Cuidado con los Mercados Desarrollados
La fiesta sigue. Después de los rallys de bolsas americanas y europeas -especialmente la española- parece que la mayoría de inversores va a volver a tropezar con la piedra de siempre. Cuándo? No se puede precisar, pero lo que es seguro es que la piedra está ahí y los inversores, ebrios de tanta subida, corren alocados como pollos sin cabeza. ¿Y cuál es la piedra en la que van a tropezar muchos? Pues lógicamente unas valoraciones de bolsas desarrolladas que para nada son ya baratas, por no decir que empiezan a estar ya caras. Sobre todo si tenemos en cuenta que los beneficios empresariales están en máximos y los tipos de interés en mínimos, lo cual inevitablemente nos acerca a su fin e inicio del ciclo inverso.
Además debemos distinguir entre bolsa desarrollada europea y americana: El mercado europeo se enfrenta a una deflación persistente, quizá con recorrido mayor si el BCE se ve obligado a tomar medidas extraordinarias al estilo de las tomadas por la FED en estos últimos semestres. Pero con nubarrones de solvencia y de recesión en la periferia que no le van a sentar nada bien a sus bolsas. Es cierto que la bolsa alemana cotiza a precios más razonables que la española, pero a pesar de sus esfuerzos para blindarse, no debemos olvidar que todavía vamos en el mismo barco, centroeuropeos, norteuropeos y periféricos del sur. Y eso puede ser una fuente de contagio de conflictos en las bolsas europeas, aunque lógicamente la peor parte se la llevarán las del sur, por estar en el epicentro de los problemas financieros por ende cotizando a casi 20 años de beneficios.
En el caso norteamericano, su Mercado se enfrenta a un cierre relativamente acelerado del QE, puesto que su economía se recupera con mayor fuerza de la prevista por la mayoría. Pero ello también llevará consigo una inflación incipiente ya no tan lejana. Y esa potencial subida de tipos, unida a unos precios ya al nivel de la bolsa española en términos de PER, forman un cóctel perfecto para una racionalización de sus cotizaciones en los próximos semestres.
Para muestra de lo que estamos comentando, un par de botones de lujo: Gifford Combs y Francisco G. Paramés. Uno con sesgo norteamericano (y global), y el otro con una visión más española (y europea). Ambos con opiniones juiciosas y moderadas, pero fundamentando los motivos por los que cada vez les es más y más difícil encontrar buenas inversiones a los precios actuales. Los dos advierten claramente de los peligros de invertir a estas valoraciones, a pesar de que nadie puede saber hasta donde puede llegar la ineficiencia de los Mercados. Huelga decir que ambos, como estrellas de la gestión que son, consiguen comprar empresas para sus carteras sensiblemente más baratas y con más Valor que el promedio de valoraciones de empresas que arrojan los índices de referencia de cada país. Pero creedme, si ellos tienen dificultades para encontrar Valor en estos momentos, el margen de error para la inmensa mayoría de inversores es nulo. Un dato significativo: Uno mantiene en liquidez casi dos tercios de su cartera, y el otro -aunque históricamente full invested- mantiene también un nivel de cash en máximos históricos.
Aquí tenéis un resumen de la carta trimestral de Bestinver (Paramés), y más abajo otro resumen de la Newsletter anual de Dalton Investments (Combs). Esperamos que os sirvan de inspiración para soportar las tentaciones de los pollos sin cabeza que correteen a vuestro alrededor:
Paramés (Bestinver):
Results for the year 2013 were satisfactory in a long-term context but decidedly mediocre when compared to stock market indices, which enjoyed one of their best years in recent memory. It is worth looking back to examine where we made mistakes and where we were successful.
From a short-term perspective at least, we were much too cautious in 2013. We should have been fully-invested from the word “Go” and in the riskiest assets to boot. But we prize capital- preservation and risk control. Still, in retrospect, we were too quick to realize profits and reduce exposures, and this cost us in terms of performance. Some specific examples provide insight.
We began the year as we did in 2012 with a large overweight position in financial company securities, both equity and quasi-debt (more on this in a moment). As the year progressed, we reduced our exposures gradually when share prices increased, as is our typical pattern. Our holding in Morgan Stanley & Co is a reasonable poster child for this behavior.
In the summer of 2011, we initiated our position in Morgan Stanley, which we began buying at a price of around sixteen dollars per share and continued buying all the way down to thirteen dollars per share. At the time, we felt a very conservative valuation for the company was no less than about twenty-five dollars per share, and possibly a bit more, giving us a sufficient margin of safety. By March of last year, our estimate for the value of the company had increased slightly to about twenty-eight dollars per share and the price had very nearly caught up, touching twenty-seven dollars. We reduced our position substantially at that point. We had started the year with a position in excess of five percent of the portfolio and, though we sold steadily, we couldn’t sell as fast as the share price increased and we were only down to three percent at the end of July!
Based on new information from the company’s financials, we increased our fair value estimate again in the summer to about thirty-two dollars per share. The share price has continued to climb and is now over thirty-one dollars, very close to our fair value. Interestingly, but not surprisingly, Wall Street analysts, who loathed Morgan Stanley two years ago, are falling over themselves to recommend the company today. Some analysts believe fair value to be over thirty-eight dollars per share, which strikes us as optimistic. Even were it true, the shares would not represent compelling value today, and now our position is down to a bit over one percent of the portfolio.
Morgan Stanley is hardly unique but represents a very typical example of the cycle of greed and fear in financial markets. In the summer of 2011, people worried that the company was going bankrupt. Yet any reasonable analysis showed that this was hardly a risk. Today analysts want to believe that the company’s profitability will magically return to “pre-Lehman” era levels. This, too, seems highly unlikely: mandated capital levels are much higher than in earlier times, profitable trading activities are restricted or in some cases proscribed, and animal spirits in general are less vigorous. Morgan Stanley will continue to be a highly-important global financial institution. It just won’t be as profitable as in times gone by.
As with Morgan Stanley, so too with much of the rest of the portfolio. We sold as share prices increased. That’s what we are supposed to do. Our goal is to create and hold a portfolio of assets selling at low valuations, not at fair valuations. Sometimes, as in the summer of 2011 or the fall of 2008, there are myriad opportunities to deploy capital in such situations. At other times, such as now, there are relatively few such opportunities.
So what’s wrong with “fair value” anyway? Nothing, except that markets have a nasty way of trading at discounts to fair value just when you need to sell assets, and that can be painful. In our view, and in the opinion of quite a few other successful investors, share prices in the USA (and around the developed world, for that matter) are about fairly priced at present. But “fairly priced” must be put in context: Interest rates are at very low levels—currently around three percent on the US 10-year Treasury bond. Furthermore, corporate profit margins are at near-record high levels. Both of these factors serve to increase “fair value”.
We are strong believers in the notion of “mean regression” in capitalist economies. We do not believe that interest rates will stay low forever, nor do we think profit margins can remain elevated permanently. Capitalism is dynamic enough to erode margins and increased demand for capital will put upward pressure on interest rates. If one creates a portfolio today at “fair value” assuming that these conditions will last indefinitely, one is likely to be in for a very nasty shock. When margins and profitability fall, fair value will drop. And when interest rates rise, fair value will go down. A combination of the two could make for a particularly nasty investment brew.
So from our standpoint, it is prudent to wait for better opportunities to deploy capital, rather than try to “force” our way into a fully-invested portfolio at prices that strike us as imprudent.
Meanwhile, we have had an active year. We look at opportunities every day and we were able to both initiate new positions and harvest some old ones during the year. But in most cases we were not able to allocate substantial amounts of capital to these opportunities because markets did not cooperate and keep prices down.