Value Investor Digest – Issue 57

March 2023

VALUE INVESTOR DIGEST – MARCH 2023

In the 57th issue of Value Investor Digest we feature London Value Investor Conference 2023 speaker David Einhorn, the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholder letter, an Investor Amnesia article giving a history of female investors, LVIC 2023 speaker Ben Inker on The Joy of Missing Out, a Value Investor Insight interview with Kopernik, the Kernow Journal; plus and article from Smead Capital Management and seven other articles. 

The agenda for the London Value investor Conference on 18th May 2023 will be announced shortly. If you want to add the LVIC 2023 to your calendar, click the button below:

LVIC SPEAKER DAVID EINHORN SAYS INVESTORS SHOULD BE 'BEARISH ON STOCKS AND BULLISH ON INFLATION'

“I think we should be bearish on stocks and bullish on inflation. I think we’re in a policy now, which is probably pretty good for Main Street, but it’s going to be difficult and increasingly difficult for financial assets. I think that both long and short-term rates are headed higher and probably higher than what people are expecting. The Fed does want stock prices lower…I think it would be better if they cared less about the stock market in either direction.”

BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY ANNUAL SHAREHOLDER LETTER

“We count on the American Tailwind and, though it has been becalmed from time to time, its propelling force has always returned. I have been investing for 80 years – more than one-third of our country’s lifetime. Despite our citizens’ penchant – almost enthusiasm – for self-criticism and self-doubt, I have yet to see a time when it made sense to make a long-term bet against America. And I doubt very much that any reader of this letter will have a different experience in the future.”

INVESTOR AMNESIA - SPECULATIVE WOMEN: A HISTORY OF FEMALE INVESTORS

“The second article, ‘Lady Brokers on the Street,’ introduces us to Victoria Woodhull, who became the first woman to open a brokerage firm on Wall Street in 1870. She also ran for President in 1872 with Frederick Douglas as her Vice Presidential candidate, and developed a close business relationship with Cornelius Vanderbilt. Her pioneering spirit and commitment to equality paved the way for the diverse, thriving financial markets we have today.”

LVIC SPEAKER BEN INKER, GMO - 2022: THE JOY OF MISSING OUT

“I don’t mind admitting that the weird ‘everything’ Covid bull market of 2020 and 2021 was the most disorienting market environment of my life. I’ve certainly lived through investment bubbles before, but as Jeremy Grantham had pointed out to me multiple times over the years, they almost always take place when investors assume a Goldilocks economy will continue indefinitely. In Covid, of course, things were fundamentally going anything but well, but you’d have never known it from the markets, which showed more signs of speculative frenzy than anything we have seen since the height of the 1999-2000 internet stock bubble. When the histories of this era are written, my guess is that the phenomena of meme stocks and crypto will wind up being the stars of the show and could well wind up replacing Dutch Tulips as history’s greatest examples of speculative insanity.”

VALUE INVESTOR INSIGHT: KOPERNIK GLOBAL INVESTORS - INDEPENDENCE OF MIND

“Kopernik Global Investors’ David Iben and Alissa Corcoran explain why they cast such a wide net for inefficiently priced stocks, why they’re focused on companies with scarce and in-need assets, what trait they consider non-negotiable to be a good investor, and why they’re high today on the prospects for Golden Agri-Resources, KT Corp. and Seabridge Gold.”

THE KERNOW JOURNAL - UK SHORT INTEREST: A LONG AND SHORT INDICATOR OF SECURITY PERFORMANCE

“The opposing forces of short-interest sentiment, squeezing and crowding and interconnectedness can all provide important information to an investment process. Accordingly, short-interest data is a deceptively rich data source with numerous potential uses. For us, an increase in short-interest constitutes a challenge to the thesis behind our long ideas and indicates the potential for elevated crowding risks on our short ideas.”

SMEAD CAPITAL MANAGEMENT: THE 2022-2023 REGIME CHANGE

“This style of regime change is what investors are feeling now. The years 2020 and 2021 were typified by low rates, technology stock dominance, unicorn sightings, SPAC/IPO nirvana, Munger’s crypto crap and overall excitement for stock and bonds markets. Ultimately, these were allowed by easy money. You can take that to the bank. The years 2022 and 2023 feel nothing like that period. They have seen higher interest rates, tech stock weakness, tough to raise capital, IPOs shelved, crypto hell and losses in stock and bonds markets. It’s a new regime.”

J. STERN & CO. - CHINA REOPENING: EXCESS SAVINGS TO UNLEASH CONSUMER BOOM

“During nearly three years of COVID restrictions, Chinese consumers have accumulated significant excess savings. Some analysts estimate that up to 12 trillion RMB (equivalent to 10% of GDP) have been saved by consumers during the pandemic…The luxury goods sector will be a major beneficiary of these excess savings. Pre-pandemic, Chinese consumers accounted for a third of the global luxury goods consumption and most of the growth.” 

JOE WIGGINS: WHAT DOES THE DEMISE OF SVB TELL US ABOUT OUR BEHAVIOUR DURING MARKET SHOCKS

“After past bear markets, many investors either learned their lesson or sought a new guru—maybe a perpetually bearish one who had just gotten it right. Now, though, investors are being offered the chance to actively bet on onetime stars’ comeuppance through purpose-designed funds. They might be almost as bad an idea as following their advice in the first place.” 

INVESTOR AMNESIA - FINANCIAL HISTORY: RUNS AND PANICS, LESSONS FROM THE PAST

“The recent banking crisis has elicited comparisons to the ubiquitous 19th century banking panics, with both periods marked by high concentration in specific industries, rapid growth, and eventual crises. Today’s newsletter examines historical parallels between the present-day crisis and 19th-century bank runs and panics. Finally, we will explore the idea that the technology sector has replaced railways as the heart of financial panics in the modern era.”

RUFFER: AMERICAN PIE

“As inflation eases this year, it will be tempting to think we are returning to the old normal. But the ancien régime of low inflation and free money is over. The adjustment process – already so painful for many investors – has further to run, and there is plenty of scope for mishaps as liquidity continues to drain from the system. The market dreams of a Goldilocks scenario, just right for risky assets. But will the bears be kept at bay?”

SG QUANT MOTION PICTURES: DISTRIBUTION OF US STOCK VALUATIONS

“We have updated our popular quant motion picture: the distribution of stock valuations. One way to observe the valuation of the equity market is to see how the distribution of individual stock valuations evolves through time. Here, for example, we plot the cross-section of forward earnings yields (inverse of P/E ratios) for US Equities. The more stocks there are towards the left of the chart the more expensive the market and vice versa.”

OLDFIELD PARTNERS QUARTERLY COMMENTARY Q4 2022

“The BBC’s main story a little while ago was, roughly, ‘The UK economy fell in the last quarter, the beginning of what the Bank of England expects to be the longest recession in history.’ The fall was 0.3%. The headline treated a slight fall, which was news though better than expected, as though it were a collapse. It treated prediction as though it too were news, when we should know by now how erratic predictions are. It showed a reverence for the Bank of England’s forecasts. The Bank of England, less than two years ago, was expecting UK inflation to peak at 2.2%.”

GOOD NEWS: CHATGPT WOULD PROBABLY FAIL CFA EXAM

“If a large-language model AI can pass the finance world’s self-styled toughest exam, it might be game over for CFA’s revenue model, as well as for several hundred thousand bank employees. Fortunately, for the time being, it probably can’t.”

HOWARD MARKS MEMO: SEA CHANGE

“In a recent visit with clients, I came up with a bit of imagery to convey my view of the effect of the prolonged decline in interest rates: At some airports, there’s a moving walkway, and standing on it makes life easier for the weary traveler.  But if rather than stand still on it, you walk at your normal pace, you move ahead rapidly.  That’s because your rate of travel over the ground is the sum of the speed at which you’re walking plus the speed at which the walkway is moving. That’s what I think happened to investors over the last 40 years.  They enjoyed the growth of the economy and the companies they invested in, as well as the resulting increase in the value of their ownership stakes.  But in addition, they were on a moving walkway, carried along by declining interest rates.  The results have been great, but I doubt many people fully understand where they came from.  It seems to me that a significant portion of all the money investors made over this period resulted from the tailwind generated by the massive drop in interest rates.  I consider it nearly impossible to overstate the influence of declining rates over the last four decades.”