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Talking Stocks

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11–20 of 28 posts

Re: Talking Stocks

#11
post #4
post #3

I had read A Random Walk Down Wall Street in college. I truly thought that the markets were efficient, that any available knowledge about a company was already reflected in its stock price. Yet I saw Raleigh using the information I gave him to make money for his clients. Heh, that's exactly what I'm experiencing now. I've always bought the efficient markets hypothesis (i.e., that current prices already factor in all…

In order to exploit the "inefficient market hypothesis", you need to know what information is reflected in stock price and what is not. This means you need to know the market, not just the stock.

I'm not sure that's true. e.g. if you have a company that has real estate worth $10/share, and a business that's worth $10/share, and the stock trades at $15, you don't really need to know whether the market underestimates the real estate, underestimates the business, or some combination of the two.

I guess for certain kinds of dirty hedges (e.g. trading the crack spread and trading oil refinery stocks) you might need to know that.

Re: Talking Stocks

#12
The points he makes at the end of his "My Investment advice for 2006" are dead-on, especially points 2 and 3. Investing well in the market requires a lot of time - saving money doesn't, and investing in yourself (side projects for example) probably has the greatest potential for wealth generation.

Re: Talking Stocks

#13

The secret to building a sustainable growing investment portfolio: DCF

Explain

He may be suggesting that you buy some Dohar Cattle Feed Company stock (that's what I get when I search Google Finance for 'DCF'), but it's probably a reference to discounted cash flow, a very useful tool for evaluating certain business.

The idea of DCF is to split up the value of an investment into chunks of future cash flow, and ask yourself how much you'd pay for each chunk. For a simple example, if you have a business that's sure to pay you $100, once, a year from now, you ask yourself: how much would I have to put in the bank, now, to get $100 on that date? That amount is the present value of that cash flow.

Now consider a business that will pay that same certain $100, but after two years. The principle is the same -- how much would you put into a bank account now to get that same $100 on the same date?

To further complicate things, imagine that you're betting on a coin flip: two years from now, you will get either $100 (heads) or $0 (tails). To figure out the net present value, you'd first determine the average outcome ($50), then decide how much you'd have to put in a risk-free account now to get that amount in two years.*

Put these together, and you can understand the DCF framework. Let's say you have a business that earned $100 last year, and that you expect to earn about 5% more each year thereafter. But in any given year, there's a 10% chance that the business will go under. The discounted future value is that same procedure, repeated for each year: the price you should pay is how much you'd invest in a bank account now for a 90% chance of $105 in a year, plus an 81% chance of $110.25 in two years, etc., or sum(100 * 1.05^n * .9^n * [1 - risk-free interest rate]^n).

So now all you have to do is 1) figure out what the business will earn every year from now until the end of time, and 2) figure out the intrinsic value of a given sum of money to be delivered at a given future date. These are both, of course, impossible. But rough estimates get you pretty close to where you need to be, and it provides a good way to compare two stable-growth businesses in the same industry (how much should you pay for a soft drink company growing at 3% each year, versus an otherwise identical company growing at 5% each year, for example?).

* This assumes you have an infinite tolerance for risk. But a one in a billion chance of one billion dollars is probably not worth a dollar -- or, rather, it's worth more than a dollar if you enjoy gambling, and less than a dollar if you intend to retire on it.

Edit: replaced a second '$105' with the correct number, $110.25.

Re: Talking Stocks

#14

I agree with most of what he writes, other than his dividends vs share buybacks commentary. I'm glad he published the descending comments though. A few quick thoughts: 1. Dividends are taxed, share buybacks are not. This is why in cases where a mature Company is sitting on a large pile of cash with little to no long term debt, share buybacks provide more value by avoiding the tax man. 2. If the management team truly…

A stock buyback only increases the fundamental value of the company if it results in an increase in dividends per share. A company that buys back stock instead of paying dividends, and also has no intention of ever paying dividends, would only be valuable in the way a baseball card is valuable.

Re: Talking Stocks

#15
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In order to exploit the "inefficient market hypothesis", you need to know what information is reflected in stock price and what is not. This means you need to know the market, not just the stock.

I'm not sure that's true. e.g. if you have a company that has real estate worth $10/share, and a business that's worth $10/share, and the stock trades at $15, you don't really need to know whether the market underestimates the real estate, underestimates the business, or some combination of the two. I guess for certain kinds of dirty hedges (e.g. trading the crack spread and trading oil refinery stocks) you might nee…

You don't have complete information, so the market may know something about the stock that you don't. Even if you're right, the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent. So you do need to know the market.

Re: Talking Stocks

#16
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that's true. e.g. if you have a company that has real estate worth $10/share, and a business that's worth $10/share, and the stock trades at $15, you don't really need to know whether the market underestimates the real estate, underestimates the business, or some combination of the two. I guess for certain kinds of dirty hedges (e.g. trading the crack spread and trading oil refinery stocks) you might nee…

You don't have complete information, so the market may know something about the stock that you don't. Even if you're right, the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent. So you do need to know the market.

That's true. And I may know something about the stock that the market doesn't. It's pretty impractical to make your decisions by finding out that everyone else is wrong, rather than by ensuring that you're right (or as right as you can be). It doesn't scale, either -- AT&T used to have over a million shareholders, and interviewing every one of them about whether Ma Bell was going to raise their dividend next quarter sounds like a real chore.

Even if you're right, the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.

If you're leveraged, yes. If you aren't leveraged, you're going to be solvent forever. And anyway, arguing about the timing obscures the real decision -- I wouldn't discourage someone from pursuing a career because I didn't know whether or not every employer would recognize their talent after the first interview.

Re: Talking Stocks

#17

I agree with most of what he writes, other than his dividends vs share buybacks commentary. I'm glad he published the descending comments though. A few quick thoughts: 1. Dividends are taxed, share buybacks are not. This is why in cases where a mature Company is sitting on a large pile of cash with little to no long term debt, share buybacks provide more value by avoiding the tax man. 2. If the management team truly…

A stock buyback only increases the fundamental value of the company if it results in an increase in dividends per share. A company that buys back stock instead of paying dividends, and also has no intention of ever paying dividends, would only be valuable in the way a baseball card is valuable.

Right, which is why I said "mature company" (who is hopefully, by then, issueing dividends :-D). At the same time, if a company issues dividends it can't afford to pay (cough Citi cough) this can be devastating to a Company's prospects.

At it's core, the whole reason stocks are worth anything to begin with is the anticipation of future dividends (DCF).

Re: Talking Stocks

#18

The secret to building a sustainable growing investment portfolio: DCF

Explain

Discounted Cashflow Model is one of the most robust way to value a company (whether public or private). Unlike other models like the dividend model, price/earnings model, a DCF model is flexible enough to value almost all type of businesses (early stage, high-growth, maturing).

And its fundamental concept is so simple: You just need to make really good guesses of the future cashflows and discount it back to the present and what you get is the intrinsic value.

Assuming this public company is valued at $1 billion but based on your inside knowledge of the company's projected cashflows, you derive an intrinsic present value of $5 billion - it's a screaming buy.

Later, as time goes by and the company meets your previous cashflow projections, the market will adjust their valuation to your initial calculation and voila, you're in the money.

Other models like P/E and dividend don't work well. Earnings and dividends can be manipulated SO EASILY. Imagine some dying company borrowing lots of cash in order to increase their dividend. Based on the dividend model, its valuation increases.

So the only thing you can back your life on is the cashflow. You can't just manufacture cash.

DCF can help you explain several phenomenons. Eg. why doesn't Salesforce crash despite its high P/E? Because the bulk of Salesforce customers pay upfront. So there's a lot of cash coming in and that cash has value.

So here's a fun exercise for you to do today: Project Facebook's cashflow for the next 10 years and discount it back to the present and compare it with Microsoft's $15 billion valuation. Then you can tell people whether Microsoft overpayed.

Happy DCFing!

Re: Talking Stocks

#19
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In order to exploit the "inefficient market hypothesis", you need to know what information is reflected in stock price and what is not. This means you need to know the market, not just the stock.

I'm not sure that's true. e.g. if you have a company that has real estate worth $10/share, and a business that's worth $10/share, and the stock trades at $15, you don't really need to know whether the market underestimates the real estate, underestimates the business, or some combination of the two. I guess for certain kinds of dirty hedges (e.g. trading the crack spread and trading oil refinery stocks) you might nee…

The market is the inefficiency, not the stock. In order to exploit these iniffeciencies, you need to decouple the fundamentals of the underlying company with the fundamentals of the market. The price at which a financial instrument trades is simply the sum of the market supply and demand. That's the big secret. If supply runs out and demand is still there, the price will go up until someone is willing to supply more stock.

Re: Talking Stocks

#20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that's true. e.g. if you have a company that has real estate worth $10/share, and a business that's worth $10/share, and the stock trades at $15, you don't really need to know whether the market underestimates the real estate, underestimates the business, or some combination of the two. I guess for certain kinds of dirty hedges (e.g. trading the crack spread and trading oil refinery stocks) you might nee…

The market is the inefficiency, not the stock. In order to exploit these iniffeciencies, you need to decouple the fundamentals of the underlying company with the fundamentals of the market . The price at which a financial instrument trades is simply the sum of the market supply and demand. That's the big secret. If supply runs out and demand is still there, the price will go up until someone is willing to supply more…

That's true, but it sounds like you're talking more about speculation (guessing prices irrespective of values) rather than investing (purchasing when the price does not reflect full value).
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