John Hussman - Zen and the Art of Market Analysis

Fund manager John Hussman makes some interesting, if a bit gimmicky, connections between the zen Buddhist teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh and financial decision making in his latest newsletter:

“The best way of preparing for the future is to take good care of the present, because we know that if the present is made up of the past, then the future will be made up of the present. All we need to be responsible for is the present moment. Only the present is within our reach. To care for the present is to care for the future.”

Thich Nhat Hanh

This week's comment is dedicated to my dear friend Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk who was born on October 11, 1926, having been born previously in January of that same year, and twice again about 25 years earlier, not to mention countless other times through his ancestors, teachers, and other non-Thich Nhat Hanh elements. Thay (the Vietnamese word for “teacher”) would simplify this by saying that today is his eighty-third “continuation day,” because to say it is his birthday is not very accurate.

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So here's another koan – “If a share of stock is sold in a forest, and nobody is around to buy it, does it still generate a fill?”

The immediate implication of interbeing is that we are forced to think about “general equilibrium” rather than imagining that one side of a trade can exist without the other. This immediately clarifies all sorts of misconceptions that we could fall victim to if we aren't careful.

For example, it immediately tells us that “cash on the sidelines” is not a useful concept, except as a measure of issuance. See, whatever “cash” is there on the sidelines exists because government has created paper money, or the Treasury has issued bills, or because companies have issued commercial paper. Until those securities are actually physically retired, they will and must remain “on the sidelines” because somebody will have to hold them.

If Mickey wants to sell his money market fund to buy stocks, the money market fund has to sell commercial paper to Nicky, whose cash goes to Mickey, who uses it to buy stocks from Ricky. In the end, the commercial paper Mickey used to have is now held by Nicky. The cash that Nicky used to have is now held by Ricky, and the stock that Ricky used to have is now held by Mickey. There is exactly the same amount of “cash on the sidelines” after this transaction as there was before it.

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Here's another koan:

A novice monk approaches his teacher and asks “What is the price movement of one share being bought?”

The teacher holds out a cypress leaf in his palm and asks, “Did I catch the leaf as it fell from the tree, or did I raise it from the ground?”

We are used to thinking that the act of buying necessarily implies rising prices. But think about this for a second. In either case, the teacher gets the cypress leaf. What makes the difference so far as direction is concerned is where the pressure is coming from. If the cypress leaf is being offered down by gravity, it is caught on a decline. If the leaf is being lifted by the teacher, it is caught on an advance. Remember that. It is easy to get trapped in wrong thinking by people who talk about “cash on the sidelines” or talk about “investors” buying or selling in aggregate.

There was no excess of stock that was “sold” in March that has to be “bought” back now. Investors didn't “get out” of the market last year, and we shouldn't think that they have to “come into” the market now. Every share that was sold was bought. That has been true for every minute of every trading day since the beginning of the financial markets.

These insights, though perfectly understandable without esoteric zen Buddhist thinking, are spot on. There is no such thing as "cash on the sidelines".

Instead, one could try to evaluate the amount of potentially untapped credit. Reductions in credit lines all around have been taking this measure down lately. Both businesses and households have been shrinking their debt loads in the US somewhat. Unfortunately unemployment, lack of demand and shrinking collateral are eating the other side of the equation.

Thich Nhat Hanh writes well about zen in terms that are easily understandable by the average layperson. I liked his book "Peace is Every Step". He has lots of interesting advice for practicing zen in everyday situations, like driving a car or washing dishes. Unfortunately I have great problems in adhering to the principle of mindfulness. Absent-mindedness is my second nature. (Or is it the first?)

Financial Analyst Bias and Client Pressure

Bloomberg has published an interesting article by Edward Robinson about the influence that sales representatives of investment banks have had on the financial analysts working at the companies (hat tip to C K Michaelson of Some Assembly Required):

When Credit Suisse Group analyst Ivy Zelman refused to turn bullish on homebuilding stocks during a rally in the fourth quarter of 2006, the blowback was intense.

She says investors told her that some housing industry executives were ridiculing her analysis as a “jihad,” and several of the bank’s sales representatives pressed her to upgrade “hold” ratings to “buys” on companies to appease bullish institutional-investor clients. One sales manager even sent her an e-mail warning that analysts who stayed bearish too long often lost their jobs.

The article goes on to explain how very biased analysts in general are against handing out "sell" recommendations for stocks.

The pressure that is applied on analysts that make "sell" recommendations has been documented before. Start analyst Meredith Whitney even got death threats for giving out a pessimistic but accurate analysis of Citigroup in late 2007.

The reference to "appeasing insitutional-investor clients" is a dead giveaway of the cause of this pressure. These clients are not after sound advice. They have already made their minds. What they are after is a blanket of security in the form of advice that just happens to agree with their prior decisions.

If things go wrong, these institutional investors (read retirement fund managers) can just explain that they relied on the investment bank analyst's analysis. This partly relieves them from the responsibility for the bad investments.

Maybe it would not be a bad idea to prevent companies that handle client money or have proprietary trading desks from publishing any analysis or advice at all. At least fund managers shouldn't be able to hide behind advice from parties that are completely dependent on them as clients.

Bubbles, Unemployment and Fiscal Stimulus

Paul Krugman, is trying to fight for the usefulness of fiscal stimulus in mitigating unemployment.

Ryan Avent has some fairly harsh words for Arnold Kling’s recalculation theory of business cycles. Tyler Cowen, predictably, thinks Ryan is too snide.

But what none of the participants in the debate seem to realize is that Arnold is basically reinventing 1934 macroeconomics.

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It’s all there: mass unemployment is necessary, because you have to shift resources away from sectors that got too big, stimulus is a bad thing because it slows the necessary adjustment. And now as then, the whole notion falls apart when you ask why, say, a housing boom — which requires shifting resources into housing — doesn’t produce the same kind of unemployment as a housing bust that shifts resources out of housing.

Both booms and busts involve shifting of resources between sectors. This much is self evident. It would be stupid to try to deny that. This doesn't mean that the unemployment should not be alleviated at all.

Krugman unfortunately makes a complete fool of himself in the last paragraph. Of course booms don't involve unemployment. In a boom, the driving force of inter-sectoral adjustment is a surge in demand. In a bust, the cause is a collapse of demand.

In a boom, the workforce moves behind the pull of opportunity. This was clearly visible in the flow of newly minted real estate brokers who were encouraged to leave their prior jobs in search of bubble-induced income. In a bust, the realignment is caused by a push-type phenomenon. (Or is it a kick?)

This is such an elementary thing that I can only wonder what Mr. Krugman has been smoking while writing that last paragraph.

To clarify, my own view is that increasing unemployment can hardly be completely avoided in a major bust of a bubble, but that government projects can (and should) be brought forward to mitigate it, if only to make use of the suddenly cheap labor and raw materials. Busts clearly have effects on people who were not directly involved in the bubble and an uncontrolled collapse is bad for everybody.

Equally, I believe that fiscal measures might even be appropriate in controlling the growth of a bubble. Additional small taxes on house-flippers (say for houses bought and sold within 12 months) could have helped slow down the development of the housing bubble. Additionally, it could have provided a larger cushion for the inevitable fiscal collapse.

In both ends of the boom-bust cycle, monetary policy should be the primary means ahead of fiscal measures. In this sense, the QE policies should go even further, as there is a lot of credit that is (and should be) paid down.

This collapsing credit can be replaced with base money even if the money multiplier has collapsed to unity. Instead of "mopping up the liquiduidity", central banks should bring back meaningful cash reserve requirements (to all bank-like entities) after the economy has recovered from the excess of credit. This would naturally will be fought against tooth and nail by the financial sector.

Must There Be a Safe Haven for Savings?

Tyler Durden wrote a post at Zero hedge on Friday that points out the massive move from long term bonds to shorter term bills in foreign purchases of US government securities. The surge in the short-term market, even at the face of extremely low interest rates, is a clear sign of a run to safety.

An overall stampede to safety is somewhat detrimental to overall wellbeing, because of excessive liquidation of productive assets. It should be resisted by governments. Savers should be encouraged to either put their savings into proper investment or cease saving in the first place.

I wonder what would happen, if the US government would simply refuse to sell additional short term securities. As the interest rates for the existing securities have nowhere to fall to, the possible set of outcomes is:

1. Buyers would move into longer term government securities. This would be good for the government, as it would get a better control of the long term cost of the debt. It would also lower the overall price level of longer term debt.
   
2. Buyers would move into the private sector market for short term securities or bank deposits. This would be a positive thing, as there is a real shortage of short term funding for the private sector.
3. Buyers would stop buying any securities at all. Instead they would make real investments. This would be good for overall employment and economic development.
4. Buyers would reduce savings and start to consume more. As previous, this would be helpful to employment. It would not be a bad outcome for the Chinese, for example.
5. Buyers would move their savings into commodities and other speculative plays. This scenario would probably have some adverse effects.
   
6. Buyers would keep their money in cash. This would be a bad outcome, but highly improbable, as the savings would be threatened by inflation.
   

All but the first outcome could result in an overall increase in the interest rates that would be paid by the US Treasury.

The question is, would a denial of such an absolute safe haven for savers be an overall improvement, or would it cause even more disruption? What adverse effects would such a move present?

Pricing and Utilization of Pharmaceuticals - Nonsense from Greg Mankiw

Greg Mankiw shared his wisdom with us in an editorial in the New York Times last week:

Imagine that someone invented a pill even better than the one I take. Let’s call it the Dorian Gray pill, after the Oscar Wilde character. Every day that you take the Dorian Gray, you will not die, get sick, or even age. Absolutely guaranteed. The catch? A year’s supply costs $150,000.

Anyone who is able to afford this new treatment can live forever. Certainly, Bill Gates can afford it. Most likely, thousands of upper-income Americans would gladly shell out $150,000 a year for immortality.

The true costs of pharmaceuticals are mostly incurred at the development phase. The actual cost of production is insignificant. No medication costs anything like $150,000 per year to produce.

So, if thousands of people are willing to pay $150,000 per year, then quite possibly tens of millions of people are willing to pay $150 per year, which would most probably bring many times the income to the drug company. Modern pharmaceuticals are simply not the hand-crafted luxury items that Mankiw is trying to portray them as. (Some of the more egregious items used in older traditions are a bit different.)

When it comes to the cost of the actual medication, any expansion of health care coverage only needs to increase the aggregate cost of medication by the price of the additional production, which really isn't very much at all. Wider utilization of a drug actually decreases the burden on individual users, as the cost of development is borne by more people.

Rational Expectations in a Recession

Paul Krugman wrote a (bit self-serving) post about the differences of viewpoints between the "saltwater" and "freshwater" economists in the US.

In this article there is one bit of economic orthodoxy that I don't quite get:

Think about the story of unemployment I’ve just described. It’s a story in which a contraction in the money supply can produce a recession – but only as long as people don’t know that there’s a recession! You see, if people do know that there’s a recession, they know that the low prices they’re being offered reflect low overall demand, not specifically low demand for their products.

I'd say that en expectation of a smooth change in the overall price level in a recession is certainly not what anybody would expect in a recession.

When the general population hears the word "recession" they think of an economic disturbance. This disturbance manifests itself as a shock-wave. In this wave, most of the people quite rationally anticipate a possible loss of income, which can be passed on to expenses only with a considerable delay.

This anticipation causes people to cut down on spending, which just reinforces the initial drop in demand. It's the prisoner's dilemma with millions of participants. Betting against the shock-wave would not be too rational.

This phenomenon is not that different from a "traffic wave" that can bring a whole highway to a complete standstill even if there is no apparent reason whatsoever. However, it is quite rational to expect congestion in dense traffic, because it happens.

These kinds of issues make the economic models that assume perfection for human beings quite dangerous. As can be seen in the video of traffic waves below, even small human errors accumulate to drastic disturbances in a tightly coupled system.



To mitigate these problems, "shock-absorbers" should be built into the economy. These absorbers would eat some of the efficiency of the system. On the other hand, so do shock absorbers in vehicle suspension, if the focus is on the short term. (Shock absorbers actually do increase the initial impact of a pothole.) We really have to reach a better trade-off between efficiency and reliability in the financial system.

These economic shock absorbers could take the form of increased transaction costs, or possibly taxation of capital gains that would discourage short-term gains.

The Estonian Laboratory of "Free" Market Economics

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of Telegraph.co.uk writes an opinion piece about the "debt deflation laboratory" of the Baltics. His writing is thoroughly one-sided, as usual, but he has some valid points.

Professor Ülo Ennuste from Tallinn University says the private net wealth of Estonia's people has fallen below zero. I know of no other country in the world where this has occurred, though Latvia may be deeper in hock. Estonia's foreign debt is 116pc of GDP, second highest in Eastern Europe.

It is not a good moment for the poster-child of the flat-tax revolution, but those crowing the end of "Margaret Thatcher's Baltic Model" neglect half the story. Estonia's euro peg is anything but free-market. It makes Tallinn dance, awkwardly, to Frankfurt's distant tune. It stoked the boom by enticing people to borrow cheap at eurozone rates: it is now prolonging the bust.

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The government could spend more. The national debt is just 5pc of GDP. It chooses not to do so. Such ultra-orthodoxy shows admirable discipline. Estonians will be a shining example to us all if they pull it off – and hold their society together.

Prof. Ennuste has some dubious figures. It's hard to believe that Estonian private assets would be worth less than 116% of GDP. There are other inaccuracies in the article as well.

However, the criticism against the Baltic currency peg policies is perfectly reasonable. Deflation (or "internal devaluation", as the euphemism goes) brings undeserved short term gains to those who are in cash assets. It will also encourage liquidation of real capital in a scramble to cash.

Keeping the currency pegged while maintaining completely disparate interest rates made absolutely no sense from the start. It was a source of "free money" to anyone who borrowed in Euros and invested in local currencies. Unfortunately, there's no such thing as a free lunch and never will. This "free money" virtually guaranteed a foreign currency denominated credit bubble.

The Euro is the wrong point of fixation. After all, the Euro has no inherent value of its own at all. The only meaningful measure of the value of a currency is against real goods and assets.

It might be absolutely impossible to avoid a degree of deflation after a humongous credit-fueled asset bubble, but at least one shouldn't be aggravating it, unless the objective is a massive overshoot in the downside.

A commenter "John" strongly disagrees with the opinions of Evans-Pritchard:

Estonia won't benefit from a devaluation, it will merely create instantaneous inflation, because the country is so small and so intertwined with neighboring economies.

Inflationary policy is exactly what Estonia needs right now, as it is headed for a deflationary spiral that will not stop before a serious overshoot. If currency reserves are not exhausted, the deflation will eventually come to a stop when foreign money comes in for hunting bargains. At that point the Estonian people might truly have lost their net wealth. They will be forced to sell their crown jewels just to survive.

"John" continues:

Instead a devaluation would destroy the last beacon of stability, the protection of value that the currency offers.

Currency is of no inherent value whatsoever, only real investments are. In the short term, the currency may look like a means to preserving wealth. However, this doesn't mean that people in aggregate are maintaining their wealth.

Even though the "value" of the currency is steady, or even grows in comparison to real goods, the quantity of currency shrinks through deleveraging. The grand total is actually shrinking. This reflects the real value that is destroyed through liquidation.

To all those who like comparisons to Zimbabwe: The Baltic policy is the mirror image of the Zimbabwean policy. In both cases the central bank and government is aggravating an already adverse trend. Hyper-deflation is not much nicer than hyper-inflation.

The Baltic states truly are a laboratory for the Chicago school of economics, with flat taxes, efficient market theories and all. I feel sorry for the human guinea pigs of the Baltic states.