Washington Square Capital Management Blog

Here are our top 10 investment themes for 2012.  These are the topics we think will have the biggest impact on client portfolios in the coming year…

1.  Steady as she goes: We think it unlikely the Fed will raise rates in 2012, largely due to the presidential election. With the ongoing crisis in Europe, the Fed would normally be engaging in further monetary easing, but there is nowhere to go below the current 0.00% target overnight rate. In most presidential election years, the Fed is hesitant to make large moves in either direction, to avoid appearing politically biased. That instinct is especially heightened in an election cycle where Fed policy action and arcane monetary policy debates have unexpectedly become contentious, emotional political issues.

2.  Risk Off: We believe risk assets (stock, real-estate, long-dated and high-yield bonds) will have a difficult 2012. Stocks have benefited from a sharp rebound after the credit crisis and are now back to the higher end of the historical range. Bonds meanwhile, are trading at yields that are lower than any seen in two generations. During the course of 2012, we would expect both to correct towards the mean. This should provide some interesting buying opportunities, especially for dollar-based investors.

3.  Break-Up or Make-Up, Brussels is good for both: 2012 should be the denouement for the European sovereign debt crisis.  Though it has been over a decade in the making, things have finally come to a head. All the dominoes (Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy) are lined up, and we wait to see which the two players (France and Germany) will allow to fall before they stop the carnage. We believe a Greek default is extremely likely this year. Even if there is a pre-negotiated haircut with some lenders, the market will treat it with the seriousness that the first default by a “developed” economy in a generation should. In either case, Greek bondholders should be prepared for losses on the order of 60% of par value.

4.  Euro Trash: We expect the Euro to bear much of the burden of the European sovereign crisis, and the currency to weaken significantly against the dollar. We would not be surprised if the Euro approached parity with the dollar over the course of the year. When we discussed a Euro break-up last year, it seemed like an outlier scenario. We have been amazed at the speed with which events have moved and a potential Euro-exit for one or more peripheral economies is now being openly discussed.

5.  Blue States/Red States: The US presidential election cycle should be the major story in the US in 2012. US and individual state debt burdens will be the most important topic of debate, as the European sovereign debt crisis plays out in the background. American politicians will have to negotiate some cut in benefits for the charmed baby-boomer generation to ensure the financial burden of these programs in coming years does not doom the economic prospects of their children and grandchildren. This negotiation of a new social compact between the generations is the most important issue of our times.

6.  Chinese Math: At the 18^th Communist party congress to be held this year, we expect power to be transferred to a new generation of Chinese political leaders. We have no doubt that the enormous state apparatus will be fully utilized to ensure economic stability during the transfer. However, we believe these efforts will ultimately be for naught. The structural shift required as China moves from an investment driven economy to a consumption driven one will make for a tumultuous year in Chinese markets. The stock market has been depressed for almost five years, GDP growth is slowing as labor costs rise, and we expect Chinese real-estate is beginning to make the first moves in an unavoidable decline towards more reasonable levels.

7.  Revolutionary Times: We were surprised to see the speed at which the political structure of the Middle East has been transformed in a remarkable series of revolutions. Though we have been aware of the demographic pressures that created the basis for these changes, their rapidity has astounded us. As events unfold in the Arab world, something perhaps even more remarkable has begun to happen in Russia. A previously apathetic Russian electorate seems to be flexing its muscle in opposition to a renewed Putin presidency.  We expect to see more political turmoil in Europe and the Middle East in 2012. This coupled with major elections and power-transfers in the US and China make for a very uncertain 2012 politically speaking. In our view, this will make for very jittery markets throughout the year.

8.  Oil Slicks: The events in the middle-east will of course have an impact on energy prices. We expect political tensions to keep oil prices artificially inflated in 2012, but longer-term we think $100 oil is unsustainable as alternative energy sources approach cost-parity with conventional sources. And while we’re talking about oil, we would like to reiterate our skeptical view of gold prices, which we believe would be well under $1,000 an ounce if the political and economic future were not as muddy.

9.  Smart Homes: The past decade has seen the widespread adoption of computing and telecommunications technology touch virtually every aspect of human activity. We expect the markets to be enamored with a couple of very high-profile IPOs expected in 2012/2013 (Facebook and Twitter). We believe some of the higher profile IPOs of 2011 will perform poorly (GroupOn for instance). The larger story will continue to be the steady march of the internet into every device and living room, placing a strain on core Internet infrastructure. We heard relatively little about a seminal event that took place in 2011, the last large block of addresses (IPv4 numbers) was assigned and there is no address space on the current infrastructure to accommodate another few hundred million devices. The public discussion has centered around the addition of new top level domain names (like .com, .org), but the addresses that sit behind these are the real concern. A new addressing scheme (IPv6) has been built into most devices for years, but adoption is minimal. We expect this will have to change in 2012, with a few hiccups along the way.

10.  Housing: Still a buyer’s market: We expect the overall US housing market to remain stagnant in2012 with pockets of strength, particularly in major urban areas (NYC, DC, San Francisco) and some suburban and rural areas that did not overbuild in the run-up to the credit crisis.  We believe there is still too much supply available and US consumers as a whole will be reluctant to financially over-commit themselves given job security concerns and how many were burned by homeownership in the past few years, despite record low mortgage rates.

We hope you enjoyed a restful holiday with your family and are off to a great start to 2012.

We’ve attached two documents to this letter: the first reviews our economic themes for 2011 (evaluating where we were right and where we were wrong) while the second outlines our investment themes for 2012 (topics we think will have the biggest impact on client portfolios in the coming year).

The fourth quarter of 2011 saw US stocks recover sharply from the mid-summer selloff.  The S&P 500 (the broad measure of US stocks), which had ended the third quarter at 1,131.42, finished the year rallying up to 1,257.60, a gain of over 11%.  Despite these gains, the S&P 500 finished 2011 virtually unchanged at -.11% (when dividends are factored in, the return was a positive 2.11%).  The Dow Jones Industrial Average (the index that tracks 30 blue chip US stocks) finished the year up 5.5% (8.38% with dividends), which was in line with our investment thesis of buying large cap dividend paying US stocks.  The Nasdaq (the tech heavy index) finished 2011 lower at -1.8%.

The Nasdaq losses were minor compared to stock returns overseas.  While the losses in the UK were modest (the FTSE 100 finished down only -2.18%) due mainly to the strength of the Pound, countries in the European Union fared far worse.  Germany (DAX) finished the year -14.69% and France (CAC 40) saw a return of -14.28%.   The so-called BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) – those emerging market powerhouses that seemingly sidestepped the credit crisis – saw stock returns that lagged Europe.   Brazil (FTSE Brazil) finished the year -21.02%, Russia (FTSE Russia) -20.74%, India (Sensex) -24.64% and China (Shanghai Composite) was -21.7%.  However, the biggest loser of the year was Greece (FTSE Greece) which saw a return of -60.01% for 2011 (this was after a -45.83% return in 2010).

The continued debt crisis in Europe was the main reason for European stock declines (banks especially were clobbered) while BRIC losses can be attributed to the slowing global economy and a hard landing after years of rapid growth.  The stock losses in Greece demonstrate what can happen when a sovereign mismanages its debt levels and capital flees when investors lose confidence in that country’s ability to effectively govern itself.

Commodities were down, overall – the Dow Jones UBS Commodity Index saw a return of -13.32% – although there were a few bright spots.  Despite a late year selloff, gold continued its climb in 2011, ending the year at $1,566.80 per ounce, up 10.2% (this finish was well below its September peak of $1,895 per ounce).  Crude oil was up 8.2% on the year, closing at 107.50 per barrel, while natural gas saw continued losses and finished the year -32%.  Copper and cotton also saw big losses, finishing the year -22.73% and -36.69% respectively.

Once again, bonds performed exceptionally well in 2011.  The Barclays US Aggregate Bond index saw a total return of 7.84% while the Barclays US Government index saw a 9.02% total return.  Not to be outdone, the Barclays Municipal Bond index saw a total return of 10.7%.  Even the Credit Suisse High Yield bond index (the riskiest of the bond space) saw a total return of 5.47% despite a big selloff in junk bonds during the third quarter.

While bond returns post-credit crisis have certainly been gaudy (virtually all client portfolios have some bond component), we can’t, as prudent investors, expect these rates of return to continue in perpetuity.   Part of what has been driving these returns is the 0% interest rate policy the Federal Reserve enacted during the financial crisis.  With rates this low, conservative investors who normally leave money in cash or buy CDs have been forced into the bond market in search of yield.  Another factor contributing to these returns has been the continued lack of confidence in the global economy: when investors (both US and foreign alike) want to limit their risk exposure, they often look to the US bond market as a safe haven.

Eventually, though, interest rates will go up, the global economy will recover and investors will begin moving money out of bonds and into more risky investments.  Our job is to try to make adjustments to client portfolios in anticipation of these market forces.  So, with that in mind, we may recommend moving money out of the bond market towards the end of the year and into dividend paying stocks, inflation protected bonds and other non-correlated investments.

We look forward to speaking with you during our quarterly review and wish you the best over the coming year.

Regards,

Subir Grewal                                                                           Louis Berger

We recently re-read a very good piece on Risk management lessons to remember from the credit-crisis 2007-2009 published by BlackRock. The document is well worth a read, and we recommend it highly for all professional investors.

There are, however, a couple of things we wish the authors had added to the note. Particularly with regard to understanding the institutional and legal context within which investments are made.

Portfolio managers must understand what happens when the market fails and a security enters liquidation: Investors should examine a potential investment through the eyes of a distressed investor prior to committing capital. Investing in distressed securities is a very specialized field that requires a lot of specific expertise. However, that should not dissuade the average investor from subjecting the investment to a  simple smell test. What happens to this security if the issuer becomes financially distressed?Who will they choose to pay first, and whom will the courts force them to pay and in which order. Part of our investment process focuses on what would happen in a distress or liquidation scenario (and what conditions would bring the issuer to that point). This occurs naturally to us because we invest in debt instruments, where return of principal is the paramount concern. We always evaluate both bonds and stock whenever we consider an investment in a company, i.e. look at the entire capital structure. We try to understand how decisions would be made in a liquidation, who would have authority to make decisions, and who would receive what portion of the liquidation proceeds in which order. We are generally wary of anything that has been through multiple layers of securitization. Understanding issuer and obligor motivation in a complex securitization requires peeling many layers of control. This is generally not worth the effort unless the returns being offered are extraordinary.

Investors should understand the financial history of the jurisdiction they are operating in, and how that impacts both law and convention: This usually falls under the rubric of operational risk, and is often an after-thought, but we believe portfolio managers must understand this. Many supposedly astute investors found themselves on the wrong side of the pond when Lehman Brothers failed (see NYTimes and DealBook). Hedge Funds with assets held within Lehman Brother’s UK prime brokerage operation found themselves facing an uncertain claim on securities they had believed were in segregated accounts. In marked contrast, the experience of the ’29 crash led to very different rules and conventions in the US, and this limited the impact on US prime brokerage clients. The lesson here is larger than a simple admonition to read custody and brokerage agreements carefully. You really do need to understand the cultural environment within which the law of the land came to be formed, and the environment in which it will be interpreted. This is part of the reason investments in China always give us pause. We’re simply not sure what underpins property rights in a jurisdiction where the collective memory of private ownership goes back half a generation at best. For that matter, we have similar concerns about Russia.

This brings up a much larger, third issue. As many ivory towers exist on Wall Street and the City of London as in Cambridge and Oxford. Many portfolio and risk managers in the institutional investment management world operate in the rarefied, highly specialized world of large corporations with armies of highly paid professionals in each division. The rough and tumble world of actual business, where businesses fail, frauds exist and people go bankrupt, is often as alien as Titan’s toxic atmosphere.

We held our first “webinar” earlier this month on the timely topic of municipal bonds. We have posted the narrated presentation at www.youtube.com/wsqcapital for the benefit of those who were unable to attend. We plan to host three webinars this quarter:

• Thursday, April 21: What Makes an Investment Socially Responsible? (April 22 is Earth Day!)
• Wednesday, May 25: Sudden Wealth: How to Make the Money Last
• Tuesday, June 21: Shopping for Life Insurance: Do’s and Don’ts

To register for any of these webinars, please visit blog.wsqcapital.com. We will continue to add recordings of future presentations to our page on youtube. Feel free to pass along an invitation to anyone in your circle interested in learning more about these topics.

IRA contributions, Roth IRA conversions

Most taxpayers can make IRA contributions for the 2010 tax year up until the individual tax-filing deadline, which is April 18, 2011 this year.

Roth IRA conversion rules have changed and virtually anyone can now convert a traditional IRA into a Roth IRA. Partial conversions of an IRA account are also permitted. Please contact us if you’d like to discuss specific issues surrounding your circumstances.

Interest Rates & QE2

In prior letters, we have discussed the extraordinary measures the Federal Reserve and other central banks around the world have taken to keep interest rates at historic lows. Short-term rates in the US remain below current inflation levels, which means savers are being penalized for holding cash. This is no doubt due to the actions of the Fed which continues to purchase the bulk of newly issued US Treasuries under its Quantitative Easing program. We estimate short and medium-term rates are 1.5% to 2.0% below where they would otherwise be.

Meanwhile, the flames of inflation have begun to flicker. A combination of increased demand and easy money policies has driven up food and commodity prices. If this trend continues, maneuvering through the obstacle course of rising inflation will take a toll on the global recovery. And as is usually the case, the burden will be heaviest for the world’s poorest who spend a higher percentage of their income on necessities. We are beginning to see some policy action and rate hikes in developing markets. Unless inflation levels stabilize quickly, this will begin to impact global trade. We caution bond investors that future returns are likely to be lower than those in recent years past. We continue to recommend high-quality bonds with 3-5 year maturities.

Budgets and Bluster

The issues facing most developed-market governments are remarkably similar whether we are talking about Greece, Ireland and Spain, or the US, California and Illinois. The long-term challenge involves tackling unfavorable demographics and enacting the painful policy reforms required to tackle the cost of social programs. In the short term, the double-whammy of a real-estate/financial crisis requiring an immense expenditure of government support, followed by a great recession driving down tax revenues have created huge deficits. The exact mix differs: in Ireland the cost of a bank bail-out has supercharged the national debt, whereas in Greece the crisis is compounded by a culture of tax-evasion and protectionism. In the US, the core problem is reforming Medicare and a health-care system that takes in more revenue per person and results in lower levels of health than those in other developed countries.

The imminent congressional debates over the federal budget and the national debt ceiling will bring fiscal issues front and center in the US. As the 2012 election campaign kicks off over this summer, we expect fiscal issues will be key in every race. In Europe, meanwhile, the moment of reckoning for Greece, Ireland and Portugal fast approaches. European institutions will either have to come up with a plan for debt-restructuring or direct support to assist struggling governments in the short-term. Meaningful progress towards the longer term demographic and policy challenges will also need to be made.

Nature, Energy and Politics

The March 11 earthquake and tsunami took a terrible toll on the people of Japan. The economic damage is also enormous as a significant percentage of the area’s power generation and distribution capacity has been offline for weeks, impacting businesses and residences across the main island of Honshu. Rolling blackouts have affected many areas, including Tokyo. Two nuclear power generation facilities (Fukushima I and II), with a total of ten operational reactors between them, suffered severe damage. It is now clear that all the reactors at Fukushima I will need to be scrapped. A large amount of fuel from the operating reactors and spent fuel stored at the facility has been damaged and released into the environment. The situation remains critical and the full extent of the crisis is still unknown.

Nuclear power generation requires operational and design expertise far more specialized than other forms of energy production. In general, the industry has recognized this and a great deal of thought and effort has been put into improving design and procedures. We should also not forget that most other forms of energy generation carry their own risks, and often a higher carbon footprint. For instance, the production and burning of coal costs numerous miners their lives every year, and damages the respiratory systems of populations globally. Hydro-electric dams have failed due to design faults or natural disasters causing a large number of casualties. We firmly believe renewable energy must be at the core of any long-term solution to global energy needs. Nevertheless, replacing our current energy infrastructure is a multi-decade project and represents an enormous investment. One step towards that process would be to accurately account for the true health and environmental costs of all forms of energy production. As things currently stand, the conventional energy industry derives numerous economic benefits from tax-breaks, favorable industrial policy and political gridlock in assessing the true environmental cost of greenhouse gas emissions.

With all this in mind, we believe certain modern nuclear plant designs can play a role as a crucial bridge technology. In many fast-growing economies, nuclear power is the only viable alternative to coal and gas for large scale power generation. It is clear though, that the nuclear industry will face tough public scrutiny and a risk re-assessment is underway. We are particularly concerned about the operational safety of nuclear power in countries without a strong tradition of accountability, independent oversight and open public discourse (see China). Some of these concerns are acute for certain developed nations such as Japan, which has few energy resources of its own and relies on nuclear power for 24% of its electricity needs. As a result, we continue to view long-term investments in renewable energy favorably.

Upheaval in the Middle East

Mass protests in the Arab world have captured the world’s imagination since the sudden, largely peaceful overthrow of Ben-Ali in Tunisia. We certainly do not believe every group engaged in protest has benign intentions and recognize that in some countries one repressive regime may be replaced by another. That said, we are hopeful the power of public protest and increasing civic engagement by ordinary citizens will transform the moribund political and economic regimes in the region. For the time being, we expect this part of the world will continue to experience upheaval over the next decade or more. In many of these societies, oil wealth has distorted economies and politics. A demographic bulge is now bringing about rapid change. Investors should remain aware that demographic and political change may cause certain markets to be disrupted over the next decade.

We are positive on emerging markets in the long-term, but advise caution for the present since asset prices have risen very rapidly. Further rises in oil prices could accelerate inflation and lead to a slow-down in global growth, which would impact emerging markets negatively.

Regards,

Louis Berger                                                                                        Subir Grewal