Morningstar Ramps Up Analyst Ratings for Mutual Funds. Positive Bias Continues.

UPDATE: 8/1/12 - You can see updated ratings as of 6/30/12 here.
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Morningstar continues to roll-out its new 'forward-looking' analyst ratings for mutual funds. When I wrote about these ratings in November after their initial launch they had ratings for 349 funds. They have increased that to 410 (as of 12/31/2011). You can download the complete listing here.

As a refresher here is what Morningstar says about it's new rating system

"Unlike the backward-looking Morningstar Rating™ (often referred to as the "star rating"), which assigns 1 to 5 stars based on a fund's past risk- and load-adjusted returns versus category peers, the Analyst Rating is the summary expression of Morningstar's forward-looking analysis of a fund. Morningstar analysts assign the ratings on a five-tier scale with three positive ratings of Gold, Silver, and Bronze, a Neutral rating, and a Negative rating.

The Analyst Rating is based on the analyst's conviction in the fund's ability to outperform its peer group and/or relevant benchmark on a risk-adjusted basis over the long term. If a fund receives a positive rating of Gold, Silver, or Bronze, it means Morningstar analysts think highly of the fund and expect it to outperform over a full market cycle of at least five years."

So far it appears that this system is going to suffer from the same problems which plague stock ratings.....a lack of negative ratings. Despite the fact that the majority of mutual funds under-perform their benchmarks, only 4% of Morningstar's 410 analyst ratings are "negative".

Morningstar has still not clarified how 21 index funds have managed to receive "metal" ratings. After all, how does an index fund outperform it's benchmark? By their own definitions, the best an index fund should be rated is "neutral". Yet every index fund they have rated up to this point has received a rating higher than Neutral (with the majority getting 'gold' ratings).

Below is a chart breaking down fund attributes by each rating

Nothing too shocking here. The average fund receiving their highest "forward looking" grade also has a higher backward looking star rating. Fund expenses are lower and manger tenure is longer. The most questionable aspect comes into play regarding fund size. Many funds that performed well in the past did not necessarily do so with large asset bases, the assets usually came after the performance. With "gold" rated funds having such large asset bases on average, will they be able to outperform going forward?

I will be checking up on Morningstar's roll-out of their new ratings from time to time and will definitely check up again this time next year to see how this batch of ratings has performed.

Who Owns The World's Financial Assets? And Why Are U.S. Households So Fascinated With Stocks?

I came across an interesting report from McKinsey Global Institute. The report includes a breakdown of the ownership of the world's financial assets as of the end of 2010. I used their information to make the below chart. 

What is interesting is the U.S. fascination with equities. It should be noted that the definition of financial assets in their report excludes "the value of real estate, derivatives, physical assets such as gold, and equity in unlisted companies."  The total value of the world's financial assets equaled $198.1 Trillion and the total value of all equities equaled $53.7 Trillion. Clearly equities, bonds, bank deposits and such are massively overshadowed by the notional value of the derivatives market which is over $700 Trillion.

Drilling down to the household level in the US reveals some more interesting observations. However, unfortunately this does not include retirement accounts (but that would only increase the equity allocation since US retirement accounts hold about a 60% allocation to stocks).

The yellow line in the graph is the inflation-adjusted S&P index. You can see how long-term market trends have affected investors asset allocations through time, with investors predictably increasing/decreasing allocations at the wrong times. But I think what is clear here, is that everyone who is saying that investors are too pessimistic.....they don't know what true pessimism looks like. Investor pessimism in the US looks more like their allocations in 1945-1950 or 1975-1990. Coincidentally, that is also when generational buying opportunities presented themselves......Sorry folks, now is not a generational buying opportunity by any stretch of the imagination, despite all those who use idiotic forward PE ratio's or useless graphs of the "fed model" to tell you otherwise. Please see below some more useful market valuation indicators which actually have a strong correlation with subsequent longer-term returns (this chart is from Doug Short at Advisor Perspectives)

The market is by no means cheap. In fact, it has only been more expensive than this (based on the Shiller PE10 ratio) about 20% of the time (and those resulted in poor longer-term returns). 

If you want to see true investor pessimism towards stocks, then look no further than Japan

And a sampling of some other countries........

I have little doubt that as the US population continues to age and the younger generation gets a sour taste in their mouth regarding stocks we will see the overall allocation to stocks by US investors continue to decline, then finally when everyone believes stocks are a losers game, it will finally be the next generational buying opportunity.

World Bank Issues The World A Rare Reality Check

The World Bank recently released it's "Global Economic Prospects" report for 2012. Organizations such as the World Bank tend to do their fair share of sugar-coating issues, however, their most recent report is about as blunt as you are likely to see from them in regards to the economic outlook.

"The world economy has entered a very difficult phase characterized by significant downside risks and fragility."

".....as a result forecasts have been significantly downgraded."

"However, even achieving these much weaker outturns is very uncertain."

"While contained for the moment, the risk of a much broader freezing up of capital markets and a global crisis similar in magnitude to the Lehman crisis remains. In particular, the willingness of markets to finance the deficits and maturing debt of high-income countries cannot be assured. Should more countries find themselves denied such financing, a much wider financial crisis that could engulf private banks and other financial institutions on both sides of the Atlantic cannot be ruled out. The world could be thrown into a recession as large or even larger than that of 2008/09."

Oh and for all those who are still deluding themselves into believing the idea that Europe will avoid a recession in 2012. According to the World Bank "Europe appears to have entered recession" which they estimate to have begun in the 4th Quarter of last year. Again this should not be a surprise to anybody, but for some reason people deny it until organizations such as these put their official stamp of approval on it (and there will probably still be deniers all the way up until each individual country makes it official.....big delay).

Here is a chart of the World Bank's estimates for GDP growth using 3 different scenarios they presented

According to the world bank regarding the baseline forecast...

"The baseline projections.....assume that efforts to-date and those that follow prevent the sovereign-debt stress of the past months from deteriorating further, but fail to completely eradicate market concerns."

I think their baseline assumptions are pretty optimistic. And regarding the contained crisis scenario...

"it is assumed that one or two small Euro Area economies (equal to about 4 percent of Area GDP) face a serious credit squeeze.

"It is assumed in this scenario that although borrowing costs in other European economies rise and banks tighten lending conditions due to losses in the directly affected economies, adequate steps are taken in response to the crisis to ensure that banking-sector stress in Europe is contained and does not spread to the rest of the high income world."

And finally regarding the larger crisis scenario....

"the freezing up of credit is assumed to spread to two larger Euro Area economies (equal to around 30 percent of Euro Area GDP)."

"Repercussions to the Euro Area, global financial systems and precautionary savings are much larger because the shock is 6 times larger"

In their conclusion:

The global economy is at a very difficult juncture. The financial system of the largest economic bloc in the world is threatened by a fiscal and financial crisis that has so far eluded policymakers’ efforts to contain it. Outside of Europe, high-income country growth, though strengthening, remains weak in historical perspective. At the same time some of the largest and most dynamic developing countries have entered a slowing phase.

These are not auspicious circumstances, and despite the significant measures that have been taken, the possibility of a further escalation of the crisis in Europe cannot be ruled out. Should this happen, the ensuing global downturn is likely to be deeper and longer-lasting than the recession of 2008/2009 because countries do not have the fiscal and monetary space to stimulate the global economy or support the financial system to the same degree as they did in 2008/09. While developing countries are in better shape than high-income countries, they too have fewer resources available (especially if international capital is not available to support deficit spending). No country and no region will escape the consequences of a serious downturn.

I'll leave you with random charts I found interesting from the report

Yes that is China growing from using 5% of the world's metal consumption to about 41% currently....now how much of that consumption is productive vs wasted building ghost cities, is another question.

When Should Wall Street 'Investment Strategists' Be Fired? Calling Out "Dr. Bob" Froehlich

In most professions if you are consistently wrong you lose your job. If for some reason you do not lose your job, you will at least lose your credibility. Oddly, that is rarely the case with Wall Street Investment Strategists. In fact, regardless of how their calls turn out, many show up day after day on the media circuit merry-go-round (and investment conference merry-go-round).

What brings this up is a recent meeting I attended where Dr. Bob Froehlich was the main speaker. You have probably seen him on CNBC, Fox News and the like. Somehow I seem to cross paths with "Dr. Bob" a couple times a year. He currently is the "Chief Investment Strategist" for The Hartford. He used to have essentially the same job for DWS Investments. In fact, I remember a rep from the firm bringing him by our office in mid-2008. And yes, he was in full permabull mode. According to him, The Fed was gonna keep lowering rates and you don't want to fight the fed! It was worth a good chuckle (after all, he still thought housing was only a "subprime" problem).

If you ever wanted a shining example of a "permabull" this is him. In his own words from his Jan 3rd commentary he says "As a strategist who always sees the glass half full......" However, honestly, I'm not sure he ever sees the glass as anything but completely full. Now there is nothing wrong with being optimistic....But blind optimism does justice to no investor.

Just to illustrate how consistently bullish this guy is...........BussinessWeek April 2000 - Branding a Bull, Kemper-Style (yes folks, this is about a week after the market peak, when the S&P was around 1500).

"Undoubtedly another reason Scudder Kemper is "branding" itself by featuring Froehlich is that he's an unabashed bull. He has produced a series of audio tapes called From Wall Street to Main Street that extols the great benefits of investing in stocks. He has penned a recent book, The Three Bears are Dead!, which makes the case that the "three bears" of investing--inflation, interest rates, and government spending--all died in 1997. And Froehlich is a big believer in "Boomernomics"--that is, that baby boomers are just starting to drive the economy and stock market and that their impact will be much greater than anyone thought, prolonging the bull market well into the 2010s. The Chicago Tribune wrote about Froehlich, "There are [those] who have the eyes to see the dust in the distance, ears to hear the hoofbeats of the thundering herd, and noses to smell the money to be made. One of those is Robert Froehlich."

Dr. Bob couldn't smell money to be made if someone shoved it up his nose. That is, unless we are talking about how he really makes his money (because we know it's not by investing). He knows he makes his money as an "investment strategist" by selling blind optimism.

Yes "Boomernomics" would prolong the bull market well into the 2010s.......and nearly 12 years later here we are........

Despite his continued bad calls, mutual fund companies continue to employ this guy. Why? Because apparently they believe optimism sells! When DWS Investments finally got rid of the guy in late 2008 (after another market crash he was completely blindsided by), Hartford was quick to swoop up the hype machine.

Dr. Bob puts out his 10 investment themes yearly and they tend to always be good for a laugh. For example, the below was Dr Bob's Top 10 Investment Themes for 2011.

10: Investment Theme: “I WANT TO TAKE YOU HIGHER” (INTEREST RATES RISE)
Strategy: OVERWEIGHT PRODUCTS THAT HAVE A POSITIVE CORRELATION TO A RISING-RATE ENVIRONMENT 

Not Quite......

9) Strategy: OVERWEIGHT THE TECHNOLOGY SECTOR  

8) Strategy: OVERWEIGHT THE INDUSTRIAL SECTOR

7) Strategy: OVERWEIGHT GERMANY 

6) Strategy: OVERWEIGHT ENERGY SECTOR
5) Strategy: OVERWEIGHT THE MATERIAL SECTOR
4) Strategy: OVERWEIGHT CHINA
3) Strategy: UNDERWEIGHT THE U.S. DOLLAR
2) Strategy: OVERWEIGHT INTERNATIONAL STOCK
1) Strategy: OVERWEIGHT COMMODITIES

Well let's first look at how his sector bets turned out (I included commodities using the S&P GSCI). Dr. Bob's sector "overweights" are in red.

Gee, if he only would have picked financials he would have been perfect.........at picking all the WORST performing sectors. The story isn't really any different if we look at global sector performance either (except the negative numbers are much larger).

How about his country overweights? China and Germany were both down about 18%. That compares to the MSCI World index which was down just over 7%. Clearly not a good call. And it goes without saying that his call to overweight international stocks (with an emphasis on emerging markets) and underweighting the dollar were both bad calls.

Now anyone can get calls wrong, and everybody does. But the consistency with which he makes bad calls and the degree to which he misses every crisis is amazing.

So what are his themes for 2012?

10) STRATEGY: Overweight Large-Cap Stocks  

9) STRATEGY: Invest in Tax-Free Municipal Bonds 

8) STRATEGY: Overweight Dividend-Paying Stocks Over Non-Dividend-Paying Stocks.

7) STRATEGY: Invest in Japan

6) STRATEGY: Invest in International Bonds 

5) STRATEGY: Overweight the Energy Sector

4) STRATEGY: Overweight the Health Care Sector

3) STRATEGY: Invest in China

2) STRATEGY: Overweight the Media Industry

1) STRATEGY: Invest in Commodities 

It will be hard for him to do worse than 2011. Here are a few gems from the above letter. First in regards to China

"I believe the economy has a major reversal growing at 9.5% to 10% instead of the 7%-7.5% consensus the market is currently calling for in 2012."

He was also very adamant about the China story when I saw him speak. The funny thing is this part where he claims to be able to spot bubbles...

"Look, the one thing that I’ve learned in my 35-year career is what the chart looks like for an asset bubble. It looks just like gold where the chart simply goes higher, and higher, heading straight up with no end in sight"

So he has had a 35 year career but about 23 years or so into it he wasn't able to spot the tech bubble, and then he wasn't able to spot the real estate bubble. But NOW he has it down! Wait, what was that about China again? So he learned to spot bubbles but yet doesn't see one in Chinese Real Estate?

But the best is this one, and he repeated this many times also when he spoke.

"First of all, Europe won’t fall into a recession"

The above is a perfect reflection of how long Dr. Bob stays in denial. The reality is the Eurozone is already in a recession!

Again, the purpose of this post was not to point out individual bad calls (although I did that). The purpose was to point out how ridiculous it is that the financial industry pays so much attention to (and regurgitates) opinions without any regard to the credibility or supporting facts behind those opinions.

Let me leave you with Dr. Bob's most ironic comment from his most recent letter. This is from his theme #9: Invest in Tax-Free Municipal Bonds (where he tries to call out Meredith Whitney for her call on Muni's)

"It never ceases to amaze me how the doom and gloomers tend to get all of the media headlines and hype. I guess it’s true that “bad news” sells"

News for you Dr. Bob. If bad news sells, why do you still have a job? Furthermore if accuracy matters, why do you have a job? And while he doesn't say it in his letter, when I heard him speak, he actually spoke about how upset he was that Meredith Whitney "was not held accountable" for her call! Really Bob? Really?

Infographic All About Gold. How about Platinum?

At the bottom of this post is an interesting infographic about Gold provided by numbersleuth. So if all the gold in the world would provide 5 rings for every person......what would it be for platinum? And the better question is, since platinum is the most rare of precious metals and actually has industrial uses as well, why is platinum over $200/oz cheaper than it's less rare counterpart? 

History says we have an anomaly (although not yet at record levels). Maybe by the time platinum gets it's own infographic the ratio will be a little more normalized.......

(click image to see larger on numbersleuth)

The List of Companies & Governments Preparing for Euro Breakup Grows

The list of companies and governments putting plans and systems in place to handle a breakup of the Euro continues to grow. Last week The Telegraph reported the UK "Treasury plans for Euro failure":

"The Treasury is working on contingency plans for the disintegration of the single currency that include capital controls.

The preparations are being made only for a worst-case scenario and would run alongside similar limited capital controls across Europe, imposed to reduce the economic fall-out of a break-up and to ease the transition to new currencies. 

Officials fear that if one member state left the euro, investors in both that country and other vulnerable eurozone nations would transfer their funds to safe havens abroad. Capital flight from weak euro nations to the UK would drive up sterling, dealing a devastating blow to the Government’s plans to rebalance the economy towards exports."

The bold was added by me.....Clearly that should say "perceived" safe havens. To think currencies from indebted counties like the UK, Japan and the US are true "safe havens" is wishful thinking.

"Britain’s response to a euro meltdown would reflect measures taken by Argentina when it dropped the dollar peg in 2002 and by Czechoslovakia after the country broke in two in 1993, according to sources. Faced with a massive capital inflow, the Czech Republic temporarily imposed taxes on foreign inflows to banks and capped the amount of overseas credit domestic banks could use.

In addition to the risk of an appreciating currency, dealing with potential UK corporate exposures to the euro poses a considerable challenge for the Treasury.

Britain’s top four banks have about £170bn of exposure to the troubled periphery of Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain through loans to companies, households, rival banks and holdings of sovereign debt. For Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland, the loans equate to more than their entire equity capital buffer."

Here is a nice chart from economist Steve Keen's debtwatch blog on the distribution of debt in the UK

You can expect that UK Government debt line (orange) to continue to explode as it absorbs (via bailouts) the coming defaults in the UK Finance sector (black line). Want to think about the possible magnitude we are talking about? And we thought the US finance sector was bloated........

What was that about running to the safe haven of the UK? If you think running to your slaughter is a good idea then be my guest. The UK will eventually have no choice but to print, print, print.

So despite ongoing denials to any possibility of a Euro breakup. A wide range of companies  and governments are putting plans and systems in place for that very possibility. Not a bad idea considering that the "possibility" will eventually be reality despite all the denials. The only question is which countries will be left in the Euro, if any, and how long will it take to play out?