Login

Posts Tagged ‘asset allocation software’

Is Buy and Hold Dead?

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010

 After reading a recent debate, I decided to chime in with my own thoughts on the matter. Somehow the discussion of buy and hold evoked the typical academic responses of markets being efficient and so forth.

A few comments on ‘efficiency’

Market efficiency implies that all information is assimilated into the current market price, and therefore there is no possibility that you can buy assets cheap, to then sell high, because if it was truly cheap, the market would quickly jump in to buy the security, thus bidding up the price, eliminating the opportunity. Fantastic, but is it logical? This is similar to the University of Chicago line of thinking that if there was a $20 bill on the floor, it must be fake because someone would have picked it up by now. We all know that there is a very high possibility that short term inefficiencies exist. The quant funds have all but proven it: DE Shaw, Medallion, AQR Capital are all funds that trade in liquid equity markets but arbitrage short term opportunities. A hedge fund expert wittingly referred to these funds as “excess liquidity providers”.  My favorite response to anyone who says that markets are efficient is: “that is a self fulfilling prophecy” …

The Buy and Hold Debate

Buy and Hold is an “asset allocation policy” … it basically implies that the strategic asset allocation it the best guess as to what will be the best performing allocation over the investment horizon (typically 1+ years). If you do not think buy and hold works, that means you adjust the strategic asset allocation (ie shift equity weightings up and down over time) and make tactical trades (short term opportunities that present themselves in the market) to add alpha.  Dynamic asset alllocation therefore, is saying that “buy and hold” doesnt work (ie “Buy and Hope” …. :-) .  Time varying asset allocation emphasizes that dynamically switching the asset allocation you can minimize the downside of bear markets, overweight markets that are rallying, etc. It is the holy grail of money management: “equity like returns with bond like risk”. 

Due to the increased difficulty in cranking out decent returns, it is even more important to “think dynamically”.

Performance of a 70% stocks, 30% bonds Portfolio

The chart below shows how difficult money management has been. A portfolio of 70% stocks and 30% bonds (note we are using the MSCI US Stocks Index, total return, for stocks, and the Salomon Brothers US Treasury Index, for bonds) performed as follows:

  • +16.6% per year from 1985-1999, with a standard deviation of 10.9%, compared with…
  • +1.8% per year from 2000-2010, with a standard deviation of 11.1% 

This is a huge drop in annualized values in an aggressive Equity portfolio (far below the risk free rate of return), with an elevated level of risk. The return to risk ratio was nearly 9x higher from 1985 – 19999 versus the past ten years.

Returns by Market (80s and 90s versus 2000s)

 

 There was a huge drop in asset class returns between the two periods. further strengthenting the case for a more dynamic approach to asset allocation in the 2000s. Even bonds have fared substantially worse in the past decade than the prior 15 years. 

Returns by Asset Class (80s and 90s versus 2000s)

Another asset class focused way to see the same data …

Efficient Frontier Comparison

This secular shift in returns between the different decades has produced a notable response to the buy and hold, academic oriented crowd: a notable downward push to the efficient frontier. Interpretations of the efficient frontier are as varied as how people like their eggs in the morning.  Some think it is useful, others useless, some think it is a good framework, others think it is a good tool for clients to see and not much else. Regardless, it is a mathematical approximation as to the “best, most efficient portfolios using return and covariance measures”.  Utilizing expected returns from these different periods, the following two, vastly different efficient frontiers were produced.

Conclusion

This is slicing the past thirty years into two periods, one when the business environment was booming and capital markets surged, and the other when the world suffered two disastrous bear markets and a global mini-Depression. Buy and Hold is a methodology that worked “before” and it is unlikely that it will work in the future.  After the carnage in 2008 and 2009, portfolio managers have lowered their expectations. With the world economy still unstable and risky, investors have accepted this fact, and our view is that asset allocation has to be more imaginative and dynamic.

 

 

Tags: , ,
Posted in Asset Allocation, Business Cycle, Our Approach | No Comments »

Keeping an eye on the indicators

Tuesday, May 18th, 2010

As we mentioned back here in our post on the direction of the stock market over the upcoming months, it is important to track the indicators.  Long story short, they have turned a bit ugly.  To paraphrase one of the true brightest and best:

“Put your ears to the railroad tracks. Prices move first, and fundamentals come second.”

This tells you that though reports are confirming that fundamentals are sound …

  • M&A, Capex, share buybacks, dividend increases have been running at historically low levels and are just beginning to rise
  • Corporates are lean, and richer in cash than they have been in decades
  • Profit margins are approaching all time highs, only a year after the “Great Recession”

… the market is sending a different signal:

  • Dr Copper and Dr Crude are both down about 17% (through today, May 18)
  • S&P was spooked into its largest intra day loss since 1987, and is now down about 7% from April 26
  • Yield curve (10s / 3Ms) has flattened by about 50 bps from nearly 380 bps to 330.

Where to from here? The Greek drama reflects a broader sovereign crisis that took us by surprise with respect to how quickly it cascaded into a crisis.  Greece was one of the weaker guys in the pack, but its amazing to us how Ireland has a deficit of -14.7%, compared with Greece’s deficit of -12.2% and little mention is made in the press of their situation. True, the total indebtedness of Greece is higher, at 124.9% of GDP compared with Ireland’s 82.9%.

And thats not all.  A massive oil spill, looming uncertainty over financial reform, civil lawsuits against the investment banks, etc.

Difficult times indeed. However we think the market is going to trade lower over the next few months. This is not to say the rally has been officially delayed, but these are major headwinds that have reminded the market that volatility is always around the corner. It is very easy to say that this has spooked a bunch of investors who have been cautiously adding to their exposure and are now reminded of the awful 2nd half of 2008.

Sincerely,

The Covert Analytics Team

 

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Asset Allocation, Business Cycle, Commodities, Market Talk | No Comments »

How we see ourselves …

Monday, May 17th, 2010

Covert Analytics is a different product. We hope that is obvious when you see our product for the first time, the ease by which our product gives you insightful results and analysis, and how our simple approach beats buy and hold and is the product you wish you had access to before the market crash! OK maybe not all those things, but we do hope it is a different product for you.

We cannot help but identify with another market leader, albeit in consumer electronics. And this is how we see ourselves:

Apple redefined consumer electronics, and we hope to redefine asset allocation. Our aim is not to be the most intelligent group of software developers and market practitioners, but instead the most easy to use product, that delivers the most benefits, and is one part of your business that is a stress reliever, and not a stress provider.

Sincerely,

The Covert Analytics Team

Tags: ,
Posted in Asset Allocation, Our Approach | No Comments »

The Importance of Covert Analytics to Your Firm

Monday, May 17th, 2010

As a dedicated software provider for the investment management industry, one of our top priorities is to educate. We do not educate to pitch our software but to educate the marketplace about our approach, which we think will definitively and sustainably improve any portfolio manager’s practice.

The recent black swans that have dominated the news have caused understandable fright among many investors and coinciding with that is a rise in apprehension among their money managers. Why is this? Because recent events are a reminder that the raging bull since March 2009 will finally be met with a formidable adversary: volatility. Vol is back. The past few weeks have brought about known risks: sovereign default risk, investor panic, wild currency swings and unknown risks such as the BP oil spill, Iceland’s volcanic ash, the US intra day market crash, etc.

There has never been a better time for an approach like ours. We think that the key differentiating factor of our software is that it was built by market practitioners, and not under the cozy umbrella of academia. A good analogy of this is being street smart versus books smart. Though the books smart guy may have the better degree and vocabulary, the one that is going to get you through the tough part of town safely is the street smart guy.

Covert Analytics is the streets smart guy. To borrow a saying from Eastern philosophy, “the best defense is a good offense”, and this is precisely what we aim to provide our clients. Our clients, again, are fancy hedge fund managers and simple fee based money managers in Ohio. The punchline we give potential clients is, for sure our market modelling is not the black box solution to solve your portfolio management process issues, but we are however a software that will help you (the money manager) sleep better at night.

The diagram below displays what we call the “Four Cornerstones of Portfolio Management” … as you will note we believe Covert Analytics touches each aspect of this four cornerstone approach.

 

1) Client Profile – this is set forth by our users when they specify the “focus” of the portfolio along with the target range. As you will note this is a no frills approach to “client specification” … as a bunch of other less relevant details can be included, however we think any advisor will agree these are the key questions to answer.

2) Asset Allocation – any user of our approach will benefit from the Covert Technique to asset allocation, by which markets are selected, quantitative risk indicators are built per market and a dynamic asset allocation (fully backtest-able) mode is constructed.

3) Security Selection – typically this would include a fund manager screening tool, however since our model allocates  to stock and bond markets along with commodity baskets, we would urge clients to view markets the same way. Top priority is picking the market and a distant second (on the priority list) is finding the vehicle.

4) Rebalancing & Monitoring – Covert Analytics emphasizes constant rebalancing as new data is incorporated into your model. The monitoring service allows you to keep a better eye on your models and the portfolios based on those models.

We hope you will see why we think our software is a great offense for any portfolio management, investment advisory or hedge fund shop. Please contact us if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

 

The Covert Analytics Team

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Asset Allocation, Our Approach | No Comments »

Suggestion for CALPERS

Friday, March 19th, 2010

We agree with the Wall Street Journal article, implying that serious investors need to rethink asset allocation. It goes without saying that an asset allocation strategy “works” over the long run, but that doesnt help navigate through ferocious bear markets.

“In their research, managers came across Denmark’s ATP fund. In 2008, that $112 billion pension fund moved from allocating investments based on asset type to what drives risk, a spokesman confirms. For example, it put private and public equities into one category called corporate earnings, which usually perform badly during economic downturns.”

That is exactly how Covert Analytics suggests portfolio managers manage portfolios! Allocating investments based on what drives risk? That is the exact definition of what our platform is trying to achieve!!!

Suggestion: CALPERS can fire all their employees (except 2), hedge funds, advisors. Maintain one employee to manage their Covert Analytics subscription and other employee to execute trades! Problem solved.

Here is the link to the WSJ article

Tags: ,
Posted in Asset Allocation, Business Cycle, Our Approach | No Comments »

Why “Covert Analytics”?

Friday, March 19th, 2010

We wanted to let people know how and why we are called Covert Analytics. The idea initially was that an investment advisor would use our platform as the secret tool to help them navigate markets. The secret tool, you may ask? Yes … secret because most investment advisors would claim that their approach to the market was revolutionary, proprietary, etc. Hey at our old investment advisory firm, we did the same…

So if their asset allocation approach was from an “off the shelf” or in this case “off the web” software, it would diminish the sophistication level they projected. We wanted to partner with our clients (money managers) in offering the “best in the world” product to their end clients. Granted our platform is our perspective, and our expertise and experience in the trenches, in an attempt to better navigate the markets.

Covert + Analytics: a powerful tool used by money managers to arrive at optimal allocation decisions. 

The simple picture is that Covert Analytics is a dynamic asset allocation software that we built because we felt we needed smarter software! It is your secret weapon to manage your client assets and build a dynamic and proprietary model using our platform.

Thanks for listening,

The Covert Analytics Team

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Our Approach | No Comments »

The Covert Analytics Trinity

Saturday, January 30th, 2010

These are three integral components of the Covert Analytics approach, what we call our Trinity!

Here is a description of these components:

Gut feeling: We believe that the best money managers have a certain amount of experience, that translates into a “gut feeling” of the market. A deeper sense as to what drives the market’s up and down moves that does not vacillate depending on what the headlines say is causing markets to gyrate. It always amuses us when we see Bloomberg headlines that explain that “the market is up today because of X” and then subsequent day to see the market down and to have a headline that reads “X continues to disappoint, thus leading the market lower”. Gut feeling allows you to over write the noise. It allows you to have a grasp of what the market is going to do, how you will react if it unfolds and how you will manage your risk if it does not.

Systematic approach: This term refers to having a disciplined approach to investing, usually applied to ‘systematic hedge funds’. A systematic hedge fund is a concept that explains the investment style of the fund, where a system is in place to trade markets irregardless of the hedge fund manager’s input. The opposite of this is a discretionary approach, ie one where the hedge fund manager makes all investment calls for the fund on an “ad hoc basis”. We do not advocate that any investment advisor adopt a black box style approach to investing, which is what the majority of systematic hedge funds employ. What we strongly advocate however is that having a systematic approach which helps you maintain a framework across booms and busts, across bull markets and bear markets, will help you achieve greater returns over the long run by avoiding common pitfalls of investor emotions.

Global macro focus: Again this is a hedge fund term, but really applies more on the markets traded than anything else. The best global macro hedge fund managers (Paul Tudor Jones of Tudor Investment Corp, or Bruce Kovner of Caxton Associates) make the majority of their investment calls on broad market moves (ie where is the S&P going, how Crude, Gold is going to trade, where the Euro is headed) and typically abstain from “I like Dell over Microsoft” type calls. It is an emphasis on global capital flows and making money on stock, bond and commodity markets across the world. They benefit from the fact that usually “there is a bull market somewhere”. So not only is this a regional de-emphasis (ie go global), it is a security type definition as well (broad market indexes).

Covert Analytics is a software platform that was developed to allow investment advisors combine these three key paradigms into one successful money management platform. Our asset allocation software was designed to allow you to combine your gut feeling, with a systematic approach (that you custom tailor), and to have a global macro focus (rather than just simply allocating to US stocks, US bonds, and Cash).

The Covert Analytics Team

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Asset Allocation, Business Cycle, Dynamic Rebalancing, Our Approach | No Comments »

US Stock Market Outlook

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010
 
The S&P 500 today had a shakeout in response to the Federal Reserve announcement.  It has since made a great rally (not shown on the graph!!!).

S&P 500 Intraday

 Regardless of the noise today – please note the 5% correction we have had over the past two weeks. This coincided with earnings season.  It is interesting that 3/4 of the companies that have reported earnings beat estimates, according to Bloomberg.  If you look at an average 4Q earnings report, it is typical to see a 8-10% increase in revenue y-o-y but a nearly 20% gain in earnings.  Shows that companies are being run very efficiently; Gavekal says they are being run even more efficiently than sovereigns!

S&P 500 Intraday for past 15 days

The trend from March 2009 seems still well in place. It is clear the pace of stock gains has moderated since about November, and we are having another 5 % selloff. In the graph below there are arrows indicating the 5% corrections that have occurred since the rally began.  In other words, no need to cry wolf yet.  Markets are trading reasonably well and we believe they are in great shape.  In other words, any further weakness in the broad market would be seen as a short term buying opportunity for those investors who have not entered or have a lower than target allocation.

S7P 500 past 12 months

 

On a similar note, we acknowledge the many tailwinds that are facing investors … they include ( this is a non exclusive list compiled by us ):

  

And the case for the bulls is as follows:

Bulls ...

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Asset Allocation, Stocks | No Comments »

Great chart by PIMCO: “Ring of Fire”

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010
 

There is no need to throw out another rambling dialogue over indebtedness and the sovereign risk that is or is not priced into markets.  Regardless, this chart shows an interesting “Venn Diagram” of the groupings of nations as measured by their deficit (as a percent of GDP) plotted against their federal indebtedness.  We have discussed in recent posts Japan, and the nearly 200% of GDP tsunamai of debt they have hanging over their heads.  But PIMCO intelligently groups Japan and some Western nations into a Ring of Fire. 

 

These include: US, UK, Spain, France, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Japan: 

PIMCO: Ring of Fire

 The general justification for the fiscal deficits central banks have run were that it was necessary at the time, and that the private sector would eventually replace the government’s money. PIMCO put it this way: 

“the global private sector is now expected by some to detox and resume a normal cyclical schedule where animal spirits and the willingness to take risk move front and center.” 

That has yet to take shape.  We have long felt that what what will turn this recovery into a “sustainable” economic recovery will be if this return of animal spirits ensues.  PIMCO says the following: 

“But there is a problem. While corporations may be heading in that direction due to steep yield curves and government check writing that have partially repaired their balance sheets, their consumer customers remain fully levered and undercapitalized with little hope of escaping rehab as long as unemployment and underemployment remain at 10-20% levels worldwide.” 

PIMCO then goes on to discuss Reinhart / Rogoff who put together a seminal study called “This Time is Different: A Panoramic View of Eight Centuries of Financial Crises”. Link is included below.  We saw Carmen Reinhart speak at the Inter American Development Bank presentation in Miami a few years ago. She is a stunning academic, with forceful thoughts and words to be heeded. Her study almost implied that over the long run, no governments pay off their debt! Very interesting read, and though long I strongly suggest you read it. 

The important point to remember about the historical analysis of financial crises is that “the starting point is important”.  The following table shows the gross level of public and private debt (measured as a percent of GDP).  The results are impressive - and scary considering the precarious situation of the US, UK and Japan. 

Total Debt as a % of GDP

The next chart shows the total indebtedness (as a group) of advanced (red) versus developing (blue) countries. One can see why the emerging markets escaped from the financial crisis relatively unscathed.  Their financial markets performance was another story. 

Developed versus Developing

Bill Gross and PIMCO continue to put out their monthly Investment Outlook for free. It is available to the worldwide financial community, giving you rare, FREE, access to one of the preeminent thinkers on investment strategy.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Asset Allocation, Business Cycle, Market Talk, Tracking Smart Money | 1 Comment »

Great quote from a NY hedgie

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010
Was speaking to a NY based event driven hedge fund manager yesterday, and he had a great quote:

“Investing is 70% instinct, and 30% homework”

This is no small time hedgie either. He is the founding partner of a $2 billion event driven hedge fund. Reminds us of a great quote from one of our favorite investors, Marc Faber:

“Investing has a lot to do with common sense and personal observations”

We built Covert Analytics to allow investment advisors and portfolio managers to input their views across global capital markets. The framework we initially conceptualized would allow investors to apply a logical methodology to evaluate a varied group of assets, and to see how this methodology would have worked historically.

Here is how we see our platform “mixing” with our great quote:

Your views, our platform

Covert Analytics is a platform, that combined with your views, produces information that helps drive your portfolio management process

Our plaftorm + Your Views = Input for your PM Process

Our platform is not a black box which tells you how to allocate. Our software allows you to input market specific views without the traditional academic mumbo jumbo of forecasting market returns or standard deviations, but instead allows you to build and combine indicators which are consistent with your views. Our proprietary backtest methodology allows you to evaluate how your asset allocation model performs historically, factoring in the portfolio guidelines you set forth, and proposes a recommended asset allocation.

Covert Analytics is a platform which allows you to build dynamic, quantitative asset allocation models that are driven by your expertise, and your views. We are glad our hedgie friend said that, because we could not have agreed more!

The Covert Analytics Team

Tags: , ,
Posted in Asset Allocation, Dynamic Rebalancing, Our Approach | No Comments »