The (Bill) Gross Factor in Recent Bond Market Movements ?

I don't need to rehash all the various reports of the departure of "Bond King" Bill Gross from PIMCO.

What I do find interesting is trying to find the footprints of the impact of his departure on the bond market. The Pimco Total Return Fund has been losing billions of dollars in assets. When a mutual fund gets redemptions it must sell bonds to meet those redemption calls.



An article at marketwatch,com noted:

... the corporate bond market is obviously less liquid than the market for U.S. government debt, which makes selling corporate bonds a bit tougher. That means the prospect of Pimco being forced to sell holdings could continue to have a bigger impact on corporate debt than in other markets.

Why would Pimco sell? If investors are pulling massive amounts of money out of the company’s funds, Pimco will need to sell its holdings in order to meet those redemptions. Around $10 billion had been yanked out of Pimco in the immediate wake of Gross’s departure, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Unsurprisingly, traders and other investors are poised to take advantage of what may amount to a fire sale.

“If I’m an investor or a mutual fund or another asset manager, I think the smart move to make is to keep some cash on the sidelines, wait for the Total Return fund to face some more redemptions, than prepare to buy some of the bonds that they’re selling,” LeBas said.

In the near term, that could mean more downside for corporate bonds, wrote David Sekera, director of corporate bond strategy at Morningstar.

Two areas of the bond market that can be even less liquid than investment grade corporate bonds and US Treasury bonds are High Yield (junk) bonds and Treasury Inflation Protected (TIP) bonds.

Exchange traded funds (ETFs) are often used in the bond market by large speculators or fund managers as a means of taking positions in the bond market or hedging. A bond fund manager anticipating the need to sell bonds might first sell the relevant ETF short before liquidating the actual bonds that the fund owns. Similarly a quick way for a hedge fund or other short term trader to take a position anticipating a fall in a sector of the bond market would go short the ETF rather than shorting individual bonds.

I have no information about what PIMCO might have been doing in its bond market activity or whether hedge funds or other traders might have taken speculative positions to take advantage of anticipated bond sales by PIMCO. But I did notice some extremely large volume and large price swings in high yield and inflation protected bond ETFs. over the past week. The Gross factor in the bond market...quite possibly.

Below are 3 examples (there are similar patterns in other ETFs in these sectors of the bond market) all of these ETFs have had huge spikes in volume relative to their average and large price swings.

Addendum (october 2)

WSJ reports:
Investors withdrew a net $23.5 billion from Pimco's Total Return fund during the month, and Pimco said Wednesday that the lion's share took place Friday((September 26). That was the day Mr. Gross stunned the fund world with the announcement that he was leaving as chief investment officer and manager of the Total Return fund, which had $222 billion in assets at the end of August, to join a smaller rival, Janus Capital Group.

TIP Inflation Protected Bond ETF (average daily volume 578.833)

Date	Open	High	Low	Close	Volume	Adj Close
9/29/2014	112.27	112.34	112.14	112.19	3,329,800.00	112.19
9/26/2014	112.4	112.4	112.06	112.11	338,900.00	112.11
9/25/2014	112.5	112.72	112.45	112.69	672,800.00	112.69
9/24/2014	112.42	112.54	112.19	112.28	927,000.00	112.28
9/23/2014	112.13	112.4	112.1	112.38	571,300.00	112.38
9/22/2014	112.15	112.18	111.86	111.96	1,131,400.00	111.96

HYG High Yield Bond ETF (average daily volume 4,163,690)

Date	Open	High	Low	Close	Volume	Adj Close
9/29/2014	91.04	91.37	90.89	91.36	6,289,400.00	91.36
9/26/2014	91.22	91.73	90.95	91.55	11,842,500.00	91.55
9/25/2014	92.1	92.1	91.5	91.61	7,348,000.00	91.61
9/24/2014	92.5	92.5	92.06	92.24	6,342,700.00	92.24
9/23/2014	92.79	92.92	92.44	92.52	3,573,100.00	92.52
9/22/2014	93.16	93.24	92.91	92.99	4,355,300.00	92.99

SJNK Short Term High Yield Bond ETF (average daily volume 408.795)

Date	Open	High	Low	Close	Volume	Adj Close
9/29/2014	29.87	29.88	29.8	29.83	1,386,500.00	29.83
9/26/2014	29.95	29.99	29.84	29.96	3,984,200.00	29.96
9/25/2014	30.05	30.06	29.95	29.98	1,918,100.00	29.98
9/24/2014	30.12	30.12	30.05	30.08	1,155,500.00	30.08
9/23/2014	30.17	30.21	30.11	30.11	812,900.00	30.11
9/22/2014	30.23	30.25	30.17	30.22	3,033,000.00	30.22

Does It Even Make Sense to Speak About Emerging Markets As an "Asset Class"

I certainly think it is important to be invested globally and certainly in parts of the world that are considered "emerging markets".

But within the category there are important distinctions: simply investing in an emerging markets overall index like IEMG is far different than being selective among emerging markets.

For example here is the country allocation in IEMG

as of 19-Sep-2014

	China	17.55%
	Korea (South)	15.01%
	Taiwan	12.82%
	Brazil	10.06%
	South Africa	7.39%
	India	6.88%
	Mexico	4.7%
	Russian Federation	4.07%
	Malaysia	3.88%
	Indonesia	2.73%
	Thailand	2.54%
	Hong Kong	1.71%

Many analysts have written about the fragile five" countries  most exposed to impact of higher US interest rates because of their high dependent on outside investments and their current account deficits. The fragile 5 are Turkey, Brazil, India, South Africa and Indonesia. As can be seen above these make up a bit under 30% of the above ETF. Additionally Russia carries a high degree of political risk.

Another term which is now recognized as having little usefulness is BRIC (Brazil,Russia, India and China) clearly those economies actually have little in common nor do they share many factors that would impact stock prices. They can be purchased in an ETF BRK.

Then there is the major regional division. Eastern Europe, Latin America and Emerging Asia.

The Emerging  Eastern Europe ETF (ESR) is 65% allocated to Russia and 25% to Poland. Obviously it has high exposure to the political risks associated with investing in Russia. And 25% of the asset allocation is in two Russian oil companies Gazprom and Lukoh..in other words not a very diversified portfolio.

Emerging Latin America (EEML) is also very concentrated in country allocation: 56% to Brazil and 26% to Mexico.

The third major country sector within emerging markets is emerging Asia. Below are the country weightings for GMF and Emerging Asia ETF.

Fund Country Weights

As of 09/22/2014

China	38.66%
Taiwan	24.12%
India	17.06%
Malaysia	6.45%
Indonesia	4.89%
Thailand	4.41%
Philippines	3.02%
Hong Kong	0.81%
United States	0.36%
Singapore	0.22%

With the large divergence in the factors impacting the holdings in the above ETFs it shouldnt be surprsing that they have increasingly had large differences in perfomance. Additionally investors might note that emerging markets do still have many billions of dollars that allocate with emerging markets as an asset class. That could lead potentially for opportunities for those looking to invest in particular geographic sectors either to buy or sell in rebalancing during periods where large money flows into or out of emerging markets as a group moving them all in tandem despite the large differences.

Below are 1 one year and 5 year charts for the ETFs mentioned above the line charts show growth of $100,000 the bar charts performance (top) and volatility below that. Color codes are the same on all graphs.

Interestingly over the one year period GMF produced the highest returns at the lowest volatility. Over the 5 year period GMF returned 40% with a volatility of 20.9 a far better risk reward tradeoff than iemg which had a higher  volatility than  iemg  (20.9 vs 15.6) but its return over the period was 40.4% vs 10% a very attractive return vs risk .

1 Year

One Year Returns (top) and Volatility (below)

One Year Growth of $100,00

Five Year

Returns (top) Volatility (bottom)

Growth of $100,00

Morningstar On Performance Chasing In Emerging Markets Investing

An interesting Morningstar video illustrating the performance chasing of investors in and out of emerging markets..with the predictable poor results. Here is the graph under discussion

I am not affiliated with this website...

,,,,called Sensible Investingtv. ,,but their investing approach is quite similar to mine and the website consists of videos so it's likely a bit more digestible than my blog.. It's worth a visit.

Highly recommended.

Bloomberg on Hedging Currency Risk in European Stocks

Bloomberg.com personal finance blog  had this to say today about HEDJ the currency hedged European stock ETF I discussed yesterday

Easing Up in Europe

The European Central Bank recently announced interest rate cuts and a program to buy asset-backed securities and covered bonds. If that sounds familiar, that's because it's reminiscent of the Federal Reserve's actions in the U.S. and also of "Abenomics," the strategy Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has taken to revive Japan's economy. It's yet another central bank printing money to weaken its currency and stimulate exports and its economy.

That puts the WisdomTree Europe Hedged Equity Fund (HEDJ) in the catbird seat. It tracks the top exporting companies in euro zone countries and hedges against moves in the relative value of the euro against the U.S. dollar. That combination gives investors pure exposure to the performance of local stocks, with a bit less volatility from currency fluctuations. So far this year, the fund is up 5 percent, while the non-hedged European ETFs are flat.

HEDJ follows in the footsteps of another WisdomTree ETF, the Japan Hedged Equity Fund (DXJ). That ETF soaked up $10 billion in new cash from investors as Abenomics unfolded in Japan. About $1.8 billion has flowed into HEDJ so far this year, the most of any European ETF. That quadrupled its size to $2.5 billion. HEDJ charges 0.58 percent of assets a year.

Should You Hedge the Currency Risk on Your European Stocks ?

The outlook for the European economies has moved lower in the past weeks. This due to the immediate news of the crisis in the Ukraine and sanctions as well as weaker economic data. In response the European Central Bank has engaged in another round of interest rate easing with every intent of keeping this policy in place for an extended period of time. An additional goal of the policy is to weaken the Euro making exports more attractive.

Where does that leave the outlook for European stocks. I have noted in earlier blogs that the European stock markets carry significantly lower valuations than US stocks and Germany in particular has fallen sharply as a result of the Ukraine crisis.

I have also noted that investing in European stocks, particularly through the ETFs is not as much an investment in the economies of those countries but rather in a group of major multinational corporations. Those corporations carry lower valuations than US stocks but compete with them around the world. A weaker dollar will make the European companies more price competitive. Additionally remember that the weaker US economy and stronger dollar vs the Euro will hit US multinationals' exports to Europe.

1. So with the case for European stocks perhaps not as negative as the headlines should one hedge the currency risk...the impact of a lower Euro cutting into the returns of European stocks for US investors (already reflected in the US$ price of Europe ETFs trading in the US?

There are three things that I learned in over a decade working in the currency markets prior to working with individual investors.

1. Exchange rates are notoriously difficult to predict. But...
2. Exchange rates tend to move based on interest rate differentials--money flows out of low interest rate currencies to higher interest rate currencies (the "carry trade" is a major factor traders/investors borrow in the lower interest rate currency and invest in the higher.
3. Once a trend is established in currencies it tends to last for a considerable period of time...but when that reverses it reverses sharply

• With regard to  the ECU/$ exchange rate we can point to to the following factors already in place:

1.  The interest rate differential (higher dollar) in place..and the US is in a mode of  looking to raise interest rates after a long period of Central Bank policy cutting rates...the date is unknown but the direction is. The ECB on the contrary has indicated it plans to keep rates low for an extended period. In other words the interest rate differential is near certain not to reverse and the likelihood is very high it will widen
2. The ECB favors a weaker Euro
3. A strong trend towards a weaker Euro agains the $ is already in place. Ten year chart below:

What does a weaker Euro mean for investors in European stocks through a US $ denominated ETF:

a lower dollar will reduce any gains on the European stock investment and of course increase losses.

What can be done: One of the great things about ETFs is that the innovation and competition gives access to individual investors strategies that were once available only to large institutional investors. In some cases it gives them access to strategies they would be better off avoiding. But in the case of currency hedging this is a great innovation.

There are several ETFs which hedge (eliminated) the currency risk from European stock investments. Many of them are new, not liquid and have minimal assets under management...likely a good idea to avoid them However the Wisdomtree hedged European ETF(HEDJ) has none of those issues and is worth considering.Although it is tied to an index different than those of the major Euro area etfs (EMU and FEZ) the holdings are close enough to make it an effective hedge.

Here are the top 20 holdings in HEDJ with their % of the portfolio  as you can see almost all of the top holdings are major multinational companies(with the notable exception of two major Spanish banks)

1. Anheuser-Busch InBev NV (ABI) BE 6.08
2. Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentari (BBVA) ES 5.67
3. Telefonica SA (TEF) ES 5.65
4. Sanofi-Aventis SA (SAN) FR 4.98
5. Banco Santander SA (SAN) ES 4.77
6. Unilever NV (UNA) NL 4.42
7. Siemens AG (SIE) DE 4.27
8. Daimler AG (DAI) DE 4.00
9. Bayer AG (BAYN) DE 3.14
10. LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitt (MC) FR 2.83
11. L\''Oreal SA (OR) FR 2.82
12. Bayerische Motoren Werke AG (BMW) DE 2.80
13. E.ON SE (EOAN) DE 2.36
14. Sap AG (SAP) DE 2.32
15. Schneider Electric SA (SU) FR 1.94
16. Koninklijke Philips Electronic (PHIA) NL 1.87
17. Danone (BN) FR 1.74
18. Heineken NV (HEIA) NL 1.35
19. ACS Actividades de Construccio (ACS) ES 1.35
20. Airbus Group (AIR) NL 1.33

As the Euro has weakened as of late due to ECB policies the use of  HEDJ has shown its usefulness not only has the currency risk been eliminated the gain on the exchange rate has offset declines in the European stocks

But ..as in all investments nothing is guaranteed, Over the last 12 months hedging away the currency risk has reduced returns over considerable periods of time.

The strategy of replacing an etf with currency risk (FEZ,EMU for example) with a hedged currency etf like HEDJ for all of part of one's European stock investment might be worth a look.

But remember that not all European ETFs contain only ECU denominated stocks. VGK for example contains a large allocation to UK stocks of course denominated in Sterling. The Bank of England has moved to a tightening mode. Between last September and the beginning of July Sterling was on a strong positive trend rising from $1.60 to $1.70...before falling back to close to $1.60 since July in response to the possibility Scotland will vote to breakaway from the UK....thus demonstrating how difficult exchange rates are to predict.

You May Be Surprised I Agree WIth This Article

The WSJ carries an interesting article making the case for a simple 3 ETF portfolio

Many "Bogleheads"—a group of investors who favor index investing as inspired by Vanguard Group founder John Bogle —suggest a three-fund portfolio consisting of the U.S.-focused Vanguard Total Stock Market Index fund, Vanguard Total International Stock Index, and Vanguard Total Bond Market Index. Together, the three mutual funds, which also offer ETF shares, track more than 15,000 global securities.

One possible allocation is 40% U.S. stocks, 20% international stocks and 40% bonds. That Vanguard portfolio, rebalanced annually, returned an average of 7.14% a year over the last decade, a little less than the 8.07% return of the Dow Jones U.S. Total Stock Market Index and the 8.62% return of the MSCI All Country World ex USA index, and well above the 4.52% return of the Barclays U.S. Aggregate Bond Index.

You might be surprised to know that I have no problems with that advice.

As a reader of this blog can no doubt see I think there are ways to improve on this allocation: tilting the portfolio towards value stocks and holding a different mix of international and bond allocations thatn those in the instruments listed above.

But someone holding such a portfolio would be better off that probably 90% of other investors certainly better off than those that fill their portfolio with actively managed mutual funds and individual stocks.  Not only are portfolios the choice of many "do it yourselfers" they are also the portfolios many clients hold when they are wroking with a broker or advisor.,,,not to mention those that have "special products' or "alternative investments" in their holdings.

Of course there is one other requirement that is noted in the article

Experts also are quick to point out that even a simple portfolio needs tending—investors shouldn't just set it and forget it.

"The biggest pitfall [for all investors who decide on an asset mix and invest accordingly] is behavioral, when people don't want to rebalance," says Brad McMillan, chief investment officer at Commonwealth Financial Network in Waltham, Mass., and San Diego. For instance, if equities have taken a hit, you should consider buying more equities and selling off other asset classes, and "that's extraordinarily hard to do," he says.

In fact it could be argued that one valuable function of an advisor is simply to prevent...or point out and try to prevent...clients from falling into all the behavioral pitfalls in investing ...which seem invatiably to result in buying high and selling low.

One system for choosing what funds to hold in a portfolio clearly ist the right path choosing funds based on the Morningstar "stars" rating sysem.

A WSJ article reviews the record of 5 star funds http://online.wsj.com/articles/how-funds-with-5-star-morningstar-ratings-10-years-ago-have-fared-1410120116

Take a list of the top-rated mutual funds from years ago—those with five-star ratings from Morningstar Inc. MORN -0.43% —and look at them now. The sobering fact: You'll see many once-proud, five-star funds have dropped to four stars, three stars or worse.....

a separate study suggests it is even more difficult for a leading fund to stay at the top: S&P Dow Jones Indices analyzed 715 top-performing mutual funds, focusing on U.S.-stock funds for the past four years through March, and found that only two stayed in the top 25% through a four-year period.

A lot of advisers, of course, think everyone should put their money in low-cost index funds because managers can't beat the market over the long term.(Put me in that camp)

But hope springs eternal (and the folk at the WSJ have bills to pay and morningstar has reports to sell).

So the article adds te following

 For those who are looking for more-active managers, though, the Morningstar data offer lots of lessons.

Seems to me the better lesson is to skip the actively managed funds.

"Slippage The Hidden Costs of Managed ETF Porftolios

Among the costs of actively managed mutual funds often cited by critics such as John Bogle is the hidden cost of “market impact”. Market impact is the change in market price created when a large mutual fund decides to liquidate or initiate a position in a particular stock. Depending on the size of the trade and the particular stock the active fund manager can find that as he buys (sells) stock he pushes the price up (down) increasing the impact on the funds returns.

Portfolios made up of ETFs were thought to alleviate this problem. Trades were to be infrequent and when the trades were exercised in relatively small amounts by individual investors the impact would be small. However the growth of large “managed ETF programs” and “robo advisors” may mean that the “slippage factor” may have returned through these programs reducing the returns for investors in these programs.

Managed ETF programs have grown tremendously over recent years as brokers and investment advisors “outsource” the management of ETF portfolios to large managers. The strategies and frequency of the trading varies. But observers have already noted that the large trades can have significant impact on market prices. The impact can be further aggravated because some of these managers both manage accounts directly and issue “buy and sell alerts” which individual advisors and large brokerage firms implement on their own. Thus not only are there trades directly from the advisor entering the market but trades from other sources making the same buy/sells as well. The result when the orders hit the market is that the trades can move the market creating the same ‘slippage” as active stock manager’s experience. For the client that means an unseen cost.

An article by Matt Hougan in ETF.com  focuses on the large flow created by some of these managers although it doesn’t specifically reference the slippage article. He writes that through use of the fund flow data on the etf.com website it is possible to isolate ETF activity that generates one time large trade flows and those that represent a trend in flows in and out of an asset class. He notes that often there are large flows in a particular ETF even though similar flows may not be present in other ETFs in an asset class.

He offers the example of large one day flows in three US treasury etfs, His explanation:

The fact that all those flows occurred on one day suggests that a single large investor made these decisions, as opposed to "investors" in general. In fact, we can probably even guess which investor made these bets: Good Harbor Financial.

Good Harbor is a large, well-run ETF strategist firm with $10 billion invested in quant-driven ETF strategies. It rebalances its portfolios twice a month—once on the 15^th and once at the end of the month—which coincides perfectly with the timing of these flows (due to settlement delays, fund flows don't always appear the day an investor buys a fund).

What we're seeing in the flows for IEF, SHY and IEI is Good Harbor getting nervous, not the market in general. That's a worthwhile signal—Good Harbor has a great track record—but it's just one opinion. And in fact, a quick glance at this morning's preliminary flows numbers suggest big outflows in both SHY and IEI, two of the Good Harbor targets in question.

I have no idea whether Good Harbor is a well-run strategist with a good track record or not. I do know that by looking at the flows from their trades and the market behavior on those days it is clear that their trading has a market impact. It also seems quite possible that if an analyst like Mr. Hougan knows the dates of the rebalancing then so do some market participants who may try to profit from that information to the detriment of Good Harbor. The examples in his articels  are from Etfs in US Treasuries which have large numbers of assets, large daily volume, and good liquidity, yet the trades by this one manager clearly have impact on the market in those ETFs. It would only be reasonable to assume such impact would be even greater in the case of other less liquid ETFs.

 The charts of the one month flows from etf.com are below. Below each graph I have put a price/volume graph (2 months) of the same ETF. In all three cases there was an increase in the day’s trading range--.an indicator of market volatility—relative to other trading days. In fact there are other large trading range days that also occur on the 1^st and 15^th of the month the rebalancing dates for Good Harbor.

.

Here's the chart for IEF in August fund flows for August and below it price/volume for July and August

And here is the same data for SHY

And here for IEI

Good Harbor is only one of a number of large managed ETF portfolio managers. Many market participants have noted that their trades can have significant intraday market impact which may be a drag on returns. As the assets under management of these managers grows the impact is likely to increase. Furthermore there is a rapid growth in robadvisors internet based portfolio management with allocations that are rebalanced at fixed dates. As these grow there is more potential for increasing the number of large trades that create volatility and perhaps distort prices for brief periods

What are the implications for individual investors? That is the subject of my next blog on the subject.

More Bad News for Active Managers

The latest edition of the Standard and Poors SPIVA report that evaluates active fund managers vs their benchmark indices has just come out. The results seldom differ much
 As Reuters reports:

S&P Dow Jones Indices just published its mid-year scorecard of S&P indices versus active funds (SPIVA). Active funds are the funds that attempt to offer some sort of superior return relative to some benchmark.

"According to the data, 59.78% of large-cap managers, 57.84% of mid-cap managers and 72.79% of small-cap managers underperformed their benchmarks," said Aye Soe, director of index research and design. This is for the 12-month period ending June 30, 2014.

Fund managers have a knack for getting lucky over short-term periods. When you extend the performance period from 12-months to 5 years, the results are much uglier.

"The past five years have been marked by the rare combination of a remarkable rebound in domestic equity markets and a low-volatility equity environment," Soe added. "This combination has proven to be difficult for domestic equity managers, as over 70% of them across all capitalization and style categories failed to deliver returns higher than their respective benchmarks."

A Contrary Indicator ?

from cnbc.com

Market bears now scarcer than any time since 1987

Maybe Investors Should Worry More About Hong Kong and Less About the Ukraine

WSJ today

Hong Kong Election Ruling Stirs Fear Over City's Status as Finance Hub

Some Business and Political Leaders Warn Beijing's Decree Threatens to Undermine Pillars of Hong Kong's Success