2017: Third Quarter Review

There were a number of changes to the portfolio during the quarter.  A brief summary is below, but expect a broader portfolio review (likely in multiple parts) in the coming weeks.

International: 
- Added to Brazil (EWZ & EWZS): As readers will remember, Brazil fell heavily in mid-Q2 after recorded conversations (re. accepting a bribe) involving President Temer led to an impeachment attempt and potential criminal charges.  In mid-to-late-July, it became clear that these charges wouldn’t be accepted by the lower house of Congress (subsequently confirmed by a vote in August) and in late August the Brazilian market broke out to new highs.  OM added to the Brazil position on each of these events (in larger size on the breakout to new highs).  This makes Brazil the largest position in the portfolio.
- Bought India (INDA & SCIF): OM started a small position in India.  He’s been looking at it for a while, as it’s somewhere that’s likely a multi-year holding but was always too price sensitive.  Call this a first nibble at what might one-day be a much larger position.
-  Bought Greece (GREK & ALBKY): OM’s previous investments in Greece have been far from stellar (i.e. terrible) yet he returned to that poisoned chalice just before quarter-end.  Why now?  Time (and recapitalizations) help heal balance sheet wounds, and there was a small (under-reported) catalyst on debt reduction.  The initial position is very small - it would have to triple to cover prior losses - but the return potential is substantial and OM thinks the market is over-stating the risk.
- Exited Italy (EWI): OM exited the Italy position.  It has performed well, but other opportunities (i.e. Greece) are just more attractive at this point.

Equity: 
- Exited Dollar Tree (DLTR): While Dollar Tree is a beneficiary of tax reform (if it comes), with Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods and stronger ideas out there, it was an easy sell.
- Exited Liberty Broadband (LBRDK):  This was actually the toughest decision in the portfolio, since Charter Communications (LBRDK just owns Charter and a subsidiary) is a fantastic business with good opportunities ahead of it.  There are some very good public write-ups about why Charter Comms (and thus LBRDK) will be worth substantially more in the future, and OM largely agrees with them.  In the end there were just things OM has greater confidence in.
 - Bought Texas Pacific Land Trust (TPL):  TPL is a publicly traded land trust that’s self-liquidating as it buys back shares with excess cash.   The trust benefits primarily from oil & gas royalties (the Trust’s land is located in the Permian basin), which have risen over the last 4-years even as the oil price has fallen.  Interestingly, in the middle of the year the Trust announced the formation of a subsidiary to provide water resources.  Given TPL owns the water rights under its land, there is opportunity to supply water to drilling companies and find ways to recycle the (non-potable) water that’s a byproduct of drilling. 

Currencies 
- Exited Short Euro (EUO): Our Man exited the short Euro trade in mid-late August.  Though it’s been a fantastic contributor over a number of years, the end was bittersweet – as noted previously, it should have happened earlier in 2017.  The exit also marked the end of Our Man’s dollar bull thesis – in its various guises (and including the Short Australia dollar positions, within the China Thesis) it ended up contributing over 1,000bps to performance!  It should have been more 😔...

China Thesis: 
- Added to Chinese A-Shares (ASHR):  Our Man materially added to the A-shares position during the quarter.  China is a swirling surfeit of liquidity seeking somewhere to call home, drive up prices and then move on once more when the authorities play whack-a-mole.  We've seen it at least once each in real estate, domestic equities, commodities, and most recently bitcoin.  With the authorities making it harder to invest in bitcoin (the latest home), the liquidity is on the hunt once more.   OM is wagering that the 19^th National Congress starting in Q4, will offer the stability for local equities to shine once more after the boom/bust of 2015.  Technically, they’re setting up well and OM wouldn’t rule out a run at 2015 (or even 2007) highs.
- Exited Short Australian Dollar (CROC):  Much like the short Euro position, OM exited this position during the middle of the quarter.  Unlike the Euro position, the sin wasn't holding it too long, it was re-entering/sizing it in Q2 despite the technicals looking unattractive.

Commodity: 
- Added to Uranium (URA):  OM sized up the position in Uranium mining companies (URA) after the recent pullback held above its 2016/2017 lows (spot uranium also held above its 2016 lows).  This coupled with Japanese power plants slowly coming online and the supply discipline holding creates an interesting opportunity.

Performance and Review 
The second quarter saw OM’s portfolio rise 512bps, while the S&P 500 (TR) rose 4.5% and the MSCI World was up 4.1%.  For the year, this left OM’s portfolio +13.4% compared to +14.2% for the S&P 500 (TR) and +13.0% for the MSCI World.  

Performance was driven by the International/Country book (+476bps), with Brazil being the primary contributor (just over 300bps).  As noted above, Brazil bounced back sharply from Q2’s Temer-related fall, and OM was helped by added to the position in the quarter.  Argentina and Italy were also healthy contributors.

The Technical book (+124bps) was a direct beneficiary of the market rise.   The Funds book (+39bps) also rose with the market, though it underperformed during the quarter but remains comfortably ahead of the market in 2017.  The Equity book (+14bps) was only a marginal contributor with negative performance from Vipshop Holdings (VIPS, -59bps) offsetting most of the gains driver by Liberty Broadband (LBRDK, +36bps) and Biotech (IBB, +34bps).

The China Thesis (-42bps) and the Currencies book (-81bps) both detracted from performance due to the long Dollar exposure before those positions exited the portfolio.  Finally, the Commodities book (-18bps) hurt as Uranium stocks continued to muddle around.

Portfolio (as at 9/30 - all delta and leverage adjusted, as appropriate)
41.4% - International (Brazil, Argentina, India and Greece)
25.7% - Technical (DDM, QLD and SSO)
15.9% - Equities (JD, VIPS, TPL, FNMA & IBB)
10.3% - Funds (CWS, GVAL, and CAPE)
9.4% - China-Related Thesis (ASHR)
7.3% - Commodities (URA)

2.9% - Cash  

Disclaimer:  Nothing above represents a recommendation in any way, shape or form so please don’t even think of trying to take the above that way.  For added clarity, while Our Man is invested in all of the securities mentioned that’s a terrible reason for anyone else to do so.  Our Man also holds some cash and a few other securities (of negligible value).  You should not buy any of these securities because Our Man has mentioned them, but should do your own work and decide what’s best for you given your own circumstances/risk tolerance/etc. 

Portfolio Update

Given there were a number of new additions to the portfolio at the end of 2016 and in early 2017, this seems like an appropriate moment to look at the various books/themes in the portfolio and talk a little more about them.


Technical: 22.7% NAV (all sizes are as of March-end) 
The positions are unchanged and are relatively evenly split between DDM, SSO, and QLD, which represent exposure to the major US indices   Currently Our Man’s technical model is strongly in “Buy” territory, and while it indicates there are possibilities of 5-8% pull backs in the near future barring a much more substantial reversal in markets it seems unlikely that its recommendation will change.  Thus, Our Man’s not expecting much to change here for a while.


International:  20.1% NAV 
This book currently has positions reflecting themes in Argentina, Brazil, and Europe (Italy).
- Argentina (8.9%) is the largest theme, though this was reduced during Q1 as OM exited PZE (Petrobras Argentina, which rallied strongly in late-2016) and reduced the size of the PAM (Pampa Energie) position.  The remaining exposure to the theme comes through Pampa (6.4%) and Adecoagro (AGRO, 2.5%).  It’s now been over a year since President Macri took office, and he’s made a remarkable number of changes to help Argentina transition towards a more market-based (vs. government driven) economy including the removal of capital controls, allowing real independence to the Central Bank (which has since decided to target inflation), settling with bond holdouts opening the way for Argentina to raise USD debt, and reducing government subsidies and price caps.   While these things are only now starting to impact the economy, they have already improved investor sentiment which is highlighted by the prospect of Argentina returning to the MSCI Emerging Markets Index this summer.   While OM hopes to see the benefit of the increased liquidity and flows, the position is likely to be one that declines as Argentina continues its move towards normalization.

- The recent additions of Brazil (7.6%) and Europe (Italy 3.7%) were discussed in the year-end review.  Both positions are likely to increase in the future, especially if the recent pullback in Brazil continues.

- Finally, at the start of the year, GVAL was removed from this book and added to the new Funds book (see below)


Equities: 19.3% 
The equities book is made up of broadly evenly sized positions (~3.5%) in JD.com (JD), Vipshops (VIPS), the Nasdaq Biotech ETF (IBB), Dollar Tree (DLTR) and Liberty Broadband (LBRDK).  JD (which Our Man re-entered in January at a mildly better price than he sold it at last year) & the long-held VIPS position are both plays on the Chinese Consumer; think of them as companies that one day could be Amazon & an online TJ Maxx respectively.   Both Dollar Tree and Liberty Broadband (mainly Charter Communications, whose services fellow New Yorkers see as the new “Spectrum”) are exceptionally well run businesses which would also would be beneficiaries of tax reform in the US.

There is also a much smaller position in Fannie Mae (FNMA, 80bp), which along with the position in IBB was discussed in the year-end review.


Funds:  9.9% 
This represents a new book/theme in the portfolio; all of the exposure is expressed through ETFs (or potentially funds).  These ETFs have something about them that has piqued OM’s interest and are why I think they’ll outperform markets over the long-term.   Given that this outperformance is expected over the long-term, the changes to this book are expected to be extremely small.  Currently, there are 3 broadly equally-sized positions in the book:
- GVAL and CAPE are both based on applications of Shiller’s PE Ratio (aka Cyclically Adjusted Price Earnings, CAPE).  GVAL applies it to International stocks (finding the cheapest stocks in the cheapest countries), and CAPE applies it to US sectors.  To Our Man’s mind Shiller’s PE Ratio/CAPE is a tool that is poorly applied in finance with too many trying to use it as a timing mechanism or reason for a short-term decision, whereas it’s real value is as a very long-term measure of relative value.  The intent of both ETFs is to buy things that are cheap on a relative basis (compared to other countries/sectors) and Our Man’s wager is that over the long-term this will prove to be more profitable than the market.  The GVAL position was moved from the International book/theme as it seems to better fit here.
- CWS:  Our Man has read the Crossing Wall Street blog for most of the last decade, and this ETF is based off that blog.  CWS publishes an annual “Buy List” of ~25 stocks at the start of each year, which are equally weighted and then no changes can be made during the year.  Each year only 5 stocks from the Buy List have been replaced, with the others carried forward (with any additions) onto the new Buy List.  This longer-term focus (typically, 4-5 years on the Buy List) leads to a bias towards quality and value and if the process can remain disciplined this can lead to out performance over time.


Commodities: 3.4% 
This book was changed from Precious Metals to better encapsulate the things that might go into it
- The Uranium stock ETF (URA) was added during January, and is the sole position in this book.  OM will likely go into the thesis on Uranium in greater detail at some point, but the cliff notes are:
1). Supply: 70% of supply comes from 2 producers (Cameco, a North American company, and the Republic of Kazakhstan) and both have cut supply in the last 12months and announced their intention to keep it down.  It takes a really long-time (5-7years+) to permit, build, and develop a mine so this capacity constraint has limited offsets.

2). Demand: The primary demand for Uranium is from nuclear power plants.  Post-Fukushima the demand fell substantially as Japan (and other countries like Germany) closed down their nuclear power plants.  Over the last year+ we’ve started to see some of these Japanese plants being updated and come back online, while other countries have approved and are building new (typically Generation III/III+) nuclear plants.  The building of new plants takes time (5-7 years to the plant approved, built) and will likely be slow (as countries wait to see how the new Generation III plants operate) but represents positive incremental change.  In the short-term, contracts for uranium supply are long-term (2-10yrs) with a significant percentage coming due within the next couple of years.

3). Price/Technical:  URA is down 80-90% from its 2011 peak and hit a low of $11.31 in mid-Jan 2016.  Subsequently, it held above this low in early November ($11.74) and confirmed a yearly uptrend in early 2017 (it’s price in 2017 closed at a level higher than any price in 2016!).  OM’s technical model suggests that the future path of URA is more likely to be a bear market rally than the start of a new bull market, but also that this could well be a particularly vicious bear market rally (to $40+!!!) given the depth & time of the decline.

Given this combination of supply/demand factors and the price/technical lining, OM believes that URA currently represents an attractive risk/reward.


Currencies: -47.6% 
OM continues to remain very long the US Dollar, with short positions in the Euro (via EUO) and Japanese Yen (via YCS).  The Euro short is around 2x the size of that in the Yen, with OM continuing to believe that the Euro will comfortably break par to the Dollar within the next 12-18mos.


China Thesis: 2.3% 
There are two components to OM’s China thesis; (i) that the Chinese are seeking to transition their economy to a Consumer-driven one (like the US/Europe/etc) and away from a Fixed Investment one, and that (ii) that they will provide as much monetary support as they’re able to in an attempt to smooth this transition.  To some degree, the Chinese internet positions (JD and VIPS) in the Equities book incorporate the view described in part (i) but in the China Thesis book it is expressed via a small short position in the Australian dollar (42% of Australian exports go to China, in particular commodities used for Fixed investments).  This short position has been substantially larger than it is today (10%+ vs ~1.5%). Part (ii) of the thesis is expressed through a position in Chinese A-shares (~3.5%) with OM believing that much of China’s monetary support will end up finding its way into the local stock market and that 2007 and 2015’s highs (50%+ above here) will be eclipsed before the market finally peaks. 



Disclaimer:  Nothing above represents a recommendation in any way, shape or form so please don’t even think of trying to take the above that way.  For added clarity, while Our Man is invested in all of the securities mentioned that’s a terrible reason for anyone else to do so.  Our Man also holds some cash and a few other securities (of negligible value).  You should not buy any of these securities because Our Man has mentioned them, but should do your own work and decide what’s best for you given your own circumstances/risk tolerance/etc. 

Some Initial Thoughts on Currencies

While not much has happened in recent months to warrant changes to the portfolio, the single most interesting thing has been the march of the Yen.  As this graph shows, the yen has continued to strengthen (a drop in the graph = yen strength, and dollar weakness) fairly steadily throughout the period and this has also been broadly true since mid-2007. 

As you can see the big spike in mid-September was when the Bank of Japan announced it would intervene to slow the yen’s rise (during September it bought sold 2.12trn yen and bought $25.4bn).  The alert amongst you will have noticed that September’s intervention wasn’t sterilized (i.e. the Japanese just printed the money and then bought dollars with it) as Japan again tries to create inflation.

With the yen having started rising again, we have unsurprisingly seen the Bank of Japan moving to employ new ways of trying to prevent the yen’s rise, including asset purchases of corporate bonds, real estate trusts and even stock funds!

But, why’s this interesting?
Well, because Japan’s government bonds have (again) become a popular theme on the short side with Kyle Bass, amongst others, eloquently stating the case (here on CNBC).  A corollary to this is the generally held view that the yen should be far weaker, with various Japanese politicians (not to mention various financial folk) others suggesting a 120 Yen/Dollar rate as being ‘fair’.  Over time, I have great faith that both those who are short the yen and JGBs will be proven correct.  I can’t help but wonder, however, if in order to see the yen move to the 120-140 range that people predict, we won’t have to see it reach the other extreme (i.e. the Yen at 50-60) first! 

Perhaps, the move that’s currently underway is the start of a spring uncoiling, after all Japan’s consistent trade surpluses (and the foreign reserves that they’ve build up) mean that the Japanese (like everyone else) are short the yen.  If people start to unwind those positions and the stronger Yen causes Japanese exporters to struggle (and potentially need to take on more debt…thus increasing the demand for yen) then things could get really interesting.  The irony is, of course, that if the Japanese government is successful with the asset purchases and even manages to create inflation, the victory will be pyrrhic (as the higher inflation will necessitate higher nominal interest rates on JGBs, hastening the default that the JGB shorts see coming).

So that’s my ponderings on the yen, interesting but given the scope of the move the risk-reward probabilities suggest that there’s nothing to do here,  However, as mentioned back in the mid-year review, one of the things I have my eyes on is a short position in the Euro (vs. the Dollar)…something that’s not a popular sentiment these days.

The dollar has been unquestionably weak against the Euro over recent months (see this chart).  It’s also expected to remain weak for the foreseeable future, with Europe countries having seemingly resolved their sovereign debt problems and the Fed poised to undertake another Quantitative Easing program (QE2).  However, with a 10% move over the last month and sentiment so anti-dollar, is all the news priced in?

Certainly, it seems pretty certain that QE is coming after the Fed’s Nov 2-3 meeting with people now mainly arguing over the size (will it be $1trn at once in a shock and awe move, or $100bn a month for 6-12months?) and the instruments that will be purchased (predominantly Treasuries, but potentially also some munis).  For those who’re wondering why the QE is seen as such a sure thing; through Bernanke’s statements (and those of his cohorts, like Charles Evans), it’s become clear that there seems to be consensus for it.  The only thing that the Fed fears more than inflation is deflation; and if a picture’s worth a 1,000 words, then the Fed’s fears can be summed up in this one chart (source: SF Fed):

As for Europe, are the sovereign problems are resolved (with Portugal, Ireland, Italy Greece and Spain now model sovereigns with no real probability of default) or has the ECB’s program to back-stop the debt provided suitable liquidity to push the questions of solvency further down the road.  I would suggest that a real solution to the problem of excess debt is unlikely to be found in taking on more debt, and programs that facilitate this rather than looking for a better long-term solution are likely to eventually fail.  While the ECB’s moves have succeeded in pushing the spectre of European sovereign failures from the front pages, they haven’t addressed the underlying problem (too much debt!).  Furthermore, I would expect that any recurrence of the fears that we saw earlier in the year will be reflected in the Euro’s performance.

Longer-term, as readers know, I believe that the problem of excess credit/debt will be solved either by paying back the debt or by defaulting on it (and the creditor having to write-off that debt).  When you payback debt (and don’t replace it with new debt) or write it off then dollars are removed from the system…and the dollar, like all things that become scarcer, will go up!  While the scale of the Fed’s QE is expected to be large ($1trn), it pales in comparison when we consider that about 50% of the world’s debt issued is denominated in dollars.  As such, there’s likely to be a meaningful opportunity to go Long the Dollar (vs. the Euro) in the near future.