Have We Seen This Movie?

There are some moments that mark your life, moments when you realize nothing will ever be the same. And time is divided into two parts, before this and after this. – John Hobbes (Fallen)

In the summer of 1977, my mother, brother, and I made our much-anticipated annual trip from our small East Texas hometown to the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex to visit my aunt and uncle. The big city offered us the opportunity to see and do things that weren't normally options at home, but the highlight was always a visit to our version of the happiest place in Texas (sorry Walt), the Six Flags Over Texas amusement park.

On the morning after Six Flags, I heard my aunt and mother discussing what we were going to do for the remainder of our stay. The plan for that day was to head to the shopping mall to buy back-to-school clothes for me and my brother. Coming from a small town with only a couple of department stores to choose from, the idea of literally having dozens of places to shop for deals under one roof was exciting…. for the adults.

My brother and I, however, weren’t eager to spend the day trying on new shoes and blue jeans. My aunt, noting our lack of enthusiasm, pulled out the newspaper and suggested we pick a movie to go watch at the mall theater. I recall that the listings took up an entire page of the paper. In the middle of the page there was an advertisement that included the image of what looked like a dark robot wearing a gas mask and German storm trooper helmet. 

We had no idea what Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope was about, but Mom thought Smokey and the Bandit may be a bit racy for my 7 year old brother. That narrowed our choices to Benji, Herbie, or the cool looking "robot". Little did we know that after the trip to the mall that day that nothing would ever be the same.

In the days before VCRs, DVR's, and Netflix, the movie experience was more than an activity, it was an event. Star Wars was one of only 54 movie releases in 1977 per the movie data website, The Numbers®. Compare that to this year, where 83 movies were released, in JANUARY.

Watching a movie today is almost as routine as watching reruns of The Brady Bunch was not so long ago. Now, with so many more flicks to choose from coupled with the ability to stream just about any of them through our home theaters or various other devices, it’s not that unusual to realize that you've already seen a movie after the first scene or two.

This week, that familiar feeling came over me while watching a business channel. The headline flashed that the Fed had “surprised” markets by raising rates for just the second time in a decade, boosting the rate that banks can lend each other money overnight from .5% to .75%. The stock markets soon lost about 2% of their value, mostly attributed to the rate increase.

There were plenty of commentators predicting the calamity that would result from this “unexpected” increase in rates. Then I realized why it felt like Déjà vu when I looked back at the Accountable Update I wrote about this time last year. In the 12/18/15 installment titled Staying Out of Trouble, I noted that the Fed had just raised fed funds rate by .25% and that they anticipated additional moves by up to 1% in 2016. Sound familiar?

The same people on the business channel were saying the exact same things they said last year, “Get out of bonds! Buy a house now before higher rates make them unaffordable! Don’t invest your cash, wait for higher rates! This is the beginning of the end! Buy gold before it’s too late!”

Eventually, the broken clocks will be right, for a moment. We prefer to have a plan for each of our clients that relies on evidence instead of guesses. The odds are this isn’t a defining moment that we will look back upon one day. It’s much more likely that this is just another movie that we’ve seen before. If you would appreciate a more in-depth look at some of the evidence, please enjoy the following Issue Brief from DFA’s, Doug Longo.

If not, head to the mall. There are only 9 shopping days until Christmas!

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The Fed, Yields, and Expected Returns

Doug Longo
Dimensional Fund Advisors
Fixed Income Investment Strategist

December 2016

In liquid and competitive markets, current interest rates represent the expected probability of all foreseeable actions by the Fed and other market forces.

On December 14, 2016, the Federal Open Market Committee (Fed) concluded its final meeting for the year and announced its decision to raise the federal funds target rate from its range of 0.25%–0.50% to 0.50%–0.75%.

As we have mentioned before, Fed watching is a favorite pastime for many market participants who often presume that Fed actions will lead to specific market outcomes. On December 16, 2015, the Fed raised the federal funds target rate for the first time since 2006. As a result, some market commentators believed this was a signal that multiple rate increases would occur in 2016.

As we now know, the Fed failed to prove the market prognosticators right; the Fed did not change the target rate until its last meeting of the year. Despite this, interest rates in the US have varied throughout the year. In fact, as shown in Exhibit 1, immediately following the Fed’s rate increase in 2015, yields on many US treasury bonds decreased until the second half of 2016.

Exhibit 1.       US Treasury Yields (%) as of December 14, 2016

Securities data provided by Bloomberg Barclays LIVE. Bloomberg Barclays data provided by Bloomberg.

Because interest rates in the US began to increase at the beginning of the fourth quarter, it prompts a question: Did the market lead the Fed to raise its key interest rate, or did the Fed lead interest rates higher by setting expectations?

Trying to answer the question may be futile, however. In liquid and competitive markets such as the US Treasury market, current interest rates represent the expected probability of all foreseeable actions by the Fed and other market forces. Market participants, using publicly available information, estimate the probabilities of different outcomes. Those expectations are collectively reflected in current interest rates. As publicly available information changes, market participants adjust their expectations, which are immediately reflected in new interest rates.

While market participants use publicly available information to set expectations, unanticipated future events or surprises relative to those expectations may trigger interest rate changes in the future. The nature of those surprises cannot be known by investors today. As a result, there has been no reliable way found to systematically benefit from trying to outguess market prices when forecasting changes in interest rates. We can say, however, that there is known and observable information in current interest rates, or bond prices, that we can use to set expectations about future returns.

The expected return of a bond can be decomposed into three components: (1) the yield of a bond over its holding period; (2) capital appreciation (or depreciation) of the bond due to the shape of the yield curve; (3) and changes in bond prices due to future changes in yields. As we mentioned earlier, there is no reliable way to predict future changes in yields due to unanticipated future events that are not yet known.

Our research and experience in the fixed income markets informs us that there is reliable information in the first two components of expected return that enables us to use current bond prices to identify securities with higher expected returns.

As we can observe in Exhibit 2, yields on US Treasury bonds have increased since the end of September. While the increase in yields has had a negative impact on fixed income returns over the short term, the expected returns of fixed income securities, as observed through the first two components of expected return, have increased.

The first component (yield) has increased as bond prices have decreased. Additionally, as yields on longer-term bonds have increased more, relative to shorter-term bonds, the shape of the yield curve has become steeper. A steeper yield curve increases the second component of expected return (capital gain). As time passes, a bond’s maturity and yield decrease as the bond becomes a shorter-term bond. On an upward sloping yield curve, this results in capital appreciation. As a result, the expected capital gain is greater for bonds on steeper yield curves if those bonds are sold before maturity.

We believe using information about expected returns in current prices combined with a long-term focus can serve investors well when pursuing investment goals. So while yields have increased over the fourth quarter, prices today indicate that forward looking expected returns have also increased.[1]

Exhibit 2.       US Treasury Yields (%) as of December 14, 2016

Source: US Department of the Treasury.

[1]    Fixed income securities are subject to increased loss of principal during periods of rising interest rates and may be subject to various other risks, including changes in credit quality, liquidity, prepayments, and other factors. Sector-specific investments can increase these risks.

Dimensional Fund Advisors LP ("Dimensional") is an investment advisor registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission. 

All expressions of opinion are subject to change without notice in reaction to shifting market conditions. This content is provided for informational purposes, and it is not to be construed as an offer, solicitation, recommendation or endorsement of any particular security, products, or services. 

Do Faster Horses Make More Money?

I knew I had to ask him about the mysteries of life
He spit between his boots and he replied
"It's faster horses, younger women, 
Older whiskey, and more money"

Country music fans probably remember Tom T. Hall’s 1975 song, “Faster Horses”. In the song, Hall talks to an old cowboy “about the mysteries of life”, to which the cowboy replied, “It’s faster horses, younger women, older whiskey, and more money.”

Faster horses seemed to provide a safer inspiration for this week’s missive than the old cowboy’s second answer. The third answer also seemed interesting, but I’m more of a consumer than a connoisseur of the fire water. (While researching this article, I stumbled upon the World’s Best Whiskies 2016, if you’re looking for Christmas gift ideas.) “More money”, well, that’s why we’re here so let’s get back to horses.

Whether it is equines, trains, telegraphs, cars, airplanes, internets, or whatever comes next, going faster seems to be an innate desire of humanity. We have gotten to a point where gratification is almost instantaneous with just about everything. But has the resulting pace from the ongoing quest for “faster horses” improved the human condition, at least as far as helping us get “more money”?

It wasn’t very long ago that if you owned some stock, you probably kept the certificate in a safe deposit box. If you were curious about what is was worth, you would look in the back pages of the newspaper where all the previous day’s closing prices were listed. When it came time to buy or sell, you would call the order into your broker and then you had a week to deliver the shares or payment, usually by the US Mail.

When I was a kid, I worked for my father during the summer at his Gulf service station. At lunch, each day, he would visit his stockbroker’s office to pull up quotes on stocks he owned or was following. Other clients of the broker and office staff would discuss the markets and current events while hanging out around the quote terminal, known as a Quotron.

In the corner, the broker kept an old ticker tape machine as part of the décor. I think they held on to the relic probably because it just looked cool, but it also offered an opportunity to appreciate the benefits of “progress”. Instead of waiting around the ticker for a trade to come across, it was now possible to type in a symbol and immediately see its price. It also replaced reams of paper with the soft green glow of an early computer screen.

By the time I was working in the industry in the early 90’s, investors could call toll free phone numbers to get quotes from a broker or through automated telephone systems. Some companies even offered software for purchase that allowed clients to get their own quotes and to make trades through their computers. It was also around this time that 24-hour business channels on cable starting to appear and that brokerage firms began to require that you hold your shares or cash at the firm where you trade.

To get current events and market information, we have gone from tuning into the evening news or reading the business section of the morning paper to having instant updates delivered to us anywhere we can get a cell or WIFI signal. With the touch of the screen, we can buy or sell an entire portfolio in an instant. But are we getting “more money” with all this speed?

The evidence suggests not. Take the turbulent market period from 2008 – 2012, for example. Equity funds in the US experienced net outflows of about $535.7 billion during this period. When you think about how gloomy the news was in that period, it really isn’t that surprising that many investors went to the sidelines.

Dimensional Funds, which are found in all our Accountable Portfolios, had $34.4 billion of net inflows throughout that same period.[i] Why might that be? Well for starters, all their funds are held by institutions or customers of Registered Investment Advisers like ATX Portfolio Advisors.

When a client at a typical investment company or brokerage firm panicked after watching the talking heads declare the coming of the four horsemen in 2008, frequently all they needed was an iPhone to go to cash. Dimensional’s investors, on the other hand, had to call into their adviser to talk about what they were feeling. That certainly was a slower process than logging in and clicking “sell all”, but that momentary pause, often, allowed reason to prevail. The result was that Dimensional’s fund managers weren’t forced to sell stocks at fire sale prices just to meet liquidation demands. In fact, they were able to pick up some bargains.

Only 15% of US equity and fixed income funds that were around in the year 2000 had beaten their stated benchmarks through 2015, while 82% of Dimensional’s funds beat theirs over that same period.[ii] That suggests that deliberately going a little slower may be one reason that Dimensional’s funds have been more successful than so many of their peers, and given their investors “more money” as a reward.

If you are wondering why you don’t have more, it may be a good time to get in touch.

[i] Dimensional estimated net flow data provided by Morningstar based on Dimensional’s US-domiciled equity mutual funds. Industry net new cash flow data provided by Investment Company Institute© based on the approximately 4,600 US-domiciled equity (domestic and international) mutual funds reported on an aggregate level to the Investment Company Institute©. This includes information on Dimensional’s US-domiciled funds during this period. For illustrative purposes only.

[ii] Data from the CRSP Survivor-Bias-Free US Mutual Fund Database, provided by the Center for Research in Security Prices, University of Chicago. Sample includes funds available at the beginning of the 15-year period ending December 31, 2015. Dimensional funds exclude VA funds and those distributed exclusively through Loring Ward. Industry funds exclude index funds, sector funds, and funds with a narrow investment focus, such as real estate and gold, money market funds, municipal bond funds, asset backed security funds, and non-US bond funds. Success rates are determined by the percentage of funds that survived and outperformed a benchmark over the 15-year period, net of fees and expenses. Dimensional funds are compared to prospectus benchmarks. Industry funds are compared to the diversified benchmark index with which they were most highly correlated over the sample period.

Tax Moves and Predictions About 2017

In case you missed it earlier this week, yours truly was quoted in a Jeff Brown article on CNBC.com about making charitable donations from your IRA. This tactic allows someone over the age of 70 1/2 to satisfy their Required Minimum Distribution but avoid paying taxes on it by directing the distribution directly to a charity. This isn't a question that comes up every day, but it can be very useful in the right circumstances.

A question that I have heard almost every day since November 8 is, “What do you think Trump means for the stock market?” Stock futures gyrated wildly the night of the election, first plunging as much as 10% before rallying back, and continuing to go up since. If we have learned anything from this election, it's that making predictions is easier than getting them right.

I have written about predictions before, but today's Update isn’t about trying to outguess the future. What we can do, however, is to look at some of the proposals being put forth by the new administration and the Congressional majority GOP to try and be better prepared for whatever comes next.

With the Republicans now controlling the executive and legislative branches, 2017 could be a year of significant tax reform. There are differences in what is being proposed by the President-Elect and Republicans in Congress, but by examining the commonalities we may be able to identify some steps we can take in 2016 or to put off until next year to take full advantage.

Both plans want to simplify the tax brackets by dropping the number of tiers from 7 to 3. As illustrated in Exhibit 1, the highest rate would drop to 33% on income over $225,000 for married folks (or $112,500 for individuals). That compares to the current 33% on income over $231,450 ($190,150), 35% on $413,350+ (413,350), and 39.6% on $466,950+($415,050). If you are in the 35% or 39.6% tiers and can defer some income into 2017, that may save you some money immediately.

Exhibit 1. From Michael Kitces at Nerd’s Eye View

Preferential treatment of capital gains and dividends will continue under both plans with some minor differences, as you can see in Exhibit 2. Both will repeal the 3.8% Medicare surtax on net investment income over $250,000 AGI for married couples ($200,000 individuals). If you are currently subject to this tax, it may be worth delaying taxable events into 2017.

Exhibit 2. From Michael Kitces at Nerd’s Eye View

Some deductions would be eliminated by both plans but one of the results of these changes in each case is the elimination of the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). If you utilize municipal bonds in your portfolio, this could make higher yielding bonds currently subject to the AMT more attractive.

It is no guarantee that all, or any, of these reforms will take place, as President-Elect Trump has shown that he can disagree with his own party as much as the opposition. However, I do predict that about half of the country will be unhappy no matter what.

Another prediction is that you will see many predictions about market returns in the coming weeks. The following Issue Brief from Dimensional shows that rather than relying on forecasts that attempt to outguess market prices, investors can instead rely on the power of the market as an effective information processing machine to help structure their investment portfolios.

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December 2016 Issue Brief

Prediction Season

The close of each calendar year brings with it the holidays as well as a chance to look forward to the year ahead.

In the coming weeks, investors are likely to be bombarded with predictions about what the future, and specifically the next year, may hold for their portfolios. These outlooks are typically accompanied by recommended investment strategies and actions that are aimed at trying to avoid the next crisis or missing out on the next “great” opportunity. When faced with recommendations of this sort, it would be wise to remember that investors are better served by sticking with a long-term plan rather than changing course in reaction to predictions and short-term calls.

PREDICTIONS AND PORTFOLIOS

One doesn’t typically see a forecast that says: “Capital markets are expected to continue to function normally,” or “It’s unclear how unknown future events will impact prices.” Predictions about future price movements come in all shapes and sizes, but most of them tempt the investor into playing a game of outguessing the market. Examples of predictions like this might include: “We don’t like energy stocks in 2017,” or “We expect the interest rate environment to remain challenging in the coming year.” Bold predictions may pique interest, but their usefulness in application to an investment plan is less clear. Steve Forbes, the publisher of Forbes Magazine, once remarked, “You make more money selling advice than following it. It’s one of the things we count on in the magazine business—along with the short memory of our readers.”(1) Definitive recommendations attempting to identify value not currently reflected in market prices may provide investors with a sense of confidence about the future, but how accurate do these predictions have to be in order to be useful?

Consider a simple example where an investor hears a prediction that equities are currently priced “too high,” and now is a better time to hold cash. If we say that the prediction has a 50% chance of being accurate (equities underperform cash over some period of time), does that mean the investor has a 50% chance of being better off? What is crucial to remember is that any market-timing decision is actually two decisions. If the investor decides to change their allocation, selling equities in this case, they have decided to get out of the market, but they also must determine when to get back in. If we assign a 50% probability of the investor getting each decision right, that would give them a one-in-four chance of being better off overall. We can increase the chances of the investor being right to 70% for each decision, and the odds of them being better off are still shy of 50%. Still no better than a coin flip. You can apply this same logic to decisions within asset classes, such as whether to currently be invested in stocks only in your home market vs. those abroad. The lesson here is that the only guarantee for investors making market-timing decisions is that they will incur additional transactions costs due to frequent buying and selling.

The track record of professional money managers attempting to profit from mispricing also suggests that making frequent investment changes based on market calls may be more harmful than helpful. Exhibit 1, which shows S&P’s SPIVA Scorecard from midyear 2016, highlights how managers have fared against a comparative S&P benchmark. The results illustrate that the majority of managers have underperformed over both short and longer horizons.

Exhibit 1.       Percentage of US Equity Funds That Underperformed a Benchmark

Source: SPIVA US Scorecard, “Percentage of US Equity Funds Outperformed by Benchmarks.” Data as of June 30, 2016.

Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Indices are not available for direct investment; therefore, their performance does not reflect the expenses associated with the management of an actual portfolio. The S&P data is provided by Standard & Poor’s Index Services Group.

Rather than relying on forecasts that attempt to outguess market prices, investors can instead rely on the power of the market as an effective information processing machine to help structure their investment portfolios. Financial markets involve the interaction of millions of willing buyers and sellers. The prices they set provide positive expected returns every day. While realized returns may end up being different than expected returns, any such difference is unknown and unpredictable in advance.

Over a long-term horizon, the case for trusting in markets and for discipline in being able to stay invested is clear. Exhibit 2 shows the growth of a US dollar invested in the equity markets from 1970 through 2015 and highlights a sample of several bearish headlines over the same period. Had one reacted negatively to these headlines, they would have potentially missed out on substantial growth over the coming decades.

Exhibit 2.       Markets Have Rewarded Discipline
Growth of a dollar—MSCI World Index (net dividends), 1970–2015

In US dollars. Indices are not available for direct investment. Their performance does not reflect the expenses associated with the management of an actual portfolio. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. MSCI data © MSCI 2016, all rights reserved

CONCLUSION

As the end of the year approaches, it is natural to reflect on what has gone well this year and what one may want to improve upon next year. Within the context of an investment plan, it is important to remember that investors are likely better served by trusting the plan they have put in place and focusing on what they can control, such as diversifying broadly, minimizing taxes, and reducing costs and turnover. Those who make changes to a long-term investment strategy based on short-term noise and predictions may be disappointed by the outcome. In the end, the only certain prediction about markets is that the future will remain full of uncertainty. History has shown us, however, that through this uncertainty, markets have rewarded long-term investors who are able to stay the course.

(1) Excerpt from presentation at the Anderson School of Management, University of California, Los Angeles, April 15, 2003.

Source: Dimensional Fund Advisors LP.

Diversification does not eliminate the risk of market loss. Investment risks include loss of principal and fluctuating value. There is no guarantee an investing strategy will be successful.

All expressions of opinion are subject to change. This article is distributed for informational purposes, and it is not to be construed as an offer, solicitation, recommendation, or endorsement of any particular security, products, or services.