On Market Timing - Part Three

What do we do now?

In the first blog I focused on the perils of short-term market timing. 

In the second I made my case that making 30-year commitments to any asset class is dangerous.  If you are paying for investment management, get it.

My very best (and hard learned) advice is to find how long your cherished financial goals will take and build your strategy around that.

Let’s say your primary investment goal is to make a balloon payment in 18 months.  You could put your money in T-bills or an insured savings account.  You won’t earn much but the check will be ready when needed.

Another strategy (which I don’t recommend) would be to purchase short-term speculative holdings like coffee futures or lottery tickets.  You create an opportunity for higher returns but greatly increase the chance of severe losses.

Investing in long-term holdings like stocks or real estate might not make sense because the year-to-year results are too unpredictable. 

My last chart is from J. P. Morgan showing market returns for stocks and bonds when held for 1, 5, 10 and 20-year time periods.

The green bars show the S&P 500 going back to 1950.  On the far left, returns for any given year have fluctuated wildly.  A lot of those years are below the 0% line.  If you need next year to be a good year, you are market timing.

My domain is further right.  I believe you need a minimum five-year commitment to stock portfolios.  I’m expecting a great year, a terrible year and three somewhere in the middle.  Maybe a market timer can tell you which order that will happen – if it happens at all – but I won’t try.[1]

On the five year bar, we’ve averaged our great and rotten years.  Very few of the five-year holds are below the zero line.  On the ten year bar, the only losing decade was 2001-2010. 

Now let’s say your primary investment objective is to live a comfortable retirement over the next 30 years with a rising income.

Putting more than a couple years’ reserves in savings won’t work.  You can’t even keep up with inflation – much less earn any spending money.

I hope you aren’t thinking about speculating in coffee futures to make balloon payments. 

You have long-term needs.  Have a leisurely cup of coffee and look for long-term strategies – maybe one of those mature green bars.

Remember the little girl and her yo-yo.  You have thirty steps.  What the yo-yo does on any one of them doesn’t really matter. 

It matters to the man who needs a balloon payment in 18 months.

It matters to financial entertainers hawking their products.

It really matters to people who don’t know it doesn’t matter.

But it shouldn’t matter much to you.

That’s it for now.  Thanks for sticking with me for one of my more technical blogs.

If I can help, give me a call, sh

The opinions expressed here are those of Skip Helms and do not necessarily reflect those of LPL Financial or anyone else. It is not possible to determine the top or the bottom of the market. Investing involves risks, including the loss of principal. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Please consider potential transactions carefully and read all appropriate materials before investing or sending money. No strategy, such as asset allocation or diversification assures a profit or protects against loss. Securities and advisory services offered through LPL Financial, a registered investment advisor. Member FINRA / SIPC

---

[1] I keep a picture of a Lehman Bros. employee leaving their London headquarters with his personal possessions in a cardboard box.  Whenever I get full of myself and think I know it all, I pull that picture up and remind myself just how humbling this business can be.  sh 

On Market Timing - Part Two

“You can’t time the markets!”

Last week I shared some thoughts on why “pure” market timing is so hard.

This week I’m going to talk about why we still include some element of market timing in regular investing.

Any attempt to diversify or allocate assets is a de facto timing strategy.  If you put more of your money into US stocks than coffee futures, you are taking the position that: 1) stocks could earn more than coffee, 2) stocks could earn more quickly than coffee, or 3) stocks could earn more steadily than coffee (usually it’s #3).

We know both investments can be volatile.   But we also know that they don’t always go up or down together.  By diversifying between the two (or many more), we may reduce the chances they both go down at the same time or speed.

Here at Helms Wealth Management, we try to own strong investments in strong markets.  But we know that we will never have all the information.  Some choices will not succeed.  The strategy is to own an array of promising investments, so weak ones can’t derail the whole portfolio. We always wish we had more of the big winners- but that’s the trade-off.

I did say “promising” investments.  All eligible candidates must offer the potential to achieve your investment objectives whether they pan out or not.  Over-diversifying into every possible investment because you don’t know which of them can help you is expensive and frustrating.

Owning similar investment packages from multiple vendors isn’t diversification either.  The same stock in three portfolios is still the same stock.

I believe in diversification.  Most of my research time is spent trying to find strength among asset classes, and culling the weak ones. 

I’m less thrilled with static asset allocation.  I’ve railed about that in most of my podcasts.  If this blog hits a nerve, please have a look.

Packed asset allocation is a comprehensive investment process that assigns pre-set mixtures of stocks, bonds, cash and other assets based on a client’s age and risk tolerance.

The theory is that the long-term risk and return performance of each asset has a high probability of repeating in the future.  Blends of assets that produced successful returns are offered in different volatility ranges so consumers have comfortable choices.

The paperwork that comes with these investments clearly states “past performance does not guarantee future results” but past performance is better than nothing if you design an investment strategy with permanent stock, bond, and cash ratios.

I think this takes not trying to time the markets too far.  If you aren’t a client, and you want to know the essential portfolio management difference between Helms Wealth and many other advisors, you just found it.

I firmly believe we should not have irrevocable faith that investment performance will repeat.  If it doesn’t, I want a process to detect it- and I want an exit strategy for my clients.

My favorite whipping-boy for this is the bond market.

This is a chart from the Federal Reserve. It shows the yield on 10-year US Treasury notes going back to 1953. That covers the bond market cycle up to a few years ago.

For the first 29 years, bond values declined sharply.  Falling prices drove interest rates to the highest they have ever been in our country.  If you tried to get a mortgage in 1980 you know what I’m talking about.

From 1982 until now, bond prices have steadily appreciated causing yields to go as low as they have ever been.

Wall Street (bless their hearts) considers a full market cycle at between 20 and 30 years.[1]  Using that methodology, they only count the extraordinarily good half of this chart when designing ready-made investment strategies.  They can’t change it.  More correctly, they haven’t yet.

When I stare at this chart, I can’t get past the fact that we are below where the last 29-year bear market started.

Next week I’ll wrap-up by explaining what I think you need to do about this.

Thanks for reading!

Call if you need more details, SH

The opinions expressed here are those of Skip Helms and do not necessarily reflect those of LPL Financial or anyone else. It is not possible to determine the top or the bottom of the market. Investing involves risks, including the loss of principal. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Please consider potential transactions carefully and read all appropriate materials before investing or sending money. No strategy, such as asset allocation or diversification assures a profit or protects against loss. Securities and advisory services offered through LPL Financial, a registered investment advisor. Member FINRA / SIPC

---

[1] See my podcast on yield forecasts.