not been, many firms would have been in a much better position to cope. During the past two decades, as the complexity of financial products has exploded, many risk managers and many senior financial managers made the mistake of believing that the bell curve inspired statistical models they used to measure a firm's risk were somehow so sophisticated as to be able to predict the future. This led them to accept risk they didn't fully understand because it fit into their model.
Now, if markets present as chaotic, and you are measuring risk using a bell curve model, you should realise that, amongst other things, you are leaving yourself exposed to a sudden change in market environment. Bell curve Monte Carlo models might be sophisticated maths but they aren't magic. They also can't predict the future and in fact, they are quite poor at predicting the future. To set large amounts of strategy and risk appetite based off of bell curve Monte Carlo model output, without further risk analysis, is a big mistake if you believe markets are chaotic.
Of course, risk managers will learn. One crucial lesson they must embrace is this: any statistical risk model (and not just the popular bell curve Monte Carlo ones) MUST be seen for what it is - nothing more than help for a company to understand the economy in which it is operating, and most importantly the changing face of the risks to which it is exposed. Fortune tellers these models are not. There are occasional market environments when these models should be ignored. A risk manager's skill comes in knowing when to ignore the model to make his decision or knowing when to use his model output to shape his decision.
These risk and capital models, whether Bell curve inspired or otherwise, are one bullet in the risk manager's arsenal. The weaknesses and failings in the model must be fully understood and planned for. The key lesson is to change attitude from an unthinking and unquestioning strategy based on flawed models to the following:
1. A desire to push the boundaries of understanding with regards to the niche you hold in the economy. Statistical models of a variety of different types are needed to do this but they must be pulled apart and questioned by the risk managers who built them. Risk managers need to be some of the smartest people in their company.
2. Once your niche is understood as much as possible, you can set about formulating a strategy based off of market expectations and ALSO dynamically hedging this strategy to defend against unexpected events. And you will have many unexpected events.
Chaotic markets present excellent opportunities as well as problems, and any business strategy must be dynamic and flexible enough to change as the market environment dictates. One lesson this crisis has taught us is that the moment you think the dust has settled and you know what is around the corner is the moment you're surprised.
Happy hunting,
Andy Shaw
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/article5689642.ece
In recent weeks, journalists and market pundits, like Anatole Kaletsky at The Times, have predicted that economic research is going to branch out into a number of different areas, leaving behind the 'flawed' principles that have driven much of recent economic study. Bell curves/ normal distributions or Monte Carlo VaR models, as tools for risk managers, have come in for particular criticism. 'Chaos Theory' and 'behavioural psychology' are two of the more popular topics that have been suggested as new avenues for economists to explore. I'm not going to dwell on what Chaos Theory is, or any other new theory for that matter, (search on wikipedia if you'd like a general explanation) but what I am going to address is how these theories, and the implications taken from them, aren't actually new and have been used in a handful of areas of the financial system for a number of years now.
Recently, I've heard statements from Wall St. CEO's saying that the markets are in chaos. If markets are indeed 'chaotic', and 'Chaos Theory' will be to economics what The Theory of Relativity was to Physics, what implications does that have for real world practitioners? Pension funds still need to match assets and liabilities despite this chaos. Insurance firms who have minimum capital requirements remain exposed to risk but must meet these restrictions despite the huge amount of uncertainty flooding our economic system.
The good news is that you don't need to rewind all the way back to Poincare and restart your education in Economics from scratch. You also don't have to wait for new 'chaos' research to start being published to take advantage of the findings that will come out of this new research. The reason is this: the conclusions one can draw, given the fact that markets present as chaotic, and the conclusions one can draw from the fact that markets are driven by human beings rather than bell curves, have been utilised in certain pockets of the financial system by cutting edge risk managers for a number of years. These methods are relatively new and they have recently been thoroughly tested through the ravages of the credit crunch, and, put simply, they work. The expertise and the experts are already out there if you know where to look.
One problem, however, is that these new techniques were far from ubiquitous as the credit crunch struck. In fact, they were very rare. Had they not been, many firms would have been in a much better position to cope. During the past two decades, as the complexity of financial products has exploded, many risk managers and many senior financial managers made the mistake of believing that the bell curve inspired statistical models they used to measure a firm's risk were somehow so sophisticated as to be able to predict the future. This led them to accept risk they didn't fully understand because it fit into their model.
Now, if markets present as chaotic, and you are measuring risk using a bell curve model, you should realise that, amongst other things, you are leaving yourself exposed to a sudden change in market environment. Bell curve Monte Carlo models might be sophisticated maths but they aren't magic. They also can't predict the future and in fact, they are quite poor at predicting the future. To set large amounts of strategy and risk appetite based off of bell curve Monte Carlo model output, without further risk analysis, is a big mistake if you believe markets are chaotic.
Of course, risk managers will learn. One crucial lesson they must embrace is this: any statistical risk model (and not just the popular bell curve Monte Carlo ones) MUST be seen for what it is - nothing more than help for a company to understand the economy in which it is operating, and most importantly the changing face of the risks to which it is exposed. Fortune tellers these models are not. There are occasional market environments when these models should be ignored. A risk manager's skill comes in knowing when to ignore the model to make his decision or knowing when to use his model output to shape his decision.
These risk and capital models, whether Bell curve inspired or otherwise, are one bullet in the risk manager's arsenal. The weaknesses and failings in the model must be fully understood and planned for. The key lesson is to change attitude from an unthinking and unquestioning strategy based on flawed models to the following:
1. A desire to push the boundaries of understanding with regards to the niche you hold in the economy. Statistical models of a variety of different types are needed to do this but they must be pulled apart and questioned by the risk managers who built them. Risk managers need to be some of the smartest people in their company.
2. Once your niche is understood as much as possible, you can set about formulating a strategy based off of market expectations and ALSO dynamically hedging this strategy to defend against unexpected events. And you will have many unexpected events.
Chaotic markets present excellent opportunities as well as problems, and any business strategy must be dynamic and flexible enough to change as the market environment dictates. One lesson this crisis has taught us is that the moment you think the dust has settled and you know what is around the corner is the moment you're surprised.
Happy hunting,
Andy Shaw
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)