Jeremy Grantham: Lessons Learned From the Past Decade

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

Jeremy Grantham has become a familiar and very popular face on this site. For those treasuring his insight, wisdom and prescient calls, the co-founder and chairman of Boston-based GMO has just published the Q4 edition of his quarterly newsletter entitled “What a decade!”.

Grantham’s letter begins with a short addendum (”Stop the Presses!”), which addresses two newsworthy items, namely “Volckerization” and the scrapping of the limit of the money corporations spend to influence political outcomes.

“What a Decade!” follows, providing Grantham’s thoughts on the past decade including the following list of lessons learned:

• The Fed wields even more financial influence than we thought.

• Low rates have a more powerful effect on driving financial assets than on driving the economy.

• The Fed is capable of being extremely out of touch with the real world - “What housing bubble?” - plus more doctrinaire - “No, the low rates had no effect on housing” - than anyone could have imagined.

• Congress is nearly dysfunctional, primarily controlled by large corporations, and hamstrung by the supermajority now routinely required in the Senate.

• Government administrations can be incompetent for long periods.

• Poor leadership can really damage a country’s hard-won reputation in a mere 10 years.

• Obama is not a miracle worker!

• The leadership of major corporations can be very lacking in insight and competence on a fairly routine basis.

• The two time-tested investment tools, value (P/E ratios and P/B ratios) and price momentum, are now much more heavily used and not so reliable as they once were, say from 1977 to 1997.

• Asset classes really are more inefficiently priced than individual stocks on average, and therefore offer greater opportunities for adding value and reducing risk.

• Developed countries, including the US, are past their prime compared with developing countries: it is indeed a new world order.

• Education and training are the keys to increasing wealth on a sustainable basis and the US is in danger of losing its once large edge here.

• We all live on an island, which can be overexploited and turned into a barren Easter Island if we are not careful. Resources are finite and biodiversity is fragile, and both must be protected. Carbon emissions are the single greatest threat.

• Being a global policeman is expensive, and somewhere between difficult and impossible.

• The Fed learns no lessons!

The Appendix to the report is a summary of Grantham’s part in a debate entitled “Financial Innovation Boosts Economic Growth”, sponsored by The Economist. The video of the debate follows below.

Click here for Grantham’s full report.

Source: Jeremy Grantham, GMO, January 2010.

Tags: Asset Classes, Co Founder, Competence, Developed Countries, Developing Countries, Financial Assets, Gmo, Housing Bubble, Investment Tools, Jeremy Grantham, Large Corporations, Long Periods, Miracle Worker, Political Outcomes, Poor Leadership, Price Momentum, Quarterly Newsletter, Ratios, Routine Basis, Supermajority
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Jeremy Grantham: “Fair value on the S&P is 860″

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

Jeremy Grantham has become a familiar and very popular face on this site. For those treasuring his insight, wisdom and prescient calls, the co-founder and chief investment strategist of Boston-based GMO has just published the October edition of his quarterly newsletter entitled “Just desserts and markets being silly again”.

Before quoting from the report, Grantham recently put matters into perspective in a Kiplinger article, saying: “The recent rally has been very speculative, favoring risky assets over the past few months. I’m sorry if you missed investing at the market’s March lows, but don’t compound the damage to your portfolio by chasing gains in risky assets. We’re at the beginning of a seven-year period of lean returns. You should only be buying the highest-quality blue-chip com­panies, where valuations are most attractive.”

Here are a few excerpts from the Grantham’s newsletter.

“Corporate ex-financials profit margins remain above average and, if I am right about the coming seven lean years, we will soon enough look back nostalgically at such high profits. Price/earnings ratios, adjusted for even normal margins, are also significantly above fair value after the rally. Fair value on the S&P is now about 860 (fair value has declined steadily as the accounting smoke clears from the wreckage and there are still, perhaps, some smoldering embers). This places today’s market (October 19) at almost 25% overpriced, and on a seven-year horizon would move our normal forecast of 5.7% real down by more than 3% a year. Doesn’t it seem odd that we would be measurably overpriced once again, given that we face a seven-year future that almost everyone agrees will be tougher than normal?

“Price … does matter eventually, and what will stop this market (my blind guess is in the first few months of next year) is a combination of two factors. First, the disappointing economic and financial data that will begin to show the intractably long-term nature of some of our problems, particularly pressure on profit margins as the quick fix of short-term labor cuts fades away. Second, the slow gravitational pull of value as US stocks reach +30-35% overpricing in the face of an extended difficult environment.

“It is hard for me to see what will stop the charge to risk-taking this year. With the near universality of the feeling of being left behind in reinvesting, it is nerve-wracking for us prudent investors to contemplate the odds of the market rushing past my earlier prediction of 1,100. It can certainly happen. Conversely, I have some modest hopes for a collective sensible resistance to the current Fed plot to have us all borrow and speculate again. I would still guess (a well-informed guess, I hope) that before next year is out, the market will drop painfully from current levels. ‘Painfully’ is arbitrarily deemed by me to start at -15%. My guess, though, is that the US market will drop below fair value, which is a 22% decline (from the S&P 500 level of 1,098 on October 19).

“Unlike the really tough bears, though, I see no need for a new low. I think the history books will be happy enough with the 666 of last February.”

Click here for the full report on Grantham’s reasoning for his cautious stance.

Source: Jeremy Grantham, GMO, October 2009.

Tags: Chief Investment Strategist, Co Founder, Desserts, Excerpts, Gmo, Guess, Horizon, Jeremy Grantham, Lean Years, Lows, October 19, Panies, Price Earnings Ratios, Profit Margins, Quarterly Newsletter, Rally, Risky Assets, S Market, Valuations, Wreckage
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Jeremy Grantham: The last hurrah and seven lean years

Thursday, May 7th, 2009

Jeremy Grantham’s keenly awaited quarterly newsletter, entitled “The last hurrah and seven lean years”, has just been published. Grantham, who co-founded Boston-based GMO in 1977, covers a lot of thought-provoking ground in this letter, but focuses mostly on where to invest now.

The widely-respected Grantham’s newsletter is must-read material. The first few paragraphs are published below and a link to the full article is provided at the bottom of the post.

“First, let me lament the loss of near certainties in investing. The financial and economic collapse that I described as ‘the most widely predicted surprise in the history of finance’ about 18 months ago is behind us. More precisely, we believed that bubbles had formed in global profit margins, risk premiums, and U.S. and U.K. housing prices, and that all three were ‘near certainties’ to break, with severe consequences for the economic and financial system. All have thoroughly burst and are in their over correction phase with the single exception of U.K. house prices, which I’m confident will do their duty. Normally there are, of course, no near certainties in investing.

“Life is not meant to be that easy. Asset allocators have been blessed in the last 10 years with a large collection of extraordinary outliers. As my favorite quote by Mandelbrot (1983) says, ‘Even though economics is a very old subject, it has not truly come to grips with the main difficulty, which is the inordinate practical importance of a few extreme events.’ If this last 10 years did not prove him right, nothing will.

“Since 1988, we have been offered 8 or 10 2-sigma events. (A 2-sigma event is our definition of an important bubble or bust.) All of these events were bubbles, and all behaved themselves by bursting. Now, sadly, there are probably none.

“Government bonds are the one serious candidate. In our opinion, they are badly overpriced but probably not by enough to justify the bubble title. Global equity markets are still cheap, but in major markets are nowhere near 2-sigma, 40-year bust levels. Some smallscale 2-sigma bargains may exist in the fi xed income markets in rate differentials, but need skillful analysis and knowledge to disentangle from value traps. And, they are a very far cry from, say, the opportunities offered by buying credit default swaps at a handful of basis points on overleveraged financials in early 2007. So, all in all, welcome back to the age of guesswork.”

Click here for the full report.

Source: Jeremy Grantham, GMO, May 2009.

Tags: Asset Allocators, Bubb, Bubbles, Certainties, Correction Phase, Economic Collapse, Extreme Events, Favorite Quote, Gmo, Government Bonds, House Prices, Jeremy Grantham, Lament, Lean Years, Mandelbrot, Outliers, Paragraphs, Profit Margins, Quarterly Newsletter, Risk Premiums
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Jeremy Grantham: Obama and the Teflon Men, and Other Short Stories (Part 2)

Wednesday, February 18th, 2009

I published the first part of Jeremy Grantham’s quarterly newsletter, “Obama and the Teflon Men, and Other Short Stories (Part 1)” on this site a few weeks ago. The second part of the newsletter by the chairman of Boston-based GMO has also now been published.

Whereas Part 1 included thoughts on the recent loss of perceived wealth and President Obama’s appointments in the financial arena, Part 2 deals with value traps, transitioning from bubbles to busts, ethics in the financial industry, and the value of GMO’s asset allocation expertise in an environment of “near certainties”.

Click the links for the two parts of the newsletter: Part 1 and Part 2.

Source: Source: Jeremy Grantham, GMO, January 2009.

Tags: Appointments, Asset Allocation, Boston, Bubbles, Busts, Ethics, Financial Arena, Jeremy Grantham Gmo, Obama, Quarterly Newsletter, Short Stories, Teflon, Traps
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Jeremy Grantham: Riveting Interview with Steve Forbes

Thursday, January 29th, 2009

Whoa! Jeremy Grantham gives a riveting, in-depth, specific and eloquent must-see interview. It is a clear and enlightening discussion with one of the finest and quiet geniuses in the investment world.

Subsequent to publication of Jeremy Grantham’s quarterly newsletter a few days ago, Steve Forbes conducted this interview with the chairman of Boston-based GMO. The video clip and transcript are published below.

Click here or on the image to view the video.

Click here for the transcript of the interview.

Here are the topical headings from the interview:

• Steve: China’s Long Tale
• Grantham’s Big Call
• A Whole New Bubble
• Time To Buy
• Cheapest in 20 Years
• Japan A Blue Chip?
• Emerging Markets
• Buy Big US Stocks
• Stimulus!
• Our Leaders Failed
• Dysfunctional Markets
• China Bubble

Here are a few paragraphs:

Steve Forbes: Well thank you, Jeremy, for joining us today. First, since you have bragging rights in this situation, what made you a bear, [a] great skeptic? Between 1999 until about a couple of months ago, you were saying, “Stay out.”

Jeremy Grantham: Well, really very simple. Not rocket science. We take a long-term view, which makes life, in our opinion, much easier.

Steve Forbes: Well everyone says it, but you certainly practiced it.

Jeremy Grantham: We actually do it. Well, we tried the short-term stuff and it was so hard; we thought we’d better do the long-term. We just assume that at the end, in those days, of 10 years, profit margins will be normal and price-earnings ratios will be normal. And that will create a normal, fair price. And more recently, we’ve moved to seven years, because we’ve found in our research that financial series tend to mean revert a little bit faster than 10 years–actually about six-and-a-half years. So we rounded to seven.
And that’s how we do it. And it just happened from October ‘98 to October of ‘08, the 10-year forecast was right. Because for one second in its flight path, the U.S. market and other markets flashed through normal price. Normal price is about 950 on the S&P; it’s a little bit below that today.

And on my birthday, October the 6th, the U.S. market, 10 years and four trading days later, hit exactly our 10-year forecast of October ‘98, which is worth talking about if only to enjoy spectacular luck. The P/E was a little bit lower than average and the profit margins were a little bit higher, so they beautifully offset. And given our methodology, that would mean that on October the 6th, the market should have been fairly priced on our current approach. And indeed it was–that was even more remarkable–950, plus or minus a couple of percent.

Steve Forbes: And what did you see during that 10-year period that made you feel–other than your own models–that this was something highly abnormal, that this couldn’t last?

Jeremy Grantham: Well, first of all, the magnitude of the overrun in 2000 was legendary. As historians, you know we’ve massaged the past until it begs for mercy. And we saw that it was 21 times earnings in 1929, 21 times earnings in 1965 and 35 times current earnings in 2000. And 35 is bigger than 21 by enough that you’d expect everyone would see it. Indeed, it looks like a Himalayan peak coming out of the plain.
And it begs the question, “Why didn’t everybody see it?” And I think the answer to that is, “Everybody did see it.” But agency risk or career risk is so profound, that even if you think the market is gloriously overpriced, you still have to get up and dance. Because if you sit down too quickly–

Steve Forbes: Famous words of Mr. Prince.

Click here for the transcript of the interview.

Source: Forbes, January 23, 2009.

Download the Forbes: Jeremy Grantham Briefing Book here.

Tags: Blue Chip, Boston, Bragging Rights, China, Dysfunctional, Emerging Markets, Few Days, Flight Path, Geniuses, Gmo, Half Years, Interview Source, Investment World, Japan, Jeremy Grantham, Paragraphs, Price Earnings Ratios, Profit Margins, Quarterly Newsletter, Rivetting, Rocket Science, S Market, Seven Years, Skeptic, Steve Forbes, Steven Forbes, Stimulus, Stocks, Topical Headings, Video Clip
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Jeremy Grantham: Obama and the Teflon Men, and other Short Stories

Friday, January 23rd, 2009

In October last year perennial bear Jeremy Grantham, chairman of Boston-based GMO, said: “We are reconciled to buying too soon, but we recognize that our fair value estimate of 975 on the S&P 500 is, from historical precedent, likely to overrun on the downside by 20% to 40%, giving a range of 585 to 780 on the S&P as a probable low.

“The world faces unavoidable declines in economic activity and profit margins, so this overrun is unlikely to be much less painful than average, although you never know your luck.”

Given Grantham’s forecast, it was with keen interest that I have been awaiting his latest quarterly newsletter entitled “Obama and the Teflon Men, and Other Short Stories. Part 1“. The following paragraphs are a summary of his investment recommendations from this report:

“The current disaster would have been easy to avoid by making a move against asset bubbles early in their lifecycle. It will, in contrast, be devilishly hard to get out of. But, we are deep in the pickle jar, and it seems likely that, in terms of economic pain, 2009 will be the worst year in the lives of the majority of Americans, Brits, and others. So break a leg, everyone!

“Slowly and carefully invest your cash reserves into global equities, preferring high quality US blue chips and emerging market equities. Imputed 7-year returns are moderately above normal and much above the average of the last 15 years. But be prepared for a decline to new lows this year or next, for that would be the most likely historical pattern, as markets love to overcorrect on the downside after major bubbles. 600 or below on the S&P 500 would be a more typical low than the 750 we reached for one day.

“In fixed income, risk finally seems to be attractively priced, in that most risk spreads seem attractively wide. Long government bond rates, though, seem much too low. They reflect the short-term fears of economic weakness and the need for low short-term rates. We would be short long government bonds in appropriate accounts.

“As for commodities, who knows? There were a few months where they looked like a high-confidence short, but now they are half-price or less, and are much lower confidence bets.

“In currencies, we know even less. It is easy to find currencies to dislike, and hard to find ones to like. There are no high-confidence bets, in our opinion.

“For the long term, research should be directed into portfolios that would resist both inflationary problems and potential dollar weakness. These are the two serious problems that we may have to face as a consequence of flooding the global financial system with government bailouts and government debt.”

Click here for the full report on Grantham’s views.

Tags: Blue Chips, Bond Rates, Cash Reserves, Economic Activity, Economic Pain, Economic Weakness, Emerging Market, Global Equities, Government Bond, Income Risk, Investment Recommendations, Jeremy Grantham, Keen Interest, Lows, Obama, Overrun, Pickle Jar, Profit Margins, Quarterly Newsletter, Value Estimate
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