Oaktree

If there is any market that demonstrates the complete and total misallocation of capital that results from Banana Ben Bernanke’s money printing and artificially low interest rate policy, it the latest phony American housing bubble. With a record numbers of citizens on the food stamp electronic breadline, with unemployment stubbornly high no matter what data you use, billionaire financial oligarchs are running around bidding up “homes for rent” and pricing out the random average person that actually has the capacity or desire to bid. What follows below demonstrates the degree of insanity that has now been unleashed upon the streets of Las Vegas - in their QE-forever induced delirium, homebuilders have gone Chinese and in Las Vegas "permits for new home construction are up 50 percent, twice the national average."

Despite the all-knowing Alan Greenspan confirming there is no irrational exuberance currently, Oaktree Capital's Howard Marks is less convinced. Though he is not bearish, he lays out rather succinctly the current pros and cons for equities - based on the various 'valuation' arguments, discusses the folly of the equity risk premia, and highlights the dangers of extrapolation and what history can teach us... "appreciation at a rate in excess of the cash flow growth accelerates into the present some appreciation that otherwise might have happened in the future... it isn't just a windfall but also a warning sign."

In the following presentation, given by Howard Marks - the world's largest distressed debt investor - he warns of the perils of "investing in uncertain times." As Reuters notes, he fears the "unsound practices" from before the financial crisis are creeping back into credit markets, with private equity firms bidding increasingly high prices for companies. Marks points out the ease with which lowly rated companies were issuing debt this year, how companies were paying out record dividends to their shareholders and the increasingly high debt-to-equity multiples private equity firms were paying for companies amid a resurgence in deals. "We have a world in which nobody is thinking bullish. Everybody's worried and yet people are acting bullish," and predicts a looming "shake-out" in the hedge fund industry as he asks rhetorically, "today there are 8,000 hedge funds. Are there really 40,000 exceptional people (working for hedge funds)?" In conclusion, Oaktree Capital's founder warns that investors, in their search for returns, were becoming overly confident while the economic background was still gloomy.

One can spend all day watching financial media channels stuffed full of self-promoting index-hugging asset-managers and be left with the belief that all is well and that the market does indeed represent our reality... Or, as UBS' Art Cashin notes today (confirming what we first published a month ago - here, here, and here), there is more (well less) to today's global economy and markets than meets the eye or rests in the headlines. His excellent diatribe today reiterates our previous comments of investing icons such as Baupost's Seth Klarman and Oaktree's Howard Marks that "(The) underpinnings of our economy and financial system are so precarious that the un-abating risks of collapse dwarf all other factors."

Day after day we are inundated with the apparent 'idiocy' of investors putting their hard earned money into Treasury bonds when they only earn 2% yields. Hour after hour, we hear why investors should buy stocks, 'get paid to wait', and bonds are in a bubble. So why is it that day after day, an entire generation appears to have found a new mantra of investing, preferring less risk to more, satisfied with less return as opposed to more. The simple answer comes down to two words - often misunderstood - risk and drawdown. While most consider the former to be some quantifiable measure of uncertainty (more is better because think of the upside potential); it is the latter that ends careers, crushes retirement hopes, and scars pysches for life - and is often ignored. As we discussed here previously - must read, comparing (risky uncertain cashflow stream) equity dividend yields to (risk-free certain cashflow stream) Treasuries is like comparing apples to unicorns, but more importantly as Boomers retire en masse, this chart explains why there is a third leg to the investment decision - risk, reward, and regret; and equity drawdowns are the real 'risk'. Oaktree Capital's Howard Marks explains...

It was just a matter of time before the most powerful crony capitalist bank in America decided to join the housing trade.  Making money running the food stamp program just wasn’t enough for Your Crony Highness Jamie Dimon and company, it’s time to join his financial oligarch brothers in the bidding war to corner the housing market and become your overlord.  That way they can control how you eat (food stamps) and where you sleep.  It’s become very clear what the large financial interests in these United States are attempting.  Funnel all the low interest crony American money, with a dash of Chinese laundered money, into the “housing recovery.”

We already posted Howard Marks' most recent letter in its entirety previously, but it bears reposting a section from Art Cashin's daily letter which focuses on one segment of Marks' thoughts, which is especially relevant in light of today's most recent comment from one Warren Buffett - a person who very directly benefited from the government/Fed's bailout of the banking sector in 2008 - who said that "Bank Risk No Longer Threatens U.S. Economy." The same banks, incidentally, who are TBerTFer than ever. An objective assessment or merely yet another example of the "handcuff volunteerism" (not to mention crony hubris) Marks touches on? Readers can decide on their own.

Oaktree Capital's Howard Marks begins his latest missive with a few hard truths. Anyone who has read his memos of the last 23 years will see he returns often to a few topics. This is due to the frequency with which themes tend to recur in the investment world. Humans, he notes, often fail to learn. They forget the lessons of history, repeat patterns of behavior and make the same mistakes. As a result, certain themes arise over and over. Mark Twain had it right: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” The details of the events may vary greatly from occurrence to occurrence, but the themes giving rise to the events tend not to change. Most or all of these themes have to do with behavior that’s observed in the markets over and over. The good news is that today’s investors are painfully aware of the many uncertainties. The bad news is that, regardless, they’re being forced by the low interest rates to bear substantial risk at returns that have been bid down. Their scramble for return has brought elements of pre-crisis behavior very much back to life. In 2004, I stated the following conclusion: “There are times for aggressiveness. I think this is a time for caution.” Here as 2013 begins, I have only one word to add: ditto.

Oaktree Capital's Chairman Howard Marks went on a rather more politically-positioned rant in his latest missive (pdf here) but one section caught our eye more than others given the current imbroglio:

The bottom line is that if we don't want to be Greece, we can't act like Greece. Something has to be done... and soon. Every year in which we add another trillion dollars to the national debt (and tens of billions to the annual interest bill) - and every year the excessive entitlement promises are allowed to compound - makes it harder to solve the problem.

A dismally honest reflection follows...

The primary, if not only, reason there has been a brief spike in subsidized demand for housing in recent months, has been the GSE/FHFA endorsed REO-To-Rental plan, and associated securitization conduits, in which large asset managers have been encouraged to take advantage of government funded, risk-free financing (and entirely bypassing banks who have given up on loan origination due to legacy liability issues which have every bank tied up in litigation from now until Feddom come - just see today's Bank of America results) and purchase foreclosed properties in bulk, with the intention of converting them into rental properties. Needless to say, the subsidization of this wholesale purchasing of foreclosures, coupled with the ongoing "foreclosure stuffing" pursued by the big banks (as a reminder days to foreclose in New York just hit a record 1,072 per RealtyTrac as banks simply refuse to clear housing inventory faster knowing full well withheld inventory is an additional clearing price subsidy) is the main reason why the punditry has been confused into believing there is a housing rebound. That this "rebound" is merely a subsidized demand pull phenomenon a la the "cash for clunkers" auto sales program is patently clear to most. Nonetheless what little confusion is left, is finally coming to an end, thanks to none other than one of the first entrants in the REO-To-Rental space, $31 billion hedge fund Och Ziff, which a year after entering the program with hopes of quick riches, is now looking to cash out.

• Draghi Says Next Move Not His as Spain Resists Bailout (Bloomberg)
• EU Doubts on Deficit Cutting May Hinder Spain’s Path to Bailout (Bloomberg)
• Merkel to Visit Greece for First Time Since Crisis Outbreak (Bloomberg)
• Fed's Bullard warns inflation won't ease U.S. debt burden (Reuters)
• Walmart Workers Stage a Walkout in California (NYT)
• Natural Gas Glut Pushes Exports (WSJ)
• BOJ Refrains From More Stimulus as Political Pressure Mounts (Bloomberg)
• Big funds seek to rein in pay at Wall Street banks (Reuters)
• Hong Kong Luxury Sales Fall as Chinese Curb Spending (Bloomberg)
• Dave and Busters Pulls IPO due to "Market Conditions" (Reuters) - so market at anything but all time highs now is market conditions?
• Weak U.S. labor market looms ahead of elections (Reuters)
• Glut of Solar Panels Poses a New Threat to China (NYT)

Even as the media desperately tries to whip everyone into a buying frenzy in an attempt to rekindle the second housing bubble, the marginal, and less than pretty truth, is finally starting to emerge. Over the weekend we presented the first major red flag about the state of the housing market - in this case commercial - when we exposed that "New York's Ultraluxury Office Vacancy Rate Jumps To Two Year High As Financial Firms Brace For Impact." What is left unsaid here is that if demand for rents is low, then, well, demand for rents is low: hardly the stuff housing market recoveries are made of. Today, on the residential side, CNBC's Diana Olick adds to this bleak picture with "Apartment Demand Ebbs as ‘Avalanche’ of New Units Open." In other words rental demand for both commercial and resi properties is imploding. But at least there is always owning. Well, no. As we have shown, the foreclosure, aka distressed, market is dead, courtesy of the complete collapse in the foreclosure pipeline as banks are effectively subsidizing the upper end of the housing market by keeping all the low end inventory on their books (who doesn't love the smell of $1.6 trillion in fungible excess reserves to plug capital holes in the morning. It smells like crony capitalism). But at least the ultra luxury, aka money laundering market was chugging along at a healthy pace. After all there are billions in freefloating dollars that need to be grounded in the US, courtesy of the NAR which is always happy to look the other way, another issue we discussed this weekend. Now even that market appears to be cracking, following the purchase of a duplex in New York's most iconic property: 740 Park, by, who else but a former Goldman partner, at a whopping 45% off the original asking price.

Lately, it has become particularly fashionable to bash private equity, especially among those workers in the employ of the state. The argument, in as much as capitalism can be summarized in one sentence, is that PE firms issue excess leverage, making bankruptcy inevitable (apparently those who buy the debt are unaware they will never get their money back), all the while cutting headcount to maximize cash flow (apparently the same PE firms don't realize that their investment will have the greatest terminal value to buyer if it has the highest possible growth potential, which means revenue and cashflow, which means proper CapEx investment, which means streamlined income statement, which means more efficient workers generating more profits, not less). The narrative ultimately culminates with some variation on a the theme that PE firms are responsible for offshoring jobs. While any of the above may be debated, and usually is especially by those who have absolutely no understanding of finance, one thing is certain: when it comes to bashing PE, America's public workers should be the last to have anything negative to say about Private Equity, and the capital markets in general. Why? Because when it comes to fulfilling those promises of a comfortable retirement with pensions and benefits paying out in perpetuity, always indexed for inflation, and otherwise fulfilling impossible dreams, who do America's public pension fund administrators go to? The very same private equity firms that have suddenly become outcast number 1.

We all make mistakes. In the investment world, some mistakes arise from having imperfect information, some from not anticipating the future correctly and some from sloppy analytics. Sloppy analytics includes everything from outright mathematical errors or misinterpretations, to poor assumptions, to overfocusing on unimportant variables or underfocusing on important ones. Analytics is the most critical and controllable part of the investment process, but even if done flawlessly does not ensure a favorable outcome by any means because the views/ behaviors/incentives of other investors – and indeed, the investment environment itself – change continually in ways that can’t be anticipated. But there is one more common mistake that is a consistent source of perplexity for active investors. Over the years, my experience has been that those who lose money more often (and in greater amounts) than they should, often do so because of overconfidence. Overconfidence can lead to the conviction that one is only buying investments that will be highly profitable and one is only selling investments that no longer have significant upside potential. This can lead to a lack of diversification and a heavy concentration of money in a single investment or asset class. Overconfidence, however, also leads to overtrading.

Unlike Dan Loeb, David Einhorn did a far more calculated portfolio reshuffle in the three months of Q2, purging only 6 positions among which RIM, CA, Dell, HCA, the GDXJ Junior Gold Miners ETF, and Roundys. He appears to have also hired a new healthcare/insurance analyst after adding positions in Cigna, Coventry Health, UnitedHealth, Humana, Wellpoint, as well as Einstein Noah Restaurants, Virgin Media, Hess, Chipotle, Genworth and some Oaktree bonds. His top 5 positions are Apple, Seagate, Microsoft, Marvell Tech and Cigna. Overall, it does not appear as if he has had a major shift in perspective on the economy. Total reported long equity AUM as of June 30 was $6.4 billion.