Markets – Page 2 – How to Value Stuff

If God was the Only Active Investor

In active investing the investor aims to outperform an index. In passive investing the investor aims to match or track the performance of an index.

Now imagine if God was the only active investor in a theoretical market.

God is all knowing, so he knows all the future cash flows of all the investments available in the market. Since he is the only active investor and all other investors mimic him, all the investments in the market will be priced based on their discounted future cash flows. As such, all the investments will have exactly the same expected return.

There are two fundamental problems with this thought exercise:

If God knows the future cash flows, then he’s not taking any risk. If God isn’t taking any risk, what discount factor should God use? The rate of inflation?
If God is the only active investor, then who is he buying from? If God is the only investor that sets prices and all other investors are trying to mimic his returns, then all the other investors would want to buy when God buys and sell when God sells. Does this mean that no orders will be matched?

The Primacy of the Income Account

Have you ever listened to an earnings conference call or read a transcript from one of those calls? If you have, you will know that these calls usually have a question and answer session following the prepared remarks, In the Q&A sessions, sell-side analysts that cover these stocks can ask management about anything that is on their mind.

I remember when I started following conference calls, how weird I thought the questions posed were. To me, the questions were unusually specific. It wasn’t until I realized what a sell-side analyst does, that the questions started to make sense. The analysts are simply trying to fish for inputs into their valuation models. They build these models, primarily by using discounted cash flow analysis, to come up with price targets for the stocks that they employed to cover.

The Problem with DCF-Analysis

When you build a Discounted Cash Flow Model, you need to make a bunch of assumptions. By how much will the company grow its revenues in the next few years? How much capital expenditure will it require to maintain that growth? What is the cost of capital? Etc, etc, etc.

DCF models can be very useful and it is imperative for business analysts to understand the possibilities as well as limitations of a DCF analysis. DCF analysis is useful when cash flows are stable and relatively predictable. DCF analysis gets difficult to use if the companies that are being analysed have extremely high growth rates or if they create value by other means than by consuming cash to generate earnings.

Capital Allocation and Balance Sheets

The late Marty Whitman, a legendary value investor, often talked about the Primacy of the Income Account. In his opinion, analysts and other investors where too preoccupied with the income statement and earnings of companies. As a result, the wealth creation that happen through the balance sheet was often overlooked.

I heard a great example of this the other day. I don’t remember which podcast it was, but the interviewee gave the following example:

Imagine if you had run a discounted cash flow analysis of Berkshire Hathaway shortly after Warren Buffett took over as CEO. You would have totally missed the point, since Buffett created value through capital allocation and by utilizing the balance sheet.

A normal DCF model would nerver have captured this.

The Implied Meaning of a Market Cap

“Apple is worth $2,000,000,000,000. That is a lot of money” said Anthony Pompliano on Twitter the other day. Dave Collum promptly corrected him: “priced at.” This is a very important and warranted distinction. We talk about the market capitalizations of companies all the time, but less often we think about what it actually implies.

For Every Buyer there is a Seller

The current price of a publicly traded stock is the most recent point where the most willing seller and most eager buyer matched. So when Apple stocks ended a trading day at $498, the last buyer and seller that were matched were willing to do business for that price. For someone to buy, someone also has to sell.

But the market price only gives us some information about the marginal sellers and buyers. One an average day, somewhere between 100 to 200 million shares of Apple stock will change hands. That’s a lot of shares. On particularly busy days, this will exceed 300 million. On a slow day, however, as little as 50 million shares will change hands. But Apple has 4.35 billion shares outstanding. So, even on the most hectic days, less than 7% of the outstanding shares will change hands.

The 7% figures is likely deceptive as high frequency trading and other forms of day trading and market making might overstate the fact that the majority of stockholders will not sell on a given day.

Therefore, the market cap and stock price of a company will tell you where it is priced at by the market. it won’t tell you where the stock is valued at by the market.

Leverage + Arbitrage

I like reading books on business history and biographies of business people. One thing that I feel is often a common thread in there stories is that substantial wealth creation often seems to stem from some combination of leverage and arbitrage.

I’ll elaborate. Often, the initial businesses are created around some sort of arbitrage. The arbitrage might be that the entrepreneurs have some information or ideas that others don’t. But an arbitrage usually doesn’t sustain. Once the word is out the trade gets crowded, which in turn erodes the profitability.

Some arbitrage are more sustainable than others and cane be ridden for longer. And I suapect that there are plenty of business people out there that found powerful arbitrages to take advantage of and did so for a long time. The reason we never heard about them, is because they were constrained. They were not scalable. They couldn’t not be levered.

If you have an arbitrage, however, that is defensible and has the potential to be leverad to a larger scale, you have the components of substantial wealth creation.

Here are a few examples:

Sam Walton realized that by buying cheap and pricing low, he would create operating leverage, by maximizing inventory turns. He realized that the big stores would not go to smaller towns, an opportunity that he was able to arbitrage for a very long time.
Kirk Kerkorian built his initial wealth through a unique albeit limited arbitrage. After WWII, Kerkorian borrowed money to bid on surplus bombers which he picked up abroad and flew home. At the time, there was a shortage of jet fuel and Kerkorian was able to sell the remaining fuel in the bombers’ fuel tank. Selling the fuel raised enough money to repay the loans he had taken. He essentially got the planes for free.
Sam Zemurray made a fortune in the banana trade. In his early days, he took advantage of a brilliant arbitrage opportunity. When banana cargo came to New Orleans, bananas that were spotted were deemed unfit for the travel to metropolitan locations and were discarded at the port. Zemurray bought the ripe bananas very cheaply and sold them locally to grocers within a day of New Orleans. To get the bananas to grocers fast, he leveraged the train system.

Covid-19 and Corporate Darwinism

On August 10, 2020, small company in Columbus, Ohio issued a press release announcing its second quarter financial results. There is nothing particularly special about that. Core Molding Technologies, a so-called dark company that trades over the counter, does this every quarter.

In this particular press release, the company disclosed to the world, just like any other public company on the planet, how it was being affected by the Corona-virus Pandemic. So, nothing particularly special about that either.

But what came next was, to me at least, something that caught my attention. The quote, which comes from David Duvall, President and Chief Executive Officer of Core Molding Technologies says “When customers reopened in June and revenues rebounded, to approximately 85% of first quarter’s average monthly revenues, we recorded our highest monthly operating profit of the past five years. It is a clear statement that we have created a stronger company and more resilient organization.”

The underline was added by me.

Darwin’s theory was that the fittest survive. Not the strongest, but the fittest. The fittest for its particular environment. And when the environment changes drastically, the fittest are the ones with the most adaptability.

Every company on this planet has been desperately trying to adapt fast to a new reality. In their struggle to survive, they try to eliminate any excess in their being. Some will go extinct, many will survive.

In many cases, the survivors will have similar things to report as Core Molding. They will be leaner. They will be meaner. And their streamlined costs structures will make them more profitable.

Universal Basic Income and Inflation

Imagine if the government would decide that everybody would receive a monthly check of $4,000 as a Universal Basic Income. Now imagine that you are in need of a good plumber. How much do you think the plumber will charge:

Less than before UBI.
Same as before UBI.
More than before UBI.

If you think that the plumber will charge less than he did before UBI, you are probably overestimating the compassionate nature of plumbers. If you think a plumber would charge the same as before, you are assuming that plumber will disregard the effect of extra monthly $4,000 to their life.

My assumption would be that most plumbers are not plumbers of passion. Rather, they entered into plumbing because it paid well. The reason it pays well is because nobody aspires to be a plumber. But there is a price where the occupation of plumbing attracts enough of people to satisfy the need for plumbing.

My guess would be that many people would of alternative uses of their times when presented with Universal Basic Income. But the jobs aspire to leave behind would still need be done…just at another price.

Repugnant Markets | Alvin Roth on Trading Kidneys

A repugnant transaction is an economic term that describes an exchange between people that is generally perceived as morally or ethically wrong. These transactions fall outside of regular market mechanisms, hence the term repugnant markets. The repugnant nature of these transactions, cause these markets to be structurally inefficient.

Examples of Repugnant Markets

Organ transplants
Child surrogacy
Prostitution
Recreational drugs

Whether a market is considered socially repugnant in not a binary definition. At the same time, what people consider to be a repugnant transaction can change over time and across cultures. Some transactions that are considered repugnant, are also illegal. Some are not.

Matching Markets

When you think about markets, the first examples that come to mind will be something like stock exchanges, farmers markets or auctions. In all these examples, the transaction is impersonal. If you want to buy a stock on the New Youk Stock Exchange, you simply need to place an order through a stockbroker. In fact, anybody can place a bid.

Many markets are, however, personal. These markets are called matching markets. In order for a transaction to take place, a buyer and a seller need to be matched. A good example of this is the labour market. If you are in the labour market, you can’t simply choose a job. You need to match with an employer who is looking for someone who matches your skillset.

Repugnant Transactions

In a matching market, price is not the only mechanism. For a matching market to be repugnant, it means that other people feel that it should not be allowed to engage in the desired transaction.

Alvin Ross, the economist who coined the phrase, formulated the concept of repugnant transactions when studying kidney transplants. It is against the law almost anywhere in the world, to buy and sell kidneys for transplantation. Yet there is a black market for kidneys, which means that there are instances where individuals are willing to transact in kidneys, while people, in general, feel that it is immoral to do so.

Alvin Roth on Repugnant Markets and Forbidden Transactions

In the following lecture, Nobel laureate Alvin E. Roth will investigate the nature of and reasons for repugnance with its implications for the design of markets. Why is it forbidden to sell and buy organs? Why is the exchange of kidneys that leads to many successful transplants allowed in some countries such as the US, but not in others like Germany? Which markets or transactions we allow, affects the choices that people have?

Watch the lecture and learn more:

Also on How to Value Stuff

Longevity as an Investment Criteria

In the world of startups and new ventures, the central theme seems to gravitate towards growth and scaling.

When it comes to growth and scaling, learning how to manage an organization that is constantly getting bigger becomes the biggest challenge.

However, when you look at the oldest companies in the world, these are all small operations in industries that have hardly changed much throughout the lifetime of those companies.

Build to Last

Two of the oldest companies in the world are a:

Japanese Ryokan
German Brewery

When founders start new companies, most of the time their vision is to disrupt an industry.

But what if the objective would be to create something that was built to last? If you want to build an impenetrable fortress, you don’t want it to be ever-expanding, would you?

So, here’s a question: What if you were asked to build a company and there would only be one constraint: The total size of the organization would not be allowed to exceed 8 people.

What would you build?

The Columbo Method of Equity Research

Remember detective Columbo? He was a phenomenal character played by Peter Falk in a 1970s TV series called…you guessed it…Columbo. Detective Columbo was a scruffy and simplistic character, dressed in his signature beige raincoat and crumpy white shirt with a loosely knotted tie.

Colombo is no normal detective series, though. As is you would expect, Columbo’s job is to solve murder mysteries. However, the episodes don’t play out with Columbo delving into each case and eventually discovering who is the murderer, in a sharp twist near the end. Columbo is a detective series without the mystery.

In the case of Columbo, each of the 69 episodes begins with the scene of the murder. So, as a viewer, you know from the beginning who the doer is. The rest of the episode is a mental wrestling match between the murderer and lieutenant Columbo.

The Colombo Technique of Investigation

In each Columbo case, the murder is committed by someone close to the victim. This allows Columbo to approach the suspect as a witness or someone who can help Colombo in piecing together the pieces of the puzzle.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=r1_t8RGFb_Y%3Ffeature%3Dplayer_embedded

To the assailant, Columbo seems totally incompetent. The scruffiness of his hair and clothing give the impression that he slept in his clothes. He constantly scratches his head and he asks the assailant for help. His questions are simplistic and make him look like he’s totally out of his dept.

But Columbo is playing a part. He’s playing dumb. The perpetrator grows confident and starts to get comfortable, even annoyed. The trap is set. In the final minutes of a Columbo episode, the perpetrator has made a mistake and Columbo wrestles him down for the tap-out.

Stock Research and Colombo

So, how does this relate to equity analysis? In stock research, there is no crime, there is no murderer. As an analyst, you have a stock and you build your opinion based on fundamental analysis.

But therein lies the caveat. You see, it is you who is the perpetrator because once you start your analysis, you start to for opinions. You will start subjecting your mind to all forms of mental biases. You become overly optimistic. You get anchored. You will start to look for confirmation in the data.

“But that’s me, I’m paranoic. Every time I see a dead body I think it’s murdered. Can’t imagine anyone murdering themselves.”
– Lieutenant Columbo

As an analyst, you have to put on your mental raincoat and find your inner Columbo. You have to take a step back and start to ask yourself the simple question. The overly naive and borderline stupid questions. You have to confront yourself and find start to look for loopholes in your story.

Just One More Thing…

Lieutenant Columbo bombards his suspects with questions. He’s relentless. He keeps coming back with a question. He’s apologetic, he excuses himself. He just can’t help himself, he says. But he keeps coming back for “just one more thing.”

Mt. Gox | The Meteoric Rise and Fall of a Bitcoin Exchange

Although the history of the Mt. Gox Bitcoin Exchange is short, it is nothing short of amazing. Mt. Gox is a historic name in the world of cryptocurrencies, as it was one of the first Bitcoin exchanges to take off.

At the peak of its height, Mt. Gox’s customer base represented about 80% of the global trading volume. The rise of Mt. Gox, came to an abrupt end in 2014 when it was discovered that the exchange had become the victim of a large scale hack. Being unable to locate over 850,000 bitcoins that the exchange had in its possession, Mt. Gox was forced to close trading and to subsequently file for bankruptcy.

Who founded Mt. Gox?

Jed McCaleb founded the Mt. Gox and in 2007, he registered the Mtgox.com web domain with the aim of turning it into a trading site for the famous Magic: The Gathering game cards. He then turned the domain to a bitcoin exchange site.

After sometimes McCaleb realized he was getting more than he bargained for and he sold the site to Mark Karpeles who is a programmer, foodie, and bitcoin enthusiast and he usually calls himself Magicaltux in numerous online forums. Karpeles then rewrote the back-end software of the site and eventually turned the site into the most popular bitcoin exchange in the world.

Karpeles was born in France and he spent some time in Israel before settling down in Japan. He got married in Japan and in 2011, he acquired the Mt. Gox exchange from an American entrepreneur known as Jed McCaleb.

When did Mt Gox open?

Mt Gox was among the first Bitcoin exchange on the web but it was not related to cryptocurrency when it was developed. The mtgox.com domain was bought by programmer Jed McCaleb in 2007 for an online trading platform for virtual cards that are used in the game Magic: The Gathering.

In 2010, McCaleb then saw the opportunity to build a place where people can exchange their fiat currency to and from Bitcoin. This was how mtgox.com was launched as a Bitcoin exchange on July 18, 2010. McCaleb then sold the platform to French-born developer Mark Karpeles after a year.

How did Mt Gox get hacked

Mt Gox was first hacked in 2011 and during the first of the two hacks, the attackers were able to infiltrate into the computer that belongs to an auditor of Mt. Gox. This gave them the chance to change the Bitcoin pricing to a single cent. Afterwards, they then obtained the private keys of Mt. Gox clients which had their precious crypto assets kept in hot wallets which are internet-connected.

The hackers then went on and create selling orders on the accounts and then bought the Bitcoins at this artificially reduced price and they were able to buy 2000 BTC with this way. This hack was estimated to be about $30.000 theft in Bitcoin and this was then dwarfed by the hack that occurred in February 2014.

The second Mt Gox hack was infamously known as the first major cryptocurrency exchange hack when it happened. The hacked value was an enormous $460 million worth of Bitcoin at the time. Although this may not be the largest hack in terms of the value in fiat money, it is considered to be the largest amount of Bitcoin that was ever stolen.

More than 850,000 Bitcoins were stolen which includes 750,000 Bitcoins that were owned by its customers. At its peak price, the value of the bitcoin stolen is $17 billion while at the current price this will be about $3 billion.

Although Mt Gox stopped all Bitcoin withdrawals on February 2014, the exchange has already been emptied of its Bitcoins long ago. It was reported that Bitcoins were stolen bit by bit since the beginning of 2011. The group that did this investigation then indicated that by May 2013, the firm no longer held its Bitcoins. Mt Gox then filed for bankruptcy not long after the hack because they were no longer able to continue with the operations.

Will Mt Gox be rehabilitated?

According to TechCrunch, In February of 2019, there is a movement referred to as GoxRising which is working to have an alternative to bankruptcy for Mt Gox. The main idea behind GoxRising is simple and it is that instead of using the bankruptcy courts to give the assets of Mt Gox to the owners of the company, it is making use of civil rehabilitation law so as to return most of the asset to the creditors of the company.

It appears that GoxRising will be successful in these efforts because Tokyo lawyer, Nobuaki Kobayashi has been appointed by the Japanese courts to work on the civil rehabilitation process. This is going to be a piece of good news to those that have lost their assets in the Mt Gox failure because they will likely gain from this deal due to the civil rehabilitation law.

Another potential way this court may end is that the embattled CEO of Mt Gox, Mark Karpeles will likely end up with lots of Mt Gox assets if the bankruptcy process is allowed to move forward. This is because he owned about 80% of the company and when it went bankrupt, it will place him in a great position to get this huge payout under the Japanese bankruptcy law. If this happens, Karpeles knows that his life is in danger as he would receive lots of civil suits from Mt Gox creditors that has lost everything to him. More insults will be added because Bitcoin prices are much higher today than it was in 2014.

With the civil rehabilitation process, it looks like a winning idea to everyone that is involved in this deal and it looks like a way forward. The civil rehabilitation process is expected to take 3-5 years based on the reports from the media. Although civil rehabilitation may be considered to be a time-consuming process, it is still a lot better than bankruptcy.

Category: Markets