57% of Americans say they prefer a partner who provides financial security more than “head over heels” love. The survey conducted with over a thousand mass-affluent respondents shows that this preference is true for men and women, whereas today’s youngest generation, Gen Z, is the only generation to prioritize love over money.
The report also finds that Americans are contributing more annually to their savings and investments, than they spend in a year on their mortgage, children’s education and travel.
However, as Aron Levine, Head of Consumer Banking & Merrill Edge while explains, “While an endless pursuit for financial security may be prompting Americans to save at record rates, it’s clear that saving does not mean planning.” The majority of respondents say they have no monetary goal in mind when it comes to many major life milestones, including having a baby (67 percent), getting married (64 percent), sending children to college (54 percent), and putting a down payment on a house (50 percent).
Could emerging technologies be the solution to these planning shortfalls?
Respondents are increasingly embracing artificial intelligence (AI) in their financial lives, with the majority already comfortable with AI providing financial guidance, managing day-to-day finances and making investments. And, nearly half of Americans admit social media impacts their finances on a daily basis, including their spending habits, budget, and savings.
Merrill concluded that many Americans are clearly in need of well-defined plans to help pursue their goals with more autonomy and confidence.
How to invest in a post-QE world? According to John Stopford, Head of Multi-Asset Income at Investec Asset Management, investors may be concerned about how different asset classes are going to react when the effects of the quantitative tightening begin to be felt. “Ten years ago, the global financial crisis hit, and the central banks responded by flooding the system with liquidity. Markets have been a rush ever since. Investor did not have to think too hard about what they owned. All asset classes have gone up. But what would happen when quantitative easing begins to turn and unwind? Is there a risk that bonds and equities will sell-off together? The answer is probably yes,” explained Stopford.
“Most of us got used to an investment world where movements in the US equity market were negative correlated to movements in US bond market. This has been the norm for the last 20 years or so. But, from 1984 to 1998, the correlation between the S&P 500 Index and the US 10 Year Future was positive. During that period, bonds and equities went up and down together. Investors need to understand that if there is a common driver that pushes both bonds and equities in the same direction, then both will tend to have a positive correlation behavior. In this decade, the common driver has been the monetary stimulus, that essentially pushed all the assets up. Investors need now to be more selective and look for mispriced assets rather than assuming that owing big pockets of beta is going to win the day”, he continued.
In developed markets bonds there are some areas that are starting to look more attractive and are more likely to offer at least some protection if equities sell-off. “Essentially, it is about valuation and finding government bond markets with reasonable yields in real and nominal terms. We are beginning to find some value in government bond markets in US, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, where central banks have begun to tighten or already have tighter interest rates. The Fed’s tightening is being felt mostly elsewhere rather than in the US, which is dangerous because it allows the Fed to fall into a false sense of security and continue to ratchet monetary policy tighter”.
The Fed usually tightens until something breaks
In the past, the Federal Reserve has typically tightened interest rates until they reach a point in which they have tightened too much. This point is usually when the yield curve gets inverted. “The Fed looks at the US economy, which is booming, they look at US inflation, that is in line with target inflation, they look at unemployment, that at 3,9% is well below the sustainable rate of unemployment and they decide to go tightening. Meanwhile, the pressure is happening outside the US, for example in Turkey and Argentina. Emerging markets are beginning to feel the pressure of the liquidity tightening, but as long it is not yet impacting in the US, there is nothing that will stop the Fed from carrying on,” he stated.
Over the next year, investors should not be worried about a recession. Typically the latest stages of an economic expansion in a bull market are very rewarding. By the second half of 2020 though, the market outlook may get more complicated.
“Now, the Fed is tightening interest rates and they may be the cause of a bear market. But other central banks have just started tapering their quantitative easing programs. They are tightening liquidity, but they are not rising rates yet. They are not giving themselves ammunition to fight the next battle. In the typical recession, central banks cut rates by 4% to 5%. What are central banks going to do now? The one-month deposit rate in Europe is still negative and the European Central Bank is talking about raising rates after the summer of 2019. If a recession may hit in 2020, how high will be European rates by then? Meanwhile Japan is still pursuing quantitative easing but tapering a bit. There is a big question mark about what policy makers are going to do. In the past, they came out with creative ways of adding liquidity, but there will be less ammunition to fight the next crisis”.
Regarding credit vulnerability and the rising uncertainty in the markets, Stopford believes that the risk premiums are compressed at this point in the cycle, but this is something that it is beginning to change. “The yield premium offered by the US High Yield in terms of spreads, a compensation for credit uncertainty, and the equity volatility measure of VIX have typically moved together. But due to the higher level of uncertainty, it seems that they may decouple a bit. Equity volatility is going to remain suppressed for much longer and credit spreads will start to increase as the market is beginning to worry more and more about future defaults.
A challenging environment makes selectivity crucial
The US dollar remains the world reserve currency, even if there are some currencies like the renminbi, the euro or the sterling pound that are candidates to become reserve currencies, but they all have some flaws. “The dollar remains the principal world currency. Trade is still around 80% denominated in dollars. It is not surprising that the US remains the most liquid capital market and it is the place where borrowers go if they want to borrow. The quantitative easing has facilitated an explosion in debt outside the US denominated in dollars. The problem is that dollar funding conditions are now tightening, and lot of that monies are just stock in the US because that is where the economic growth is and where the returns are. Borrowers finance themselves through global trade. When the global economy is expanding, borrowers that are earning dollar revenues can service their debt tend to have excess of dollars at that point and diversify their investments, generating reserves and putting downward pressure on the dollar. On the contrary, when global trade goes into recession, there is a shortage of dollar revenues, dollars are used to fund borrowings and the price of the dollar goes up. By now, global trade is under pressure, with new protective policies and tariffs.”
On the other hand, the Japanese yen is easily the cheapest developed market currency in the world. “Japan has been running an aggressive quantitative program for some time. Japan is essentially a capital exporter. The Japanese have excess of savings and they tend to send those excess savings to other markets to earn a return. When they hit a crisis, they stop sending their capital abroad, therefore, the yen tends to have very good defensive characteristics. If equity markets collapse, Japanese investors temporarily become more cautious and the yen will tend to go up. We need to think more cleverly about how to diversify investors exposure in the current environment”, he concluded.
According to David Herro, Portfolio Manager and Chief Investment Officer of International Equities at Harris Associates, an affiliated of Natixis Investment Managers, active managers need to be grateful for passive investing. As more money flows into passive investments, more investment decisions are made irrespective of price and value and more market inefficiencies are created.
“As an active investor, I actually need passive investors to have a field on which to play. When market inefficiencies are created, I can exploit these opportunities as a long-term value investor by taking advantage of these market distortions, and that is why I am very grateful to passive investing. This means there may be some short-term pain and our challenge as an active investor is to spend more time with clients while we are going through these periods. We have to explain to clients that they do not have to act irrationally based on short-term pricing events,” said Herro.
“If you are an active manager, you are not going to match the performance of the index quarter to quarter. If clients want someone who is going to match the performance quarter to quarter, that is not us. There is always a trade-off between trying to match the index and achieving long-term results. As an equity investor, I can invest in businesses that theoretically have an extremely long duration, and I am trying to take advantage of the shelf prices, knowing that the fundamentals are not changing anywhere near the prices. I need more than one or two quarters to do that, sometimes maybe a year or two. The active manager has to be out front and communicate that active management needs time to work. Additionally, transparency with clients is key. Each manager is kind of a tool in a tool box and clients need to know what type of tool you are as a manager and how you are intended to be used. Active managers need to be who they profess to be, so clients know how to use your skills properly,” he added.
As Herro explained, when active managers do not resist the temptation of performing short-term, they start becoming quasi-passive managers and start taking short cuts, despite collecting an active fee. As a result, when the cycle turns, those managers are not going to obtain their alpha back.
“We utilize discipline and patience in our strategies. This is something that is lagging in the investment world because some of the clients are short-term oriented. But I am glad that at our company we take the time to achieve long-term returns. Our system is designed to significantly and measurably outperform over 5, 10 or 15 years. We always try to take advantage of market dislocations, when share prices move in a vastly different direction or speed than the underlying intrinsic business value. When volatility comes back, it provides more dislocation to markets, which enables us to exploit future return possibilities. For example, on the last day of the third quarter this past September, the Italian government proposed a budget that significantly deviated from commitments agreed upon by all euro zone members. In general, there was an extreme dislocation in the European financial sector. The next day of trading, the European financial stocks were trading at an average down of 2% to 3%, and even quality Italian financial institutions were down 7% to 8%. Clearly, in our view, the business did not magically become worth 8% less, but because of some political discourse there was an extreme volatility in prices in a very narrow sector and we were able to take advantage of it.”
The hidden costs of passive investment
When securities are bought and sold, just in the dealing and exchange of the investment instruments, there is a margin between the bid-ask spread alone. Money is made just in the business of buying and selling spreads. “Whether it is through hidden costs, bid-ask spreads or not being able to get investments at the right price, these are all forms of hidden costs that might make ETFs less competitive,” said Herro.
New disruptive players
Herro believes that eventually tech giants like Amazon or Google will possibly get into financial services. “They will probably offer all kinds of products. They may offer passive products, but they may even offer some artificial intelligence type of product. To me, as an active manager, the more players the better because they create market inefficiencies. They have money chasing certain characteristics in size, location or industry, instead of value characteristics. As long as they can not develop a model that delivers long-term value returns, this is additive to our business,” he concluded.
Pixabay CC0 Public DomainAlexas_Foto. Emerging Markets: Have they Ceased to be Attractive for Investors?
Following the volatility of the foreign exchange market in Turkey and Argentina, the uncertainty about future elections in Brazil, and trade tensions in China, which were motivated by the escalation of US protectionist measures, many investors have decided to limit their exposure to emerging markets. Is it time to exit emerging markets?
According to management companies, keeping emerging market assets in the portfolios remains a good option in order to diversify risks and to capture some more profitability with some types of assets, but they also emphasize that it must be done with caution after thoroughly analyzing both the countries and the assets.
For example, Luca Paoilini, Chief Strategist at Pictet AM, admits that they continue to overweight emerging markets. “In this state of affairs we maintain a neutral position in stocks and bonds. The world economy remains resilient, but caution is justified and it is too early to overweight. However, we continue to overweight emerging stocks, as the risks are compensated with attractive valuations and solid fundamental,” he says.
At Julius Baer they don’t rule out that in the short term there may be more sales in local debt from emerging markets, driven especially by the decisions that the Fed may take this week on interest rates. They are optimistic however, “Looking beyond the next Fed meeting, we note that fundamentals continue to support both local and strong currency emerging market debt on an equal basis. Valuations have returned from high risk levels to quite normal. Most importantly, global growth remains well supported by US consumer activity and housing resilience in China. Therefore, global growth is unlikely to decline to levels historically linked to emerging market bond crises,” explains Markus Allenspach, Head of Fixed Income Analysis at Julius Baer, and Eirini Tsekeridou, Fixed Income Analyst at Julius. Baer.
According to Legg Mason, despite asset management companies’ valuations, investors are beginning to show their fear of exposing themselves to the emerging universe. “Real yield spreads between emerging and developed markets are at 10-year highs, reflecting the backdrop of fear that continues to spread across the developing world, when one country after another is sold and then repurchased with yields high enough to tempt value and produce hungry investors,” say Legg Mason’s fixed income experts.
China is no longer a copycat economy. By 2029, China’s GDP is expected to surpass United States’ GDP. China is expected to become the largest economy on the planet overtaking the United States, and there is a great unease at all levels, but particularly on the political level. According to Michael Power, strategist at Investec Asset Management, this change is coming and there is not much that can be done to stop what will materialize in the next ten years.
“What is happening now is that China is starting to use its immense brain. The volume of research and development that it is taking place in China means that China no longer needs to be a copycat economy. According to R&D Magazine projections for 2018, US R&D spending is expected to increase by 2.9% to 553 billion dollars, while China R&D spending is expected to increase by 6.7% to 475 billion dollars. Meanwhile, Asia collectively is close to spend half of the R&D budget of the world, spending 43.6% of global R&D,” said Michael Power.
“The big question that has been asked by Donald Trump is: Is China playing fair? Is it cheating its way to the top? Is it a giant game of corporate espionage what has allow China to almost catch up, and very soon, perhaps to overtake American economy? But there is nothing new here. It was the same way United States behaved towards Britain in the late XIX century. For over 100 years, the United States did whatever it was necessary to bring new ideas or people to the United States. The other thing to notice is that the problem with China has been that the rest of the world wants more from China that what China wants from the rest of the world. Back in 1784, in the very first trade mission that United States ever did to China carried things like ginseng, lead or woolen cloth, their real profit came on their return, when they brought Chinese tea and porcelain to the Americas. And this pattern still exists today,” he added.
Meanwhile, Trump protectionism is potentially endangering the entire structure above which US corporations have been built over the last 20 years, and that is a supply chain that is rooted in Asia. Supply chain are critically to the structure of big technological companies and Donald Trump is potentially rocking this structure with trade war disputes.
“Supply chains have the oldest logic of trade at their heart, which is buy low in Asia and sell high in the United States. Trade deficits essentially represent the revenue side of the story, but they miss the profit side. When you look at the revenue story, it is easy to see the imbalance and how it is going to affect to ‘Main Street America’. But ‘Wall Street America’ does look at the profit side and it is a completely different picture. The United States run a 14 billion dollar of current account surplus with the Eurozone and it also runs a 14 billion current account surplus with Canada. Of course, it does not run current account surpluses with Japan, China and Mexico and ultimately the reason for that is that US corporations have not created enough big markets in these three zones to counteract the trade deficit that it runs with those regions. Until it does, it will run collectively a large current account deficit.
In 2017, the US goods deficit with China was about 375.2 billion dollars, 55% of the goods imported by US from China were computers, electronics and electrical equipment. But more interestingly for me, is to have a look at where US has surpluses with China, and at the top six categories, only transportation equipment, on the second place, is remotely industrial. The other five categories being farm crops, oil and gas, waste and scrap, minerals and ores, and forestry products. The exports on transportation equipment are centered in the deal between Boeing and China, and I worry about this because the Chinese are setting up, with the help of Bombardier, their own aircraft industry centered in a company called Comac, which will soon release its challenge to both Airbus and Boeing in 2023, at which point the second item of account surplus for US could be in danger.”
Additionally, the program “Made in China 2025” is heavily investing in 10 sectors where China is hoping to become world leaders. They still intend to become leaders in these sectors, but they are not advertising the fact anymore. Another question that should be consider is that the inputs that United States gets from China are coming from companies that are not owned by Chinese companies, but from foreign companies. In particularly, if we talk about electronics, they are usually Taiwanese companies. The assumption is that Chinese owned companies are the ones exporting their goods to the US but that is not strictly true.
An alternative explanation
China has always been blamed by Trump’s administration as being at the root cause of the problems of US’s economy. But, could the real culprit be closer to home? The big technological companies have been extracting profits from global revenues and managing them in a very tax-efficient manner, facilitating domestic buy-backs to extract wealth. “Ireland plays a key role in engineering tax arbitration for big technological companies. All the iPhones coming out of Shenzhen that are not sold in United States, are sold to a company on Ireland. And then this company sells them to its final destination, anywhere in the world. This company in Ireland pays about 370 dollars per unit from Foxconn for an iPhone, and then they sell it for 1,200 dollars in average in Europe, the uplift is close to 800 dollars. Only 0.7% of that uplift is paid in taxes in the European countries, the rest is declared as profit in the form of intellectual property back to the United States. This is a problem that Europeans have already addressed recently, that is in the heart of how Apple has become spectacularly profitable, 99.3% of its margin is declared as profit. There is this giant shell game that technological have been playing for a while and people are beginning to understand now. Combined, corporations in the United States have 2.1 trillion dollars in cash, and 45% of it belongs to big technological companies. Additionally, about a 62% of those 2.1 trillion dollars is held offshore, 1.3 trillion dollars in cash are held overseas. As of the end of June, Apple had 285.1 billion in cash overseas. Additionally, the ten top holders of cash are new economy companies: Microsoft, Alphabet, Cisco Systems, Oracle, AT&T, Amgen, Qualcomm, Gilead Science and Amazon,” explained Power.
“The Big Tech use this cash offshore to show better consolidated balance sheets, so the banks are happy to lend them, at least in the United States, where they borrow huge amounts of money. For example, Apple is borrowing domestically a 43% of its offshore cash pile. Then, they use that debt to buy-back shares, but because the debt is based in the United States, they can claim interest deduction on that debt, and on that part shield a good portion of US profits. The result is that we have seen buy-backs ballooned since 2009, and this has been a big underpin of the performance of the S&P 500. In fact, since 2011, US corporation’s debt has risen fastest than cash. Buy-backs have been so critical to performance of equity markets that the only buyers in first half of 2018 have been companies of United States. Everybody else have been a net seller. The result is that stocks have risen, and the United States equity market represents more than 50% of the MSCI All Country World Index. Due to share buy-backs, the number of shares in issue has been reduced and earnings per share have grown. However, if the culprit behind the last financial crisis was home equity withdrawal, will the culprit behind the next crisis corporate equity withdrawal? As Jack Ma, Ali Baba’s CEO, questioned at the World Economic Forum: Has China grown mostly on revenue and the US on profit? The point to understand is that revenue is shared within a very vast amount of people, whereas profit will just be shared among the 1%, and it helps explain, but not entirely why there has been increasing concentration of wealth and an increasing growth of inequality in the United States,” he concluded.
Pixabay CC0 Public DomainAbraham E. Vela Dib, Linkedin. Abraham E. Vela Dib Will Head the Mexican Pension Funds Regulator
Abraham Everardo Vela Dib will be, as of December 1, 2018, the new President of Mexico’s pension funds regulator, the CONSAR.
Vela Dib told Funds Society that leading this endeavour will be “a pleasure and distinction.”
According to Funds Society sources close to the CONSAR, Vela Dib will meet with the team of Carlos Ramírez Fuentes next week to work on the transition process.
Since the beginning of the year, Ramírez has been preparing various materials so that the change of administration is as easy as possible and the new team has all the necessary tools to make the decisions they need.
Amongst the new administration to-do list is to hold the CAR meeting that will give the green light to Afores’ investment in mutual funds.
The PhD in Economics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), has held various positions at the Bank of Mexico and its Ministry of Finance. He has also been a visiting economist at the International Monetary Fund and the Bank for International Settlements. He recently joined the teaching team of the Colegio de México-where he completed his MA in Economics, after leaving his post at the Central Bank of Hungary, where he spent the last 10 months as an expert in macroeconomic analysis and education.
Pixabay CC0 Public Domain. “Argentina will Continue to be a High-Risk Country, but at Levels that Exceed the Reasonable Possibilities of Default”
In an exclusive interview with Gorky Urquieta, Global Co-Head of Emerging Market Debt Neuberger Berman, Funds Society has had the opportunity to talk about their current vision and perspectives of emerging markets debt after the instability experienced in these markets during last August.
The current situation of emerging markets is different from that of 2013 or 2015 Neuberger Berman’s assessment of the current situation of emerging markets differs significantly from what happened in 2013 or 2015, when emerging markets experienced significant spread extensions and currency falls. Although they admit that there is a certain deceleration stage, and that some countries will have to make more aggressive adjustments in monetary policy, they also point out that there are others that are in relatively good conditions despite a more complicated current environment. In particular, Urquieta points out that: “There are countries that are in relatively good conditions in Latin America, countries such as Mexico and Colombia, and even Brazil, which is recovering from a hard recession, but there are vulnerabilities that have become more evident in recent times due to the rate hike, the expectation of rising US Treasury rates and the revaluation of the dollar that has complicated refinancing prospects, access to liquidity, and financial conditions for markets in general.”
Main risks: trade conflict and rate hikes in the United States
At Neuberger Berman, they believe that one of the reasons for the adjustment of emerging markets has to do with the uncertainty with respect to “trade,” not only the trade dispute between China and the United States, but also with regard to the uncertainty generated before an agreement was reached in NAFTA. Urquieta concludes: “In general, this whole protectionist attitude in the US is clearly not prone to lead to growth in world trade and that will affect emerging markets to a greater or lesser degree.”
In particular, and with respect to the trade conflict between China and the United States, he acknowledges that there is a risk factor as to how it will affect the Chinese economy’s demand for raw materials, although he states that it’s in a very good position to react on the side of monetary and fiscal policy favored by low pressure for the devaluation of the renminbi.
However, he acknowledges that part of this risk in emerging debt assets has already been priced in: “It’s possibly the only risk asset which has put some price on that conflict, via commodities.” Despite this, he explains that Asian currencies that may be more exposed, such as, for example, the Korean Yuan or the Taiwanese dollar, have not been so affected, thanks to their good fundamentals.
When asked about another of the major risks that concern investors, the rate hike by the Fed, Urquieta says that some of these are already priced in and justify the appreciation of the dollar with respect to its base. However, he does not expect rates to rise more than twice, due to his doubts about the ability of the American economy to maintain its current growth rate, which is close to 4%, and adds: “As we approach 2019, growth expectations will probably begin to cool down a bit and we think that the FED will not end up raising rates 3 or 4 times.”
Opportunities in Latin America: Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico
After strong corrections in the markets, there are usually purchase opportunities due to the indiscriminate sale of assets that occurs in situations of uncertainty. Urquieta explains: “In times of stress, the market starts to act without differentiating; and we saw that in August, when the lira collapsed and the Argentine peso fared worse than the lira. That example indicates that when we see that kind of reaction it means that the market is capitulating, that is to say that it has reached a point that does not distinguish, and that indiscriminate fall creates many opportunities “
As regards their interest in debt markets in foreign currency and local markets, Brazil is a country that attracts them greatly. While it is true that local rates and the real have suffered a lot of pressure due to political uncertainty, there will potentially be a point of entry that has not yet been defined, but which will be after the first round of elections.
Argentine debt assets in foreign currency are a type of asset that also seems interesting, despite all the uncertainty surrounding the country, and he explains why: “Its market price, with the current spreads, as far as regards the probability of default, seems a bit excessive. But it‘s still a high risk country, which will probably continue to be high risk for a while, but it’s already at levels that exceed reasonable possibilities of default.”
Going into greater detail concerning the Argentine political issue, they agree that it’s complicated, but they also believe that Macri still has a relatively stable level of support, at around 40%, and that necessary adjustment plans for 2019 will be approved. They do not believe that there is any significant risk of government collapse and he adds: “Conditions would have to deteriorate greatly, a break with the fund, the program aborted for some reason, there would have to be a very extraordinary event outside of Argentina.”
“On the part of the markets we may have seen the worst,” Urquieta adds regarding the Argentine markets, although he acknowledges that the Argentine economy will suffer a severe adjustment and will be in negative growth for a long time. As for the Argentine peso, he believes that its fall is beginning to be under control, mainly because the domestic market begins to have more confidence and he adds: “That will follow a course and will eventually turn into a virtuous cycle, after having been a vicious cycle, where the outflow of capital, and the more aggressive sale of pesos to buy dollars has created a vicious circle. The stability of the exchange rate is a requirement for the rest to begin to recompose.”
Finally, he adds that, in their opinion, Mexico is another market to be taken into account, as it is a highly rated segment that seems interesting on the side of the handles and debt in foreign currency.
Portfolio recommendations
Given the current market environment and the variety of strategies that Neuberger Berman offers, we asked Gorky Urquieta about his investment recommendations and he presents the following 3 alternatives based on the risk profile.
On the more conservative side, he talks about short duration which is a fairly conservative strategy within emerging markets due to the duration profile, its foreign exchange risk, being exclusively foreign currency, and the credit quality of its portfolio with an average investment grade of BBB- . He also adds that, due to the pressure that has been observed in the short part of the curves of emerging markets during the month of August, the YTD (yield to maturity) was expanded by 100 basis points to stand above 5.8% , and thanks to this it is quite possible that they exceed the return target set at 3% over cash (3 month treasury rates).
On the opposite side, are the strategies in local currency and he adds: “If things recover, it is the strategy that has the most upside.” He also explains that based on their own analyses, following market falls exceeding 10 %, there will frequently be a rebound in prices in the following one to three months, and he confirms that the market has fallen 10% since February’s highs.
In between both strategies, there’s debt in foreign currency. Urquieta adds that although it‘s true that the spread of the benchmark has expanded 100 basis points since the beginning of the year to levels of 375 basis points, it’s mainly due to the component with credit rating below investment grade, which represents 49% of the benchmark , and whose spreads have expanded between 175-180 basis points, and half of this movement has occurred in August.
Gorky Urquieta joined Neuberger Berman in 2013. He is currently a Senior Portfolio Manager and Co-Head of the Emerging Markets Debt team, responsible for the management of numerous strategies including the following: Hard Currency, Local Currency, Corporate Debt, Short Duration, Blend, Blend Investment Grade, Asian Hard Currency, and China Bond Fund, with assets under management totaling 18 billion USD.
Founded in 1939, Neuberger Berman is a privately owned, 100% independent company. It has offices in 32 cities around the world, assets under management of approximately 304 billion dollars, and more than 40 UCITS funds registered in Ireland. With over 500 professional investors and approximately 2,0000 employees in total, Neuberger Berman stands out for its extensive offer in equities, fixed income and alternative products.
According to Marc Pinto, Portfolio Manager at the Janus Henderson Balanced Fund investment team, the three characteristics that differentiate his portfolio are: the growth orientation in the equity sleeve of their strategy, the dinamically managed allocation between equity and fixed income, and the fact that the equity team and the fixed income team maintain a very collaborative working relationship.
The latter being especially noticeable when the investment team makes decisions on asset allocation, where equity and fixed income teams must compete for capital, taking into account the opportunities offered by their markets.
Additionally, the investment team has a three-way approach for disruption. They think about the companies that have been disrupted, the companies that are creating the disruption and the companies that will benefit from it. Currently, the team identifies two major disrupting forces, the e-commerce and the cloud computing. In these two trends, the investment team assess who are the winning and losing companies, and how to invest on the right side of each trade.
E-commerce
Consumers are clearly benefiting from all the innovation that is going on in the world. Technology is providing consumers more bargaining power, anyone can go to a store and compare the price of the product offered online at Amazon.
“People have said that traditional retail stores have become the showroom for Amazon, and that is true to a certain degree. However, the smart retailers have chosen to be the showroom for their e-commerce model. At Janus Henderson, we have invested in those retailers that have done a good job migrating the physical store aspect s of retail sales to e-commerce, proving an incentive to buy through them and not through Amazon”, explained Marc Pinto.
“The e-commerce penetration is still low. The retail e-commerce is going to continue growing as a percentage of total retail sales. The question is, how do traditional retailers survive in this environment? For example, Nike, the sportwear brand, is one of our largest positions in our Balanced portfolio. A couple of years ago, Nike realized that developing a direct relationship with the customer will give them a huge opportunity to essentially know their customers better. Additionally, the direct relationship with consumers would allow Nike to bypass the middleman and capture its margin, avoiding having to compete for shelf space at retail stores.
NikeID is Nike’s direct to consumer offering, where basically customers can go online and get a pair of customized training shoes, choosing the colors, putting their names on them, and shipping them directly to their homes. Nike does not incur in any retail margin and can sell them at a more expensive price. It is a very profitable business, NikeID represent now 15% of their business and it is growing around 30% to 40% per year.
Traditional retailers who have figure out how to nail the on-line and traditional retail models are the ones who will be successful on the future. These businesses have to invest a big sum of money in terms of technology to create a seamless model where customers can go into the store and decide what they want to buy and how they want to buy. Another example of a traditional retail company that has managed to have an integrated model of e-commerce and traditional retail business is Home Depot. Their website is offering the possibility of knowing the exact inventory that they have in every store and their location within the store. They have an integrated inventory management system and they have created a customer friendly portal where customers can know in real time how much of every item they have in a store. It is not technology for technology sake, is technology to make the consumer experience better”, he added.
Migrating to the cloud
Another big source of disruption are the cloud computing and the software as service players. Amazon Web Services, Salesforce, Microsoft Azure are some of the companies that are going to benefit from the migration to the cloud. “Players on the cloud are doing really well. As investors, the big question we have is about valuation levels and when it is the right time to get in. But as growth investors we definitively want to be invested in these companies”, said Pinto.
“In this case, the losers are the companies that are providing the traditional hardware and their prices. Companies like HP, IBM or Oracle are still supplying hardware to a lot of offices, but their demand is at risk to decline as cloud spending becomes a bigger portion of the business. Total IT spending is going to start flattening because the cost of deployment in the cloud is substantially less than it is for buying traditional hardware and software. Some estimates point out that the cloud deployment is 10% the cost of the traditional IT infrastructure deployment. There is going to be a massive deflationary pressure on IT spending when every company migrates to the cloud. Companies will benefit form a massive reduction on their technology costs and they will be able to spend those dollars in other areas”.
Is the growth trade over?
Since January 2009, the returns of the growth component of the S&P 500 have consistently beaten the returns of the value component of this index. With only 2016 being an exception, growth stocks have outperformed value stocks in the last 9 years. Because it has been such a long period without alternance, investors are beginning to be worried about the possibility of a mean reversion to value.
“We think that this is happening for good reasons. This is not a question of market rotation or even low rates, there is a logic behind the outperformance of growth stocks. What is driving this discrepancy of growth versus value is that the companies that are disrupting are the growth companies; and the companies that normally are being disrupted are typically value companies. The companies that are benefiting from disruption are in the growth category. More companies are going to be in the growth space as they will continue to do well”, he concluded.
In Cape Town, where Investec Asset Management story began 27 years ago, the international asset management firm with South African origins hosted the 11th Investec Global Insights conference and brought together 220 delegates from eleven countries around the world.
Richard Garland, Managing Director of the Global Advisor division, welcomed the attendees explaining what are the key elements that make Investec Asset Management a unique asset management firm. According to Garland, being a global asset management firm with emerging market roots differentiates the firm apart from competitors.
“The most important thing is where did we come from. There are many asset managers who start in London, New York, Boston or Los Angeles, but neither came out of the future. And, why do I say the future? It is because Africa is the future. We learned how to run money in the most difficult continent in the world for running money, and then we went global. We grew out of South Africa, an emerging market, to become a global asset manager”.
Some other characteristics that Garland believes differentiate Investec AM from competitors are: stability and continuity, multiple alignments of interests, a multi-specialist framework and culture.
“Over the years, we still have the same sales people and the same fund managers. This is core to who we are. The top 50 to 60 people at Investec Asset Management own equity from the company, our interests are aligned with the client interests. We work with a multi-specialist frame, we do not have only one investment style, we do not have only one investment team or philosophy. We have different ways of running money, which means we always have investment strategies or funds which will work for your clients in any environment.”
A top-level view: Interview with Hendrik du Toit
Following his introduction to the firm, Richard Garland interviewed Hendrik du Toit, Joint-CEO of Investec Group. Hendrik was one of the founders of the company in 1991, 27 years ago in Cape Town, where Investec AM was a small start-up asset manager offering domestic strategies in an emerging market.
From the early days, Hendrik remembered some chaos. But the firm was able to build up a mid-caps strategy and buy their growth in the next decade. They were able to build a track record based on multiple expansion, something that allowed them to reach new clients.
Du Toit stated that being a mid-size asset manager firm can be an advantage to compete against the large-scale asset managers. “This is an industry in which size is one of the components of strength and not necessarily the defining. It is about quality and excellence, it is not about size. In the banking industry balance sheet matters, it is an important source of strength. But in the asset management industry, you only need to be big and strong enough to deal with the regulatory barriers. When asset management firms become bigger, they lose control on what is going on in the business and only worry about the politics on the board room.”
When asked about entering the passive management business, Du Toit specified that there are only going to be two, or three at the most, serious global passive managers. “If you are in a race where prices tend to zero, only one or two scale players can live with one or two basis points. BlackRock and Vanguard, the discount players that make real money in the passive investment business, have a huge active business. ETFs have brilliantly market themselves as a passive investment and they tell the world they are cheap, when they are rather expensive. The managers make money out security trading and the commission fee and sell the illusion of a 100% liquidity when you are actually investing on very long duration assets. ETFs are a useful tool for all, we use them in our multi-asset portfolios, but they are not a competitor. In the end there are certain risks that provide the returns the clients need in a low yield world. You need to allocate your money where the winners are, otherwise you are going to stay with the losers. The promise of active is not that we are going to always outperform some index, which are difficult to beat. Instead, the promise of active is that we are going to allocate capital sensibly and try to capture the huge opportunities that the 4th revolution is bringing to capital markets.”
According to Hendrik, there are massive investment opportunities in China’s growth, in the renewable energy transition and in the food industry; and you need to be an active manager to capture them.
Demerger of Investec Group and listing of Investec AM
In September, Investec Asset Management announced that the firm will become a separately listed entity. After the separation of Investec AM from the remaining Investec Group, Hendrik du Toit will lead the new listed entity as Executive Chairman.
“Investec’s banking and wealth group are largely based in two countries: South Africa and UK. Whereas most of the growth of the asset management business comes from the Americas, Asia, Western Europe and the whole continent of Africa. Geographically, we are thinking differently. Also, client niches were totally different, we do not have direct clients as the banking and the wealth group do, we work with intermediaries. We focus on our client’s relationships and that turns into long-run revenue and profit growth,” stated du Toit.
“The strategy is going to remain the same. We are going to help clients who want to take active risks to achieve the returns over and above target benchmarks in chosen markets with our skillsets. All our portfolio managers have different but complementary skillsets. There is an addressable market of 25 to 30 trillion dollars and we would like to keep growing on our current shape. We will obviously add some private market illiquid asset offer or any other business that is active and difficult to do.”
Sustainability
Concluding the interview, du Toit mentioned the importance of considering environmental, social and sustainability criteria when investing. “I grew up in Africa and I have seen what climate change can do to communities. I have seen what overfishing, deforestation, and polluted rivers can do to places. It is not debatable that 7 billion humans have an excessive impact on this world. We also know that we have to combine development and job creation with protection of the natural resources of our world. We are long-term investors. We are supposed to invest for the next generation and the generation after. We must think about the consequences of our capital allocation. We are fortunate to be the stewards of capital and we have a long-term liability to choose where to allocate the capital. Companies will be sued and will go bankrupt for environmental liabilities”.
Photo: Funds Society. Shiller: "You Must Have Exposure To The United States Even Though It Is One Of The Most Expensive Markets In The World"
According to Robert Shiller, Nobel laureate in economics 2013, economic growth is good in the United States and although there is concern about high valuations, he does not predict a near collapse.
In his last visit to Mexico, to celebrate the launch of the Ossiam Shiller Barclays ETF in the Mexican Global Market (SIC in Spanish), the economist told Funds Society about the importance of geographic diversification and added that, within it, exposure to the United States should be kept, even though “the US market is at high valuations with a cap ratio of 30”.
“Despite the short-term fluctuations that come and go, I think we should not think that a bear market is approaching and I think that we should have some exposure to the United States that, although it is one of the most expensive markets in the world, continues to behave positively. The key is not to put all the eggs in the US basket, but to diversify,” he added.
In his opinion, one way to get exposure to this market is to look for instruments that have a value-focused approach, such as the ETF that replicates the index resulting from its collaboration with Barclays.
However, he warns that markets are not only about interest rates and their effect, but the ideas of people. Currently we have important changes in the political sphere of the United States and many places in the world, including Mexico, and according to the economist, “one would have believed that the markets had suffered, which did not happen on a large scale…”
In his opinion, “the way the economy looks is changing. It is becoming less theoretical, less mathematical, less abstract and is becoming more practical. Now it is giving greater importance to the narrative that accompanies it,” he mentions adding that, “the desire and willingness of people to invest and take risk changes over time and the narrative they live.”
Mexico
The economist, who personally has exposure to Mexico in his investments and considers the country as a key player in the global economy, commented that “the next government of Mexico, headed by Andrés Manuel López Obrador, should give certainty and security to investors” .
About the airport, Schiller said: “I do not know if Mexico needs a new airport, but I hope that this can be resolved in a way that all the people who made investments and plans feel that they made a good agreement … It is important that the new president encourages investors to feel that there is a safe environment to invest.” He concluded.
