From http://blogs.barrons.com/stockstowatchtoday/2009/12/21/doug-kass-2010-predictions-goldman-goes-private-buffett-steps-down-and-tigers-back/tab/print/
Monday, December 21, 2009 ET
Doug Kass’ 2010 Predictions: Goldman Goes Private, Buffett Steps Down and Tiger’s Back
Seabreeze Partners’ Doug Kass today is expanding on his outlook articulated in a recent Barron’s interview (”Skeptical Growth Will Take Root,” Dec. 14), notably about rising populist fervor in the land. One outcome he sees is Goldman Sachs‘ (GS) deciding it no longer wants to be a public punching bag and will revert to private status.
And why, you may ask, should anybody pay attention to Kass’ prognostications. For one thing, he saw a “generational low” in stocks in early March, just days before the market’s bottom. In any case, here are Dougie’s Top 20 Surprises for 2010:
1. There is a glaring upside to first-quarter 2010 corporate profits (up 100% year over year) and first-quarter 2010 GDP (up 4.5%). It grows clear that, owing to continued draconian cost cuts, coupled with a series of positive economic releases and a long list of company profit guidance increases in mid to late January and early February, there is a very large upside to first-quarter GDP (up 4.5%) and, even more important, to S&P profit growth (which doubles!). The upside on both counts is in sharp contrast to more muted growth expectations. While corporate managers, economists and strategists raise earnings per share, full-year growth and S&P target estimates, surprisingly, the U.S. equity market fails to respond positively to the much better growth dynamic, and the S&P 500 remains tightly range-bound (between 1,050 and 1,150) into spring 2010.
2. Housing and jobs fail to revive. An outsized first-quarter 2010 GDP (up 4.5.%) print is achieved despite a still moribund housing market and without any meaningful improvement in the labor market (excluding the increase in census workers) as corporations continue to cut costs and show little commitment to adding permanent employees.
3. The U.S. dollar explodes higher. After dropping by over 40% from 2001 to 2008, the U.S. dollar continued to spiral lower in the last nine months of 2009. Our currency’s recent strength will persist, however, surprising most market participants by continuing to rally into first quarter 2010. In fact, the U.S. dollar will be the strongest major world currency during the first three or four months of the new year.
4. The price of gold topples. Gold’s price plummets to $900 an ounce by the beginning of second quarter 2010. Unhedged, publicly held gold companies report large losses, and the gold sector lies at the bottom of all major sector performers. Hedge fund manager John Paulson abandons his plan to bring a new dedicated gold hedge fund to market.
5. Central banks tighten earlier than expected. China, facing reported inflation approaching 5%, tightens monetary and fiscal policy in March, a month ahead of a Fed tightening of 50 basis points, which, with the benefit of hindsight, is a policy mistake.
6. A Middle East peace is upended due to an attack by Israel on Iran. Israel attacks Iran’s nuclear facilities before midyear. An already comatose U.S. consumer falls back on its heels, retail spending plummets, and the personal savings rate approaches 10%. The first-quarter spike in domestic growth is short-lived as GDP abruptly stalls.
7. Stocks drop by 10% in the first half of next year. In the face of renewed geopolitical tensions and reduced worldwide growth expectations, stocks drop as the threat of an economic double-dip grows. Surprisingly, though, the drop in the major indices is contained, and the U.S. stock market retreats by less than 10% from year-end 2009 levels.
8. Goldman Sachs goes private. Goldman Sachs stock drops back to $125 to $130 a share, within $15 of the warrant exercise price that Warren Buffett received in Berkshire Hathaway’s (BRKA) late 2008 investment in Goldman Sachs. Sick of the unrelenting compensation outcry, government jawboning and associated populist pressures, Warren Buffett teams up with Goldman Sachs to take the investment firm private. The deal is completed by year-end.
9. Second-half 2010 GDP growth turns flat. The Goldman Sachs transaction stabilizes the markets, which are stunned by an extended Mideast conflict that continues throughout the summer and into the early fall. While a diplomatic initiative led by the U.S. serves to calm Mideast tensions, flat second-half U.S. GDP growth and a still high 9.5% to 10.0% unemployment rate caps the U.S. stock market’s upside and leads to a very dull second half, during which share prices have virtually flatlined (with surprisingly limited rallies and corrections throughout the entire six-month period). For the full year, the S&P 500 exhibits a 10% decline vs. the general consensus of leading strategists for about a 10% rise in the major indices.
10. Rate-sensitive stocks outperform; metals underperform. Utilities are the best performing sector in the U.S. stock market in 2010; gold stocks are the worst performing group, with consumer discretionary coming in as a close second.
11. Treasury yields fall. The yield of the 10-year U.S. note drops from 4% at the end of the first quarter to under 3% by the summer and ends the year at approximately the same level (3%). Despite the current consensus that higher inflation and interest rates will weigh on the fixed-income markets, bonds surprisingly outperform stocks in 2010. A plethora of specialized domestic and non-U.S. fixed-income exchange-traded funds are introduced throughout the year, setting the stage for a vast speculative top in bond prices, but that is a late 2011 issue.
12. Warren Buffett steps down. Warren Buffett announces that he is handing over the investment reins to a Berkshire outsider and that he plans to also announce his in-house successor as chief operating officer by Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting in 2011.
13. Insider trading charges expand. The SEC alleges, in a broad-ranging sting, the existence of extensive exchange of information that goes well beyond Galleon’s Silicon Valley executive connections. Several well-known long-only mutual funds are implicated in the sting, which reveals that they have consistently received privileged information from some of the largest public companies over the past decade.
14. The SEC launches an assault on mutual fund expenses. The SEC restricts 12b-1 mutual fund fees. In response to the proposal, asset management stocks crater.
15. The SEC restricts short-selling. The SEC announces major short-selling bans after stocks sag in the second quarter.
16. More hedge fund tumult emerges. Two of the most successful hedge fund managers extant announce their retirement and fund closures. One exits based on performance problems, the other based on legal problems.
17. Pandit is out and Cohen is in atCitigroup (C). Citigroup’s Vikram Pandit is replaced by former Shearson Lehman Brothers Chairman Peter Cohen. Cohen replaces a number of senior Citigroup executives with Ramius Partners colleagues. Sandy Weill rejoins Citigroup as a senior consultant.
18. A weakened Republican party is in disarray. Sarah Palin announces that she has separated from her husband, leaving the Republican party firmly in the hands of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. An improving economy in early 2010 elevates President Obama’s popularity back to pre-inauguration levels, and, despite the market’s second-quarter decline, the country comes together after the Middle East conflict, producing a tidal wave of populism that moves ever more dramatically in legislation and spirit. With the Democratic tsunami (part deux) revived, the party wins November midterm elections by a landslide.
19. Tiger Woods makes a comeback. Tiger Woods and his wife reconcile in early 2010, and he returns earlier than expected to the PGA Tour. After announcing that his wife is pregnant with their third child, both the PGA Tour’s and Tiger Woods’ popularity rise to record levels, and the golfer signs a series of new commercial contracts that insure him a record $150 million of endorsement income in 2011.
20. The New York Yankees are sold to a Jack Welch-led investor group. The Steinbrenner family decides, for estate purposes, to sell the New York Yankees to a group headed by former General Electric (GE) Chairman Jack Welch.
Warren Buffett’s purchase of Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. (BNI) is the newest chapter in the oldest story of his professional life.
Mr. Buffett’s mentor, the pioneering “value” investor Benjamin Graham, trafficked for decades in railroad stocks and bonds. In the early 1950s, at the outset of his career, Mr. Buffett read every page in Moody’s voluminous transportation manuals — twice, to make sure he didn’t miss anything. Working at Mr. Graham’s fund, Graham-Newman Corp., Mr. Buffett analyzed a portfolio with 21% to 36% of its assets in railroads.
But there is a more subtle side to the story. Mr. Graham taught Mr. Buffett that at the heart of the relationship between management and shareholders is a profound conflict of interest. Managers, Mr. Graham believed, will always want to pile up cash to protect themselves in case they make mistakes. But that cash belongs to the shareholders, who may be able to put it to better use than the company’s managers.
Graham also highlighted a painful paradox: The better the business and the more skilled its managers, the greater its profits, causing cash to pile up to unreasonable levels. And, to Mr. Buffett’s own chronic discomfort, he and Berkshire Hathaway are living proof of Mr. Graham’s paradox. Because of Mr. Buffett’s extraordinary skill at picking stocks and buying lucrative businesses, Berkshire consistently generates far more cash than even Mr. Buffett thinks he can put to productive use.
As long ago as 1998 — when Berkshire had $122 billion in assets and less than $14 billion in cash — Mr. Buffett worried his company was getting too big for its britches. “We have always known,” he wrote to a fellow investor, “that huge increases in managed funds would dramatically diminish our universe of investment choices.” That’s because investments of a few million dollars apiece could no longer make a material difference to Berkshire’s fortunes.
By 2006, when Berkshire’s cash mountain had risen to $37 billion, Mr. Buffett said, “We don’t like excess cash…We would be much happier if we had $10 billion.”
“Size is always a problem,” Mr. Buffett told me last month. “With tiny sums [to invest], it’s extraordinary what you can find. Most of the time, big sums are one hell of an anchor.”
Mr. Buffett would rather not resort to the simplest way of solving this problem — paying excess cash out to shareholders in the form of a dividend. Since he owns roughly 26% of Berkshire’s shares, a cash dividend would saddle Mr. Buffett with one of the largest personal-income tax bills in American history. That’s not the kind of thing at which he likes to excel. Mr. Buffett’s reluctance to pay a dividend leaves him with little choice but to buy big companies outright.
Mr. Buffett is paying for Burlington Northern partly with Berkshire shares — something he has long been loath to do. In 2007 he lamented buying Dexter Shoe in 1993 for $433 million in Berkshire stock — which would later have been worth at least $3.5 billion if Mr. Buffett had not exchanged them for Dexter, which ended up worthless. “He’s so sensitive to this issue that I can’t believe he would [pay in stock for Burlington Northern] unless he had absolute confidence that it will work out well over time,” says David Carr of Oak Value Fund, which owns $25 million in Berkshire shares.
At age 79, Mr. Buffett has no plans to retire, but he wants to ensure that Berkshire’s businesses will endure for decades after he is gone. He is betting that no new technology can make rail transportation obsolete. Mr. Buffett has sometimes been wrong about which businesses will prosper forever. Over the years, he’s invested in shoes, newspapers and printed encyclopedias. But Mr. Buffett’s approach underscores a key lesson for any investor: Before you buy any business, ask how vulnerable it is to new technology or price competition.
As a result of the Burlington Northern deal, Berkshire’s Class B shares will split 50-for-1, which would knock its share price down from $3,300 to $65. That puts the shares, for the first time in years, within psychological reach of most investors (who have long balked at Berkshire’s high per-share price).
Like Burlington Northern itself, Berkshire’s shares aren’t quite a steal. Mr. Buffett is putting tens of billions of dollars into a company that he thinks has only moderate growth prospects. That implies that the market as a whole isn’t a steal, or he would have put the money elsewhere. But Mr. Buffett has built an investing bulwark — and an industrial conglomerate. Berkshire is likely to survive any storm, but whether it can continue to beat the market by such wide margins is another story.
Warren Buffett’s purchase of Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. (BNI) is the newest chapter in the oldest story of his professional life.
Mr. Buffett’s mentor, the pioneering “value” investor Benjamin Graham, trafficked for decades in railroad stocks and bonds. In the early 1950s, at the outset of his career, Mr. Buffett read every page in Moody’s voluminous transportation manuals — twice, to make sure he didn’t miss anything. Working at Mr. Graham’s fund, Graham-Newman Corp., Mr. Buffett analyzed a portfolio with 21% to 36% of its assets in railroads.
But there is a more subtle side to the story. Mr. Graham taught Mr. Buffett that at the heart of the relationship between management and shareholders is a profound conflict of interest. Managers, Mr. Graham believed, will always want to pile up cash to protect themselves in case they make mistakes. But that cash belongs to the shareholders, who may be able to put it to better use than the company’s managers.
Graham also highlighted a painful paradox: The better the business and the more skilled its managers, the greater its profits, causing cash to pile up to unreasonable levels. And, to Mr. Buffett’s own chronic discomfort, he and Berkshire Hathaway are living proof of Mr. Graham’s paradox. Because of Mr. Buffett’s extraordinary skill at picking stocks and buying lucrative businesses, Berkshire consistently generates far more cash than even Mr. Buffett thinks he can put to productive use.
As long ago as 1998 — when Berkshire had $122 billion in assets and less than $14 billion in cash — Mr. Buffett worried his company was getting too big for its britches. “We have always known,” he wrote to a fellow investor, “that huge increases in managed funds would dramatically diminish our universe of investment choices.” That’s because investments of a few million dollars apiece could no longer make a material difference to Berkshire’s fortunes.
By 2006, when Berkshire’s cash mountain had risen to $37 billion, Mr. Buffett said, “We don’t like excess cash…We would be much happier if we had $10 billion.”
“Size is always a problem,” Mr. Buffett told me last month. “With tiny sums [to invest], it’s extraordinary what you can find. Most of the time, big sums are one hell of an anchor.”
Mr. Buffett would rather not resort to the simplest way of solving this problem — paying excess cash out to shareholders in the form of a dividend. Since he owns roughly 26% of Berkshire’s shares, a cash dividend would saddle Mr. Buffett with one of the largest personal-income tax bills in American history. That’s not the kind of thing at which he likes to excel. Mr. Buffett’s reluctance to pay a dividend leaves him with little choice but to buy big companies outright.
Mr. Buffett is paying for Burlington Northern partly with Berkshire shares — something he has long been loath to do. In 2007 he lamented buying Dexter Shoe in 1993 for $433 million in Berkshire stock — which would later have been worth at least $3.5 billion if Mr. Buffett had not exchanged them for Dexter, which ended up worthless. “He’s so sensitive to this issue that I can’t believe he would [pay in stock for Burlington Northern] unless he had absolute confidence that it will work out well over time,” says David Carr of Oak Value Fund, which owns $25 million in Berkshire shares.
At age 79, Mr. Buffett has no plans to retire, but he wants to ensure that Berkshire’s businesses will endure for decades after he is gone. He is betting that no new technology can make rail transportation obsolete. Mr. Buffett has sometimes been wrong about which businesses will prosper forever. Over the years, he’s invested in shoes, newspapers and printed encyclopedias. But Mr. Buffett’s approach underscores a key lesson for any investor: Before you buy any business, ask how vulnerable it is to new technology or price competition.
As a result of the Burlington Northern deal, Berkshire’s Class B shares will split 50-for-1, which would knock its share price down from $3,300 to $65. That puts the shares, for the first time in years, within psychological reach of most investors (who have long balked at Berkshire’s high per-share price).
Like Burlington Northern itself, Berkshire’s shares aren’t quite a steal. Mr. Buffett is putting tens of billions of dollars into a company that he thinks has only moderate growth prospects. That implies that the market as a whole isn’t a steal, or he would have put the money elsewhere. But Mr. Buffett has built an investing bulwark — and an industrial conglomerate. Berkshire is likely to survive any storm, but whether it can continue to beat the market by such wide margins is another story.
A complex options trade that pits sophisticated traders against normal investors is gaining in popularity.
While any investor can conduct the options trade, known as a "dividend spread arbitrage," the reality is that professional traders -- namely, market makers who buy and sell options for a living -- have an advantage over smaller investors.
The trade is rising in prominence at a time when U.S. securities regulators are scrutinizing certain trading practices, such as those involving lightning-fast trading systems, that may place certain investors at an unfair disadvantage.
The dividend-spread-arbitrage trade is conducted in the options of companies that are about to issue dividends and has become more common as exchanges in recent years have taken steps to limit trading fees.
Specifically, the trade takes place on the day before a company's stock goes "ex-dividend," when a company compiles a list of its shareholders for the purposes of issuing a dividend. Since a company's stock will typically drop in price after this date -- usually by the amount of the dividend -- the company's call options, which convey the right to buy the stock, also will decline in value.
Market makers who know how the event affects options try to take advantage of the situation by selling call options they don't own with the goal of buying them back later when the options are cheaper. The trade is considered controversial in part because it takes advantage of investors whose calls haven't been exercised before the ex-dividend date.
"The amount of money left on the table [is] a crying shame and part of it is because brokers don't tell their customers to exercise," said Jud Pyle, a market analyst with PEAK6 Investments.
The trade also prompts debate because retail, or individual, investors find it nearly impossible to do. Unlike market makers, individual investors aren't allowed to maintain short and long positions in the same option -- often a crucial component of the transaction. And individual investors typically lack the resources to buy and sell thousands of contracts at once, another characteristic that makes the trade worthwhile.
Anatomy of the Trade
This is how the trade often works: Market makers will buy and sell thousands of call options in a company whose stock is poised to go ex-dividend. Usually trading between themselves, they establish long and short positions in the same option. But before the session ends, the market makers will exercise the calls they bought while maintaining short positions in the calls they sold.
On July 28, for example, one day before ConocoPhillips went ex-dividend, traders appear to have bought and sold thousands of August $38 calls in the energy company. Before the session ended, the traders who conducted the arbitrage trade would most likely exercise the August $38 calls they bought and maintain short positions in August $38 calls they had sold.
That night, Options Clearing Corp. would process the day's trades. For every investor who had exercised a call option they owned, the OCC would randomly assign the contract to an investor who was short the call option. Invariably, the OCC would assign some of the options to the traders who were short. But for every option in which they were able to stay short, the traders could buy it back at a cheaper price.
In order for the trade to work, investors who own the call options -- often individual investors -- have to hold on to them through the ex-dividend date. That is because investors who exercise their call options force the OCC to assign the options to traders who are short and thereby eliminate the potential for arbitrage.
In theory, all investors who own "in the money" call options should exercise their contracts before ex-dividend dates. By doing so, they unwind out of options that are about to decline in value and take ownership of stock that is about to issue a dividend. In reality, however, several investors fail to exercise and for various reasons: they aren't monitoring ex-dividend dates or because it isn't economically feasible to do so.
While some question the fairness of the trade, although not the legality of it, others say the trade is harmless and that market makers are merely collecting profits that would otherwise be wasted. "If there's a penny on the ground and I see it, should I not pick up the penny?" said Phil Gocke, president of the options trading company Brite Sky LLC.
Exchanges' Tension
The dividend trade has become a bone of contention among the various options exchanges -- namely between those that play host to the trade and those that don't.
The OCC and the Securities and Exchange Commission have reviewed the trade and haven't imposed any restrictions on it, exchange officials said. "It's not an exchange's obligation to deem what is proper or fair," said Ed Boyle, head of NYSE Euronext's U.S. options division. "That's the job of the regulators."
The International Securities Exchange, one of the largest options exchanges in the U.S., says the trade poses a systemic risk to the industry and should be curbed. "It could become an issue and the industry needs to do something about it," said ISE Chief Executive Gary Katz. "Not because something has gone wrong but because it is time to fix a problem that nobody wants to address."
IN nature, every action has consequences, a phenomenon called the butterfly effect. These consequences, moreover, are not necessarily proportional. For example, doubling the carbon dioxide we belch into the atmosphere may far more than double the subsequent problems for society. Realizing this, the world properly worries about greenhouse emissions.
The butterfly effect reaches into the financial world as well. Here, the United States is spewing a potentially damaging substance into our economy — greenback emissions.
To be sure, we’ve been doing this for a reason I resoundingly applaud. Last fall, our financial system stood on the brink of a collapse that threatened a depression. The crisis required our government to display wisdom, courage and decisiveness. Fortunately, the Federal Reserve and key economic officials in both the Bush and Obama administrations responded more than ably to the need.
They made mistakes, of course. How could it have been otherwise when supposedly indestructible pillars of our economic structure were tumbling all around them? A meltdown, though, was avoided, with a gusher of federal money playing an essential role in the rescue.
The United States economy is now out of the emergency room and appears to be on a slow path to recovery. But enormous dosages of monetary medicine continue to be administered and, before long, we will need to deal with their side effects. For now, most of those effects are invisible and could indeed remain latent for a long time. Still, their threat may be as ominous as that posed by the financial crisis itself.
To understand this threat, we need to look at where we stand historically. If we leave aside the war-impacted years of 1942 to 1946, the largest annual deficit the United States has incurred since 1920 was 6 percent of gross domestic product. This fiscal year, though, the deficit will rise to about 13 percent of G.D.P., more than twice the non-wartime record. In dollars, that equates to a staggering $1.8 trillion. Fiscally, we are in uncharted territory.
Because of this gigantic deficit, our country’s “net debt” (that is, the amount held publicly) is mushrooming. During this fiscal year, it will increase more than one percentage point per month, climbing to about 56 percent of G.D.P. from 41 percent. Admittedly, other countries, like Japan and Italy, have far higher ratios and no one can know the precise level of net debt to G.D.P. at which the United States will lose its reputation for financial integrity. But a few more years like this one and we will find out.
An increase in federal debt can be financed in three ways: borrowing from foreigners, borrowing from our own citizens or, through a roundabout process, printing money. Let’s look at the prospects for each individually — and in combination.
The current account deficit — dollars that we force-feed to the rest of the world and that must then be invested — will be $400 billion or so this year. Assume, in a relatively benign scenario, that all of this is directed by the recipients — China leads the list — to purchases of United States debt. Never mind that this all-Treasuries allocation is no sure thing: some countries may decide that purchasing American stocks, real estate or entire companies makes more sense than soaking up dollar-denominated bonds. Rumblings to that effect have recently increased.
Then take the second element of the scenario — borrowing from our own citizens. Assume that Americans save $500 billion, far above what they’ve saved recently but perhaps consistent with the changing national mood. Finally, assume that these citizens opt to put all their savings into United States Treasuries (partly through intermediaries like banks).
Even with these heroic assumptions, the Treasury will be obliged to find another $900 billion to finance the remainder of the $1.8 trillion of debt it is issuing. Washington’s printing presses will need to work overtime.
Slowing them down will require extraordinary political will. With government expenditures now running 185 percent of receipts, truly major changes in both taxes and outlays will be required. A revived economy can’t come close to bridging that sort of gap.
Legislators will correctly perceive that either raising taxes or cutting expenditures will threaten their re-election. To avoid this fate, they can opt for high rates of inflation, which never require a recorded vote and cannot be attributed to a specific action that any elected official takes. In fact, John Maynard Keynes long ago laid out a road map for political survival amid an economic disaster of just this sort: “By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.... The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”
I want to emphasize that there is nothing evil or destructive in an increase in debt that is proportional to an increase in income or assets. As the resources of individuals, corporations and countries grow, each can handle more debt. The United States remains by far the most prosperous country on earth, and its debt-carrying capacity will grow in the future just as it has in the past.
But it was a wise man who said, “All I want to know is where I’m going to die so I’ll never go there.” We don’t want our country to evolve into the banana-republic economy described by Keynes.
Our immediate problem is to get our country back on its feet and flourishing — “whatever it takes” still makes sense. Once recovery is gained, however, Congress must end the rise in the debt-to-G.D.P. ratio and keep our growth in obligations in line with our growth in resources.
Unchecked carbon emissions will likely cause icebergs to melt. Unchecked greenback emissions will certainly cause the purchasing power of currency to melt. The dollar’s destiny lies with Congress.
The best advice I ever got was on an airplane. It was in my early days on Wall Street. I was flying to Chicago, and I sat next to an older guy.
Anyway, I remember him as being an old guy, which means he may have been 40. He told me to read everything. If you get interested in a company and you read the annual report, he said, you will have done more than 98% of the people on Wall Street.
And if you read the footnotes in the annual report you will have done more than 100% of the people on Wall Street. I realized right away that if I just literally read a company's annual report and the notes -- or better yet, two or three years of reports -- that I would know much more than others. Professional investors used to sort of be dazzled.
Everyone seemed to think I was smart. I later realized that I had to do more than just that. I learned that I had to read the annual reports of those I am investing in and their competitors' annual reports, the trade journals, and everything that I could get my hands on. But I realized that most people don't bother even doing the basic homework. And if I did even more, I'd be so far ahead that I'd probably be able to find successful investments.
NEW YORK -- Options exchanges have started to list options on Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, allowing investors to speculate on a stock that trades for thousands of dollars per share.
Investors should steer clear of Berkshire Hathaway options for now, advises Barrons.com columnist Steve Sears. A better option? Sip a can of Cherry Coke.
The Chicago Board Options Exchange launched trading on the options Thursday, becoming the first exchange to do so. The options convey the right to buy and sell shares in Berkshire Hathaway's Class B stocks, also known as Baby Berkshires.
Those shares closed Thursday's session at $2,829 -- losing $45 or 1.6%. They represent the most expensive stock on which options at the CBOE are traded.
Another options exchange, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, plans to follow suit and is scheduled to list options on Berkshire Hathaway on Monday, said a spokeswoman from Nasdaq OMX, which owns the exchange.
While investors typically use options to participate in market activity without having to put up large amounts of cash to do so, the options on Berkshire Hathaway are relatively expensive.
A VALUE PLAY? The Chicago Board Options Exchange and the Philadelphia Stock Exchange are getting into the game of listing options on Berkshire Hathaway's B shares. Here, Berkshire's Warren Buffett in May.
The July $2,800 call options, for example -- the most popular contract on Thursday -- closed at $110.90. And since options convey the right to buy or sell stock in lots of 100 shares, that means just one of the July calls would cost $11,090. Calls convey the right to buy the stock, while puts convey the right to sell it.
Since the contracts are so expensive, they will most likely attract a roster of sophisticated investors with lots of capital to manage.
Some strategists said investors might want to consider selling put options in Berkshire Hathaway. That way, they can collect a premium from the sale and use the proceeds to help offset the cost of the pricey shares.
"These options are probably a better sale than a buy," said Oppenheimer & Co. chief options strategist Michael Schwartz. "If you sell the puts, you effectively buy the stock at a discount."
The Berkshire Hathaway options mark an evolution in the options industry, whereby market makers -- professional traders who take the other side of investors' orders to buy and sell the options -- feel capable of managing the risks associated with such expensive contracts.
Barclays's Barclays Capital is serving as the designated primary market maker for the options traded on CBOE, while Susquehanna Financial Group will serve that role for contracts traded on the Philadelphia exchange.
Because of the risks the market makers shoulder -- namely, having to quote prices for options whose values could quickly change by several dollars -- CBOE granted Barclays Capital a type of waiver. While CBOE typically forces market makers to quote bids and offers within $5 of each other, they removed that requirement for Barclays.
As a result, the prices at which investors can buy and sell the options could be noticeably different.
A combination of growth optimism and inflation fear has catapulted asset markets in the past few weeks. These two concerns should drive markets in different directions: Inflation fear, for example, should limit room for stimulus and prompt stock markets to retreat. But the investment camps expressing these opposite concerns go separate ways, each pumping up what seems believable. As a result, stock and commodity markets are mirroring the behavior seen during the giddy days of 2007.
Interesting to read what happened to the big banks after the rise in interest rates from 1977-1984. This is inside the article below
In 1980, recalled Henry Kaufman, who then was Wall Street’s most influential economist as the bond market guru at Salomon Brothers, “the financial malaise was in the big institutions, because they had been lenders to Latin America, but it was not as widespread as it is today.”
In the end, many of the big American banks of that era were replaced by a crop of growing regional banks that had not made the same mistakes. The old Bank of America was folded into NCNB, which took the old name but not most of the old management. Wachovia, another North Carolina bank, grew to be a major player. Citicorp was absorbed into Travelers, becoming Citigroup. Now Wachovia is gone, absorbed into Wells Fargo after it faltered, and Citigroup survives as a government ward.
In baseball terms, the financial system had a good crop of minor leaguers available when the big league stars went onto the disabled list in the 1980s. Now the minor leaguers are also battered and bruised.
In the bleakest stock market of the past 70 years, when hedge funds and 401(k)s alike have cratered, few people are smiling. But short-seller Jim Chanos, whose fund is up 50 percent, is having the time of his life.
It was reported that Buffett bought almost 12.4 million shares of Wells Fargo in the first quarter.
Berkshire invests in Wells Fargo
On Friday May 15, 2009, 6:55 pm EDT
............... So perhaps it shouldn't be surprising that Berkshire bought nearly 12.4 million shares of Wells Fargo during the first quarter, giving it 302.6 million shares of the San Francisco-based bank. ................................
Wells Fargo avoided the reckless tactics of other banks and quietly built a powerhouse in the West. Now its takeover of Wachovia makes it a national force, but how much toxic waste is aboard the stagecoach?
* Timeless: Does CEO execute timeless principles to do business? Can biz model, value proposition last very long or foreever?
* Margin of Safety on investment principal and earning: Does the company have enough margin of safety to protect principal? Does the biz generate enough earning to have margin of safety? What happen if some biz units do not work out as expected?
* Keep it simple Is the biz model simple to understand or execute? Can my spouse or kids understand it?
* Watch words & actions Did this CEO complete or act on the promises he said in the annual report or press releases two years ago?
* Fail at where you are the best How did this company or CEO fail at what he/she is the best?
* Learn to ask questions How can I learn to ask questions in all things I learn?
Now, you have seen my questions. Will you gain the most by starting now to ask questions? What you read can be yours if you practice on it. I put the above in our Blog below. Post your questions Now!!!
Thank you for joining our meeting on Tue. Special thanks to those who stayed after the meeting and also provide several excellent ideas to improve our meeting format and provide more benefits to club members.
Some proposals are as follows. * Change our a-has to questions and ask those questions in everyday life. Volunteers will also share in the next meeting as to how those a-ha questions can be applied to some due diligence effort. * Arrange a field trip to visit companies of club member. ( Please let me know if you are interested in arranging one.) * Provide double blinded annual report which company names or crucial executive names removed. Then check if the company is worth investing.
This article is an edited transcript of a talk given at Columbia University in 1984 commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Security Analysis, written by Benjamin Graham and David L. Dodd. This specialized volume first introduced the ideas later popularized in The Intelligent Investor. Buffett's essay offers a fascinating study of how Graham's disciples have used Graham's value investing approach to realize phenomenal success in the stock market.
Here is the version of the speech (a 1.6 MB .pdf file), which has all of the tables.
FORTUNE Thursday, December 6, 2001 By Carol Loomis
What's in the future for investors--another roaring bull market or more upset stomach? Amazingly, the answer may come down to three simple factors. Here, the world's most celebrated investor talks about what really makes the market tick--and whether that ticking should make you nervous.
Two years ago, following a July 1999 speech by Warren Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, on the stock market--a rare subject for him to discuss publicly--FORTUNE ran what he had to say under the title Mr. Buffett on the Stock Market (Nov. 22, 1999). His main points then concerned two consecutive and amazing periods that American investors had experienced, and his belief that returns from stocks were due to fall dramatically. Since the Dow Jones Industrial Average was 11194 when he gave his speech and recently was about 9900, no one yet has the goods to argue with him.
So where do we stand now--with the stock market seeming to reflect a dismal profit outlook, an unfamiliar war, and rattled consumer confidence? Who better to supply perspective on that question than Buffett?
The thoughts that follow come from a second Buffett speech, given last July at the site of the first talk, Allen & Co.'s annual Sun Valley bash for corporate executives. There, the renowned stockpicker returned to the themes he'd discussed before, bringing new data and insights to the subject. Working with FORTUNE's Carol Loomis, Buffett distilled that speech into this essay, a fitting opening for this year's Investor's Guide. Here again is Mr. Buffett on the Stock Market.
The last time I tackled this subject, in 1999, I broke down the previous 34 years into two 17-year periods, which in the sense of lean years and fat were astonishingly symmetrical. Here's the first period. As you can see, over 17 years the Dow gained exactly one-tenth of one percent.
• Dow Jones Industrial Average Dec. 31, 1964: 874.12 Dec. 31, 1981: 875.00
And here's the second, marked by an incredible bull market that, as I laid out my thoughts, was about to end (though I didn't know that).
Now, you couldn't explain this remarkable divergence in markets by, say, differences in the growth of gross national product. In the first period--that dismal time for the market--GNP actually grew more than twice as fast as it did in the second period.
• Gain in Gross National Product 1964-1981: 373% 1981-1998: 177%
So what was the explanation? I concluded that the market's contrasting moves were caused by extraordinary changes in two critical economic variables--and by a related psychological force that eventually came into play.
Here I need to remind you about the definition of "investing," which though simple is often forgotten. Investing is laying out money today to receive more money tomorrow.
That gets to the first of the economic variables that affected stock prices in the two periods--interest rates. In economics, interest rates act as gravity behaves in the physical world. At all times, in all markets, in all parts of the world, the tiniest change in rates changes the value of every financial asset. You see that clearly with the fluctuating prices of bonds. But the rule applies as well to farmland, oil reserves, stocks, and every other financial asset. And the effects can be huge on values. If interest rates are, say, 13%, the present value of a dollar that you're going to receive in the future from an investment is not nearly as high as the present value of a dollar if rates are 4%.
So here's the record on interest rates at key dates in our 34-year span. They moved dramatically up--that was bad for investors--in the first half of that period and dramatically down--a boon for investors--in the second half.
The other critical variable here is how many dollars investors expected to get from the companies in which they invested. During the first period expectations fell significantly because corporate profits weren't looking good. By the early 1980s Fed Chairman Paul Volcker's economic sledgehammer had, in fact, driven corporate profitability to a level that people hadn't seen since the 1930s.
The upshot is that investors lost their confidence in the American economy: They were looking at a future they believed would be plagued by two negatives. First, they didn't see much good coming in the way of corporate profits. Second, the sky-high interest rates prevailing caused them to discount those meager profits further. These two factors, working together, caused stagnation in the stock market from 1964 to 1981, even though those years featured huge improvements in GNP. The business of the country grew while investors' valuation of that business shrank!
And then the reversal of those factors created a period during which much lower GNP gains were accompanied by a bonanza for the market. First, you got a major increase in the rate of profitability. Second, you got an enormous drop in interest rates, which made a dollar of future profit that much more valuable. Both phenomena were real and powerful fuels for a major bull market. And in time the psychological factor I mentioned was added to the equation: Speculative trading exploded, simply because of the market action that people had seen. Later, we'll look at the pathology of this dangerous and oft-recurring malady.
Two years ago I believed the favorable fundamental trends had largely run their course. For the market to go dramatically up from where it was then would have required long-term interest rates to drop much further (which is always possible) or for there to be a major improvement in corporate profitability (which seemed, at the time, considerably less possible). If you take a look at a 50-year chart of after-tax profits as a percent of gross domestic product, you find that the rate normally falls between 4%--that was its neighborhood in the bad year of 1981, for example--and 6.5%. For the rate to go above 6.5% is rare. In the very good profit years of 1999 and 2000, the rate was under 6% and this year it may well fall below 5%.
So there you have my explanation of those two wildly different 17-year periods. The question is, How much do those periods of the past for the market say about its future?
To suggest an answer, I'd like to look back over the 20th century. As you know, this was really the American century. We had the advent of autos, we had aircraft, we had radio, TV, and computers. It was an incredible period. Indeed, the per capita growth in U.S. output, measured in real dollars (that is, with no impact from inflation), was a breathtaking 702%.
The century included some very tough years, of course--like the Depression years of 1929 to 1933. But a decade-by-decade look at per capita GNP shows something remarkable: As a nation, we made relatively consistent progress throughout the century. So you might think that the economic value of the U.S.--at least as measured by its securities markets--would have grown at a reasonably consistent pace as well.
The U.S. Never Stopped Growing
Per capita GNP gains crept in the 20th century's early years. But if you think of the U.S. as a stock, it was overall one helluva mover.
Year
20th-Century growth in per capita GNP
(constant dollars)
1900-10
29%
1910-20
1%
1920-30
13%
1930-40
21%
1940-50
50%
1950-60
18%
1960-70
33%
1970-80
24%
1980-90
24%
1990-2000
24%
That's not what happened. We know from our earlier examination of the 1964-98 period that parallelism broke down completely in that era. But the whole century makes this point as well. At its beginning, for example, between 1900 and 1920, the country was chugging ahead, explosively expanding its use of electricity, autos, and the telephone. Yet the market barely moved, recording a 0.4% annual increase that was roughly analogous to the slim pickings between 1964 and 1981.
In the next period, we had the market boom of the '20s, when the Dow jumped 430% to 381 in September 1929. Then we go 19 years--19 years--and there is the Dow at 177, half the level where it began. That's true even though the 1940s displayed by far the largest gain in per capita GDP (50%) of any 20th-century decade. Following that came a 17-year period when stocks finally took off--making a great five-to-one gain. And then the two periods discussed at the start: stagnation until 1981, and the roaring boom that wrapped up this amazing century.
To break things down another way, we had three huge, secular bull markets that covered about 44 years, during which the Dow gained more than 11,000 points. And we had three periods of stagnation, covering some 56 years. During those 56 years the country made major economic progress and yet the Dow actually lost 292 points.
How could this have happened? In a flourishing country in which people are focused on making money, how could you have had three extended and anguishing periods of stagnation that in aggregate--leaving aside dividends--would have lost you money? The answer lies in the mistake that investors repeatedly make--that psychological force I mentioned above: People are habitually guided by the rear-view mirror and, for the most part, by the vistas immediately behind them.
The first part of the century offers a vivid illustration of that myopia. In the century's first 20 years, stocks normally yielded more than high-grade bonds. That relationship now seems quaint, but it was then almost axiomatic. Stocks were known to be riskier, so why buy them unless you were paid a premium?
And then came along a 1924 book--slim and initially unheralded, but destined to move markets as never before--written by a man named Edgar Lawrence Smith. The book, called Common Stocks as Long Term Investments, chronicled a study Smith had done of security price movements in the 56 years ended in 1922. Smith had started off his study with a hypothesis: Stocks would do better in times of inflation, and bonds would do better in times of deflation. It was a perfectly reasonable hypothesis.
But consider the first words in the book: "These studies are the record of a failure--the failure of facts to sustain a preconceived theory." Smith went on: "The facts assembled, however, seemed worthy of further examination. If they would not prove what we had hoped to have them prove, it seemed desirable to turn them loose and to follow them to whatever end they might lead."
Now, there was a smart man, who did just about the hardest thing in the world to do. Charles Darwin used to say that whenever he ran into something that contradicted a conclusion he cherished, he was obliged to write the new finding down within 30 minutes. Otherwise his mind would work to reject the discordant information, much as the body rejects transplants. Man's natural inclination is to cling to his beliefs, particularly if they are reinforced by recent experience--a flaw in our makeup that bears on what happens during secular bull markets and extended periods of stagnation.
The most celebrated of investors says stocks can't possibly meet the public's expectations. As for the Internet? He notes how few people got rich from two other transforming industries, auto and aviation.
Warren Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, almost never talks publicly about the general level of stock prices--neither in his famed annual report nor at Berkshire's thronged annual meetings nor in the rare speeches he gives. But in the past few months, on four occasions, Buffett did step up to that subject, laying out his opinions, in ways both analytical and creative, about the long-term future for stocks. FORTUNE's Carol Loomis heard the last of those talks, given in September to a group of Buffett's friends (of whom she is one), and also watched a videotape of the first speech, given in July at Allen & Co.'s Sun Valley, Idaho, bash for business leaders. From those extemporaneous talks (the first made with the Dow Jones industrial average at 11,194), Loomis distilled the following account of what Buffett said. Buffett reviewed it and weighed in with some clarifications.
Investors in stocks these days are expecting far too much, and I'm going to explain why. That will inevitably set me to talking about the general stock market, a subject I'm usually unwilling to discuss. But I want to make one thing clear going in: Though I will be talking about the level of the market, I will not be predicting its next moves. At Berkshire we focus almost exclusively on the valuations of individual companies, looking only to a very limited extent at the valuation of the overall market. Even then, valuing the market has nothing to do with where it's going to go next week or next month or next year, a line of thought we never get into. The fact is that markets behave in ways, sometimes for a very long stretch, that are not linked to value. Sooner or later, though, value counts. So what I am going to be saying--assuming it's correct--will have implications for the long-term results to be realized by American stockholders.
Let's start by defining "investing." The definition is simple but often forgotten: Investing is laying out money now to get more money back in the future--more money in real terms, after taking inflation into account.
Now, to get some historical perspective, let's look back at the 34 years before this one--and here we are going to see an almost Biblical kind of symmetry, in the sense of lean years and fat years--to observe what happened in the stock market. Take, to begin with, the first 17 years of the period, from the end of 1964 through 1981. Here's what took place in that interval:
DOW JONES INDUSTRIAL AVERAGE
Dec. 31, 1964: 874.12
Dec. 31, 1981: 875.00
Now I'm known as a long-term investor and a patient guy, but that is not my idea of a big move.
And here's a major and very opposite fact: During that same 17 years, the GDP of the U.S.--that is, the business being done in this country--almost quintupled, rising by 370%. Or, if we look at another measure, the sales of the FORTUNE 500 (a changing mix of companies, of course) more than sextupled. And yet the Dow went exactly nowhere.
To understand why that happened, we need first to look at one of the two important variables that affect investment results: interest rates. These act on financial valuations the way gravity acts on matter: The higher the rate, the greater the downward pull. That's because the rates of return that investors need from any kind of investment are directly tied to the risk-free rate that they can earn from government securities. So if the government rate rises, the prices of all other investments must adjust downward, to a level that brings their expected rates of return into line. Conversely, if government interest rates fall, the move pushes the prices of all other investments upward. The basic proposition is this: What an investor should pay today for a dollar to be received tomorrow can only be determined by first looking at the risk-free interest rate.
Consequently, every time the risk-free rate moves by one basis point--by 0.01%--the value of every investment in the country changes. People can see this easily in the case of bonds, whose value is normally affected only by interest rates. In the case of equities or real estate or farms or whatever, other very important variables are almost always at work, and that means the effect of interest rate changes is usually obscured. N onetheless, the effect--like the invisible pull of gravity--is constantly there.
In the 1964-81 period, there was a tremendous increase in the rates on long-term government bonds, which moved from just over 4% at year-end 1964 to more than 15% by late 1981. That rise in rates had a huge depressing effect on the value of all investments, but the one we noticed, of course, was the price of equities. So there--in that tripling of the gravitational pull of interest rates--lies the major explanation of why tremendous growth in the economy was accompanied by a stock market going nowhere.
Then, in the early 1980s, the situation reversed itself. You will remember Paul Volcker coming in as chairman of the Fed and remember also how unpopular he was. But the heroic things he did--his taking a two-by-four to the economy and breaking the back of inflation--caused the interest rate trend to reverse, with some rather spectacular results. Let's say you put $1 million into the 14% 30-year U.S. bond issued Nov. 16, 1981, and reinvested the coupons. That is, every time you got an interest payment, you used it to buy more of that same bond. At the end of 1998, with long-term governments by then selling at 5%, you would have had $8,181,219 and would have earned an annual return of more than 13%.
That 13% annual return is better than stocks have done in a great many 17-year periods in history--in most 17-year periods, in fact. It was a helluva result, and from none other than a stodgy bond.
The power of interest rates had the effect of pushing up equities as well, though other things that we will get to pushed additionally. And so here's what equities did in that same 17 years: If you'd invested $1 million in the Dow on Nov. 16, 1981, and reinvested all dividends, you'd have had $19,720,112 on Dec.31, 1998. And your annual return would have been 19%.
The increase in equity values since 1981 beats anything you can find in history. This increase even surpasses what you would have realized if you'd bought stocks in 1932, at their Depression bottom--on its lowest day, July 8, 1932, the Dow closed at 41.22--and held them for 17 years.
The second thing bearing on stock prices during this 17 years was after-tax corporate profits, which this chart [above] displays as a percentage of GDP. In effect, what this chart tells you is what portion of the GDP ended up every year with the shareholders of American business.
The chart starts in 1929. I'm quite fond of 1929, since that's when it all began for me. My dad was a stock salesman at the time, and after the Crash came, in the fall, he was afraid to call anyone--all those people who'd been burned. So he just stayed home in the afternoons. And there wasn't television then. Soooo...I was conceived on or about Nov. 30,1929 (and born nine months later, on Aug. 30, 1930), and I've forever had a kind of warm feeling about the Crash.
Corporate profits as a percentage of GDP peaked in 1929, and then they tanked. The left-hand side of the chart, in fact, is filled with aberrations: not only the Depression but also a wartime profits boom--sedated by the excess-profits tax--and another boom after the war. But from 1951 on, the percentage settled down pretty much to a 4% to 6.5% range.
By 1981, though, the trend was headed toward the bottom of that band, and in 1982 profits tumbled to 3.5%. So at that point investors were looking at two strong negatives: Profits were sub-par and interest rates were sky-high.
And as is so typical, investors projected out into the future what they were seeing. That's their unshakable habit: looking into the rear-view mirror instead of through the windshield. What they were observing, looking backward, made them very discouraged about the country. They were projecting high interest rates, they were projecting low profits, and they were therefore valuing the Dow at a level that was the same as 17 years earlier, even though GDP had nearly quintupled.
Now, what happened in the 17 years beginning with 1982? One thing that didn't happen was comparable growth in GDP: In this second 17-year period, GDP less than tripled. But interest rates began their descent, and after the Volcker effect wore off, profits began to climb--not steadily, but nonetheless with real power. You can see the profit trend, which shows that by the late 1990s, after-tax profits as a percent of GDP were running close to 6%, which is on the upper part of the "normalcy" band. And at the end of 1998, long-term government interest rates had made their way down to that 5%.
These dramatic changes in the two fundamentals that matter most to investors explain much, though not all, of the more than tenfold rise in equity prices--the Dow went from 875 to 9,181--during this 17-year period. What was at work also, of course, was market psychology. Once a bull market gets under way, and once you reach the point where everybody has made money no matter what system he or she followed, a crowd is attracted into the game that is responding not to interest rates and profits but simply to the fact that it seems a mistake to be out of stocks. In effect, these people superimpose an I-can't-miss-the-party factor on top of the fundamental factors that drive the market. Like Pavlov's dog, these "investors" learn that when the bell rings--in this case, the one that opens the New York Stock Exchange at 9:30 a.m.--they get fed. Through this daily reinforcement, they become convinced that there is a God and that He wants them to get rich.
Today, staring fixedly back at the road they just traveled, most investors have rosy expectations. A Paine Webber and Gallup Organization survey released in July shows that the least experienced investors--those who have invested for less than five years--expect annual returns over the next ten years of 22.6%. Even those who have invested for more than 20 years are expecting 12.9%.
Now, I'd like to argue that we can't come even remotely close to that 12.9%, and make my case by examining the key value-determining factors. Today, if an investor is to achieve juicy profits in the market over ten years or 17 or 20, one or more of three things must happen. I'll delay talking about the last of them for a bit, but here are the first two:
(1) Interest rates must fall further. If government interest rates, now at a level of about 6%, were to fall to 3%, that factor alone would come close to doubling the value of common stocks. Incidentally, if you think interest rates are going to do that--or fall to the 1% that Japan has experienced--you should head for where you can really make a bundle: bond options.
(2) Corporate profitability in relation to GDP must rise. You know, someone once told me that New York has more lawyers than people. I think that's the same fellow who thinks profits will become larger than GDP. When you begin to expect the growth of a component factor to forever outpace that of the aggregate, you get into certain mathematical problems. In my opinion, you have to be wildly optimistic to believe that corporate profits as a percent of GDP can, for any sustained period, hold much above 6%. One thing keeping the percentage down will be competition, which is alive and well. In addition, there's a public-policy point: If corporate investors, in aggregate, are going to eat an ever-growing portion of the American economic pie, some other group will have to settle for a smaller portion. That would justifiably raise political problems--and in my view a major reslicing of the pie just isn't going to happen.
So where do some reasonable assumptions lead us? Let's say that GDP grows at an average 5% a year--3% real growth, which is pretty darn good, plus 2% inflation. If GDP grows at 5%, and you don't have some help from interest rates, the aggregate value of equities is not going to grow a whole lot more. Yes, you can add on a bit of return from dividends. But with stocks selling where they are today, the importance of dividends to total return is way down from what it used to be. Nor can investors expect to score because companies are busy boosting their per-share earnings by buying in their stock. The offset here is that the companies are just about as busy issuing new stock, both through primary offerings and those ever present stock options.
So I come back to my postulation of 5% growth in GDP and remind you that it is a limiting factor in the returns you're going to get: You cannot expect to forever realize a 12% annual increase--much less 22%--in the valuation of American business if its profitability is growing only at 5%. The inescapable fact is that the value of an asset, whatever its character, cannot over the long term grow faster than its earnings do.
Now, maybe you'd like to argue a different case. Fair enough. But give me your assumptions. If you think the American public is going to make 12% a year in stocks, I think you have to say, for example, "Well, that's because I expect GDP to grow at 10% a year, dividends to add two percentage points to returns, and interest rates to stay at a constant level." Or you've got to rearrange these key variables in some other manner. The Tinker Bell approach--clap if you believe--just won't cut it.
Beyond that, you need to remember that future returns are always affected by current valuations and give some thought to what you're getting for your money in the stock market right now. Here are two 1998 figures for the FORTUNE 500. The companies in this universe account for about 75% of the value of all publicly owned American businesses, so when you look at the 500, you're really talking about America Inc.
FORTUNE 500
1998 profits: $334,335,000,000
Market value on March 15, 1999: $9,907,233,000,000
As we focus on those two numbers, we need to be aware that the profits figure has its quirks. Profits in 1998 included one very unusual item--a $16 billion bookkeeping gain that Ford reported from its spinoff of Associates--and profits also included, as they always do in the 500, the earnings of a few mutual companies, such as State Farm, that do not have a market value. Additionally, one major corporate expense, stock-option compensation costs, is not deducted from profits. On the other hand, the profits figure has been reduced in some cases by write-offs that probably didn't reflect economic reality and could just as well be added back in. But leaving aside these qualifications, investors were saying on March 15 this year that they would pay a hefty $10 trillion for the $334 billion in profits.
Bear in mind--this is a critical fact often ignored--that investors as a whole cannot get anything out of their businesses except what the businesses earn. Sure, you and I can sell each other stocks at higher and higher prices. Let's say the FORTUNE 500 was just one business and that the people in this room each owned a piece of it. In that case, we could sit here and sell each other pieces at ever-ascending prices. You personally might outsmart the next fellow by buying low and selling high. But no money would leave the game when that happened: You'd simply take out what he put in. Meanwhile, the experience of the group wouldn't have been affected a whit, because its fate would still be tied to profits. The absolute most that the owners of a business, in aggregate, can get out of it in the end--between now and Judgment Day--is what that business earns over time.
And there's still another major qualification to be considered. If you and I were trading pieces of our business in this room, we could escape transactional costs because there would be no brokers around to take a bite out of every trade we made. But in the real world investors have a habit of wanting to change chairs, or of at least getting advice as to whether they should, and that costs money--big money. The expenses they bear--I call them frictional costs--are for a wide range of items. There's the market maker's spread, and commissions, and sales loads, and 12b-1 fees, and management fees, and custodial fees, and wrap fees, and even subscriptions to financial publications. And don't brush these expenses off as irrelevancies. If you were evaluating a piece of investment real estate, would you not deduct management costs in figuring your return? Yes, of course--and in exactly the same way, stock market investors who are figuring their returns must face up to the frictional costs they bear.
And what do they come to? My estimate is that investors in American stocks pay out well over $100 billion a year--say, $130 billion--to move around on those chairs or to buy advice as to whether they should! Perhaps $100 billion of that relates to the FORTUNE 500. In other words, investors are dissipating almost a third of everything that the FORTUNE 500 is earning for them--that $334 billion in 1998--by handing it over to various types of chair-changing and chair-advisory "helpers." And when that handoff is completed, the investors who own the 500 are reaping less than a $250 billion return on their $10 trillion investment. In my view, that's slim pickings.
Perhaps by now you're mentally quarreling with my estimate that $100 billion flows to those "helpers." How do they charge thee? Let me count the ways. Start with transaction costs, including commissions, the market maker's take, and the spread on underwritten offerings: With double counting stripped out, there will this year be at least 350 billion shares of stock traded in the U.S., and I would estimate that the transaction cost per share for each side--that is, for both the buyer and the seller--will average 6 cents. That adds up to $42 billion.
Move on to the additional costs: hefty charges for little guys who have wrap accounts; management fees for big guys; and, looming very large, a raft of expenses for the holders of domestic equity mutual funds. These funds now have assets of about $3.5 trillion, and you have to conclude that the annual cost of these to their investors--counting management fees, salesloads, 12b-1 fees, general operating costs--runs to at least 1%, or $35 billion.
And none of the damage I've so far described counts the commissions and spreads on options and futures, or the costs borne by holders of variable annuities, or the myriad other charges that the "helpers" manage to think up. In short, $100 billion of frictional costs for the owners of the FORTUNE 500--which is 1% of the 500's market value--looks to me not only highly defensible as an estimate, but quite possibly on the low side.
It also looks like a horrendous cost. I heard once about a cartoon in which a news commentator says, "There was no trading on the New York Stock Exchange today. Everyone was happy with what they owned." Well, if that were really the case, investors would every year keep around $130 billion in their pockets.
Let me summarize what I've been saying about the stock market: I think it's very hard to come up with a persuasive case that equities will over the next 17 years perform anything like--anything like--they've performed in the past 17. If I had to pick the most probable return, from appreciation and dividends combined, that investors in aggregate--repeat, aggregate--would earn in a world of constant interest rates, 2% inflation, and those ever hurtful frictional costs, it would be 6%. If you strip out the inflation component from this nominal return (which you would need to do however inflation fluctuates), that's 4% in real terms. And if 4% is wrong, I believe that the percentage is just as likely to be less as more.
Let me come back to what I said earlier: that there are three things that might allow investors to realize significant profits in the market going forward. The first was that interest rates might fall, and the second was that corporate profits as a percent of GDP might rise dramatically. I get to the third point now: Perhaps you are an optimist who believes that though investors as a whole may slog along, you yourself will be a winner. That thought might be particularly seductive in these early days of the information revolution (which I wholeheartedly believe in). Just pick the obvious winners, your broker will tell you, and ride the wave.
Well, I thought it would be instructive to go back and look at a couple of industries that transformed this country much earlier in this century: automobiles and aviation. Take automobiles first: I have here one page, out of 70 in total, of car and truck manufacturers that have operated in this country. At one time, there was a Berkshire car and an Omaha car. Naturally I noticed those. But there was also a telephone book of others.
All told, there appear to have been at least 2,000 car makes, in an industry that had an incredible impact on people's lives. If you had foreseen in the early days of cars how this industry would develop, you would have said, "Here is the road to riches." So what did we progress to by the 1990s? After corporate carnage that never let up, we came down to three U.S. car companies--themselves no lollapaloozas for investors. So here is an industry that had an enormous impact on America--and also an enormous impact, though not the anticipated one, on investors.
Sometimes, incidentally, it's much easier in these transforming events to figure out the losers. You could have grasped the importance of the auto when it came along but still found it hard to pick companies that would make you money. But there was one obvious decision you could have made back then--it's better sometimes to turn these things upside down--and that was to short horses. Frankly, I'm disappointed that the Buffett family was not short horses through this entire period. And we really had no excuse: Living in Nebraska, we would have found it super-easy to borrow horses and avoid a "short squeeze."
U.S. Horse Population
1900: 21 million
1998: 5 million
The other truly transforming business invention of the first quarter of the century, besides the car, was the airplane--another industry whose plainly brilliant future would have caused investors to salivate. So I went back to check out aircraft manufacturers and found that in the 1919-39 period, there were about 300 companies, only a handful still breathing today. Among the planes made then--we must have been the Silicon Valley of that age--were both the Nebraska and the Omaha, two aircraft that even the most loyal Nebraskan no longer relies upon.
Move on to failures of airlines. Here's a list of 129 airlines that in the past 20 years filed for bankruptcy. Continental was smart enough to make that list twice. As of 1992, in fact--though the picture would have improved since then--the money that had been made since the dawn of aviation by all of this country's airline companies was zero. Absolutely zero.
Sizing all this up, I like to think that if I'd been at Kitty Hawk in 1903 when Orville Wright took off, I would have been farsighted enough, and public-spirited enough--I owed this to future capitalists--to shoot him down. I mean, Karl Marx couldn't have done as much damage to capitalists as Orville did.
I won't dwell on other glamorous businesses that dramatically changed our lives but concurrently failed to deliver rewards to U.S. investors: the manufacture of radios and televisions, for example. But I will draw a lesson from these businesses: The key to investing is not assessing how much an industry is going to affect society, or how much it will grow, but rather determining the competitive advantage of any given company and, above all, the durability of that advantage. The products or services that have wide, sustainable moats around them are the ones that deliver rewards to investors.
This talk of 17-year periods makes me think--incongruously, I admit--of 17-year locusts [pictured below]. What could a current brood of these critters, scheduled to take flight in 2016, expect to encounter? I see them entering a world in which the public is less euphoric about stocks than it is now. Naturally, investors will be feeling disappointment--but only because they started out expecting too much.
Grumpy or not, they will have by then grown considerably wealthier, simply because the American business establishment that they own will have been chugging along, increasing its profits by 3% annually in real terms. Best of all, the rewards from this creation of wealth will have flowed through to Americans in general, who will be enjoying a far higher standard of living than they do today. That wouldn't be a bad world at all--even if it doesn't measure up to what investors got used to in the 17 years just passed.
![[Arb]](http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-EQ505_Arbitr_NS_20091009223723.gif)
Nov 22, 1999