Occam's Razor

Retirement leaves me with a lot of surplus time, time I manage to fill reasonably well with consulting and other activities. But there is still plenty of time for leisure. Instead of watching Netflix, I tend to watch YouTube.

Since the pandemic, recession and the election are in, I watch a lot of videos with these themes. But I’ve been mostly concentrating on watching videos on the stock market. Against all odds it has made a spectacular recovery in just a couple of months. I’ve delved into some of the reasons in previous posts, but it mostly amounts to the Fed not letting the economy fail. It is injecting trillions of dollars into the economy into what are arguably junk bonds to push up stock prices. No major publicly traded company in the USA has become too big to fail, in the Fed’s eyes.

In doing so though the Fed is walking into a trap. It’s the trap that the Japanese government walked into in the 1990s and still hasn’t gotten out of. The basic issue is that by not letting businesses fail, you generate a lot of zombie companies that hang around and provide some benefits like keeping people employed but no real value. Their survival is predicated on an endless supply of cash bailouts, right now indirectly provided through the Fed. In other words, they would have failed without these payments, and arguably should have failed. The Fed is essentially not allowing capitalism to work. This means that trillions of dollars are going toward companies that deserve to die so something that useful and productive that meets our new economy can grow in its place.

There are some companies that are very cash rich where this isn’t a problem: Apple, Google and Walmart to name a few. They are thriving and have the resources to emerge more profitably in our new age, mainly because they offer goods and services for these challenging new times that are likely to persist and thrive. Many of the rest though acted stupidly over the last decade, facilitated by the Fed. The Fed kept interest rates artificially low, making it inexpensive to acquire debt. These companies used cheap debt mostly to back their own stock, which further overvalued these companies. Now the Fed is doing essentially the same thing.

As I noted in my last post, new investors are doing a lot to pump up prices too, doing arguably insane investments like buying stock in bankrupt companies. You know this can’t last. At some point, reality will catch up with stocks again. We got a taste of it on June 11 when the DJIA nose-dived 1800 points. Calm and rising share prices quickly returned when Big Daddy Fed came to the market’s financial rescue again.

Some analysts have noticed a pattern of false market rallies that occurred after similar past financial crises. This has happened in every recession since at least 1992. Stocks drop dramatically, but within a few months there is a rally, only until investors realize they were buying based on hope, not reality. So it’s not hard to see that we’re in for another of these soon. Another correction is going to happen. The Fed can delay it for a while, but it’s coming.

Since like February’s crash I can see this one coming, you might want to do what I am doing: selling when it is high again and husbanding the cash, not necessarily to get by, but to await a time when stocks are fairly valued again. Right now the market is on a sugar high, propped up by the Fed throwing trillions at the market. The market has the unwarranted belief that a vaccine for COVID-19 is nigh, and things will magically go back to normal.

An effective vaccine later this year is possible, but unlikely. There are a few reasons for this. First, typically it takes at least a year to find and field an effective vaccine. It’s generally more like four years. Second, any vaccine for COVID-19 is likely to take longer than one year to develop, because it is more complex than typical new viral diseases. Third, even if one is found, you can’t manufacture 300 million doses instantly; it will take months at best. Fourth, the USA is shooting itself in the foot, by not properly mitigating the spread of the disease. To the surprise of no one paying attention to the issue, it’s spreading in the USA and gaining strength. Moreover, it’s likely to generate a second wave of the disease later this year, which will need to be managed along with the seasonal flu. It’s not hard to infer that we’ll be wearing masks for years. From that inference you can figure out in 2021 and 2022 things will look a lot like they do today. You still probably won’t be taking vacations, going to movies or eating out. Which means the real economy is going to keep sucking.

An unemployment rate of 14.6% that is unlikely to get below ten percent by the end of the year, and with both businesses plus state and local governments running out of money, means that a V-shaped recovery amounts to a Hail Mary, which means it’s unlikely to happen. At some point Wall Street is going to figure out its exuberance is irrational and that predictable bear market is going to return.

Even if the Fed continues its strategy of printing money, eventually investors are going to realize that since assets are valued in dollars, and there are so many new dollars in circulation, that effectively their stocks are overvalued because the dollar is overvalued.

To me, it makes sense to sell while the market is irrationally high again and husband the cash. I’m not suggesting dumping all stocks for bonds or cash, but to change the balance of your portfolio to be much more weighted toward bonds and cash. If you selectively hold onto stocks, hold onto those with big cash balance sheets and who are optimized to thrive in this changed economy.

The 2008 recession was largely due to people buying homes for little or nothing down on adjustable rate mortgages. This house of cards came tumbling down predictably when it was placed under stress. The Fed is shimmying up our new house of cards as best it can, but that doesn’t change the underlying dynamic that our current financial system is yet another house of cards, is fundamentally unstable, and needs reengineering so money can go toward more productive uses.

The Fed’s actions are keeping this from happening. In the long run, this could make us the next Japan as we fruitlessly try to keep companies we think are too big to fail from the failure they so richly deserve.

Note: you way want to watch these two videos, two of the more convincing ones of the ones I’ve watched on YouTube.