Category: Investing Insight

Investing insight to make you a better investor.

The SMA Risk On/Off Switch

Market timing is a very divisive topic in investing. For traders, it has been the search for the holy grail. For passive investors, a source of derision.

Far more money has been lost by investors preparing for corrections, or trying to anticipate corrections, than has been lost in corrections themselves. – Peter Lynch

Does it mean investors should just remain long all the time? Hardly, according to the latest research by Meb Faber (ssrn).

Data for international markets show that volatility increases in declining markets. Any strategy that keeps you out of those periods, will improve your portfolio returns. The outline of his strategy is simple: go long the market if it is trading more than its 200-day SMA and stay out of the market otherwise.

A small amount of outliers have a massive impact on performance and the best and worst outliers tend to cluster when the market is already declining. However, if you miss the best and worst days in every case your compound return is higher than buy and hold.

It works across most international markets:

miss best and worst days

Unfortunately, the paper doesn’t discuss the Indian markets, so lets try and fix that.

Best and worst days

The table below shows that in a rising market, +1% days (BEST) outnumber -1% days (WORST) and the reverse is true of declining markets. Also, as you decrease the look-back period, the WORST to BEST ratio increases in a declining market.

nifty best worst

Cumulative Returns

If you apply the SMA switch to the Nifty index, here’s how the cumulative returns look like:

nifty cumulative returns

200-day SMA Cumulative Return Chart

Since: 2000
CNX NIFTY-200-day-sma-returns-2000

Since: 2010
CNX NIFTY-200-day-sma-returns-2010

50-day SMA Cumulative Return Chart

Since: 2000
CNX NIFTY-50-day-sma-returns-2000

Since: 2010
CNX NIFTY-50-day-sma-returns-2010

Drawdowns

If the SMA rule really helped investors stay out of negative fat tails, then it should manifest itself in the drawdowns.

drawdowns

Conclusion

Using a simple SMA rule helps investors avoid drawdowns and boost returns as compared to a naive buy and hold strategy. The smaller the look-back period, the better the returns and lower the drawdowns.

60% of the time, it works everytime

When I was in high school, we were taught about “truth tables.” It is a mathematical table used in logic to tell whether a propositional expression is true for all legitimate input values. Watching pundits speak on TV is makes you wonder how they could ever have passed high school algebra.

The Can’t Lose Argument

Beware those who are never wrong. The “Can’t Lose Argument” goes something like this: A data point will be mentioned, and no matter what the net change in that data — up, down or neutral — it is somehow bad for markets.

Link: If You Can’t Lose,You’re a Loser

There is always a divergence

Sometimes they matter, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes one key divergence that was extremely important ends up meaning exactly zero the next time around. A single divergence, in and of itself, has all of the reliable predictive power of a bowl of chicken bones spilled out across the table.

Link: There’s ALWAYS a divergence

Macro-tainment

It’s crucial to recognize that macroeconomics is something that even the world’s smartest economists still don’t understand very well, and that political ideology and economic reality don’t mix.

Link: When Entertainment Passes for Investment Advice

Related: Musings on stock-market forecasts

Enjoy this video:

Mutual Fund League Tables

AMFI puts out AUM statistics of mutual funds once a quarter. Here are some key take aways.

The Top 5 Dominate

Between 2009 and 2014, the top 5 players have remained the same: HDFC, ICICI, Birla Sun Life and Reliance. And their share has remained more-or-less the same: 56.96% in 2009 and 54.6% now.

32 out of a total of 46 funds have less than 2% share, 29 have less than 1%

mutual-fund-aum-share

There are way too many schemes

There are 1066 equity schemes (all permutations and combinations.) The top 2 schemes (both from HDFC) have more than 10% of AUM and the top 10 have about 30%. The rest of them fight for scraps.

equity-scheme-aum-share

Direct plans even the playing field

… a bit.

PPFAS has a 5% share of all direct plans.

direct-scheme-aum-share

However, Direct plans are yet to make a dent

Equity AUM under direct plans have doubled since last year. This ought to be giving distributors sleepless nights…

direct-regular-scheme-aum-share

Bonds, Rates and USDINR Update

The Yield Curve

Lets put the current zero-coupon yield curve in context.

Jan 2011 vs. Now

yieldCurve.2011-01-18.2014-07-25

Jan 2012 vs. Now

yieldCurve.2012-01-02.2014-07-25

Jan 2013 vs. Now

yieldCurve.2013-01-01.2014-07-25

Indian 10 yrs vs. US

After the initial Modi euphoria, the spread between Indian 10 yrs and US 10 yrs started to revert back to its mean:

ust-ind-10yr-spread.2011-01-18

Total Return Indices

Investors in the long bond are yet to recover from the July 2013 draw-down but this year is looking good. Long-bond might just be the place to be as the RBI is widely expected to get into easing mode later this year/early next year.

Cumulative Returns Since 2000

Short
short bond total return

Intermediate
intermediate bond total return

Long
long bond total return

Cumulative Returns Since 2010

Short
short bond returns since 2010

Intermediate
intermediate bond returns since 2010

Long
long bond returns since 2010

Bond ≠ Boring

Returns have been volatile for bond investors.

gsec monthly returns

Can’t really sell “stability” here.

USDINR

A new normal past the euphoria and the hangover?

USDINR.2013

USDINR.2010

In closing

With inflation somewhat stabilizing and the NDA-II government wanting to kick start growth, bonds are getting interesting again. And when rates start moving, currencies cannot be far behind.

Stay updated on the latest news related to Indian interest rates here. Its curated.

A Real Live Innovator’s Dilemma

The last time I wrote about innovation, I pointed out some of the most common problems that innovators face (The Disruptor’s Dilemma) and how incumbents can use regulation to stymie the disruptor. Peter Yared has an interesting post up on Techcrunch on how BMW is responding to Tesla’s onslaught and winning. Here’s the tl;dr:

  • Legacy companies can mislabel their products to leverage their brand, especially if an upstart compares itself directly to a particular model.
  • Legacy companies are often willing to hodgepodge new technology with their older technology to stave off new competitors
  • Innovators should not underestimate the power of a legacy company’s large, lumbering sales channel.
  • Legacy companies are often in numerous segments of a market and leverage their scale to beat an upstart’s roadmap.

Read the whole thing here: BMW Vs. Tesla