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Overnight anomaly in treasury-lending

Large banks and companies borrow money amongst themselves for overnight cash flow planning and reserve requirements by their treasury departments. This is called the overnight repo market and is a trillion-dollar market (repo refers to repurchasing government treasury debts). There was such a shortage of available money last week, that overnight interest rates spiked from 2% to 10%. This spike was so high that the U.S. Federal Reserve injected billions to stop the overnight market from freezing up.

What is going on? Since the 2008 financial crisis, the U.S. Federal Reserve has put trillions into the U.S. financial markets by purchasing all kinds of bonds. This provided liquidity to all of the large U.S. money-center banks that were insolvent at the time, and boosted the economy. Over a decade later, in order to draw some of that extra trillions back out of the economy, the Federal Reserve has been selling bonds and allowing some to mature, pulling billions out of the financial system for about the past two years. This contraction of money will slow the economy, and banks hitting cash shortages resulted in last week’s overnight spike.

When a bank cannot get money in the overnight repo market from other lenders, then the lender of last resort is the U.S. Federal Reserve’s ‘Discount window.’ For several nights in a row the Federal Reserve had to buy $75 billion worth of bank assets to support the banks. Granted, it was not a normal day (corporate tax payments were made plus U.S. debt auction settlements – both of which sucked money out of the banking system), but all of this was known well in advance.

There are two views of this event:

1) The Fed now knows that they need to provide a much higher level of liquidity in the repo market, and they are doing that, so everything is operating normally.

2) This highlights that the banking system is so fragile that it could collapse any moment! The repo market is the canary in the coal mine for the rest of the banking system. (The average treasury security is re-collateralized 2.2 times so 3 people can believe that they each own the same asset. It is a game of musical chairs that isn’t well tracked.)

My view is that opinion #1 is correct in the short-term, that this was no big deal to the banks or the economy. However, it is still a colossal amount of money and I expect the Fed will have to lend around a half a trillion over a 3 week period. The size of this repo problem is unsettling, which leads to opinion #2: it may also be correct in the very-long term. As money manager Mitch Feierstien says, “You cannot taper a Ponzi scheme” and the Federal Reserve has been kicking this can down the road since its founding in 1913. They ramped up money printing in 1971 (when the U.S. went off the gold standard), and supercharged the money printing in 2008 with over $4 trillion. Just retracting a little of that extra money sloshing around the economy nearly seized up the overnight lending market. It appears that permanent money printing (called quantitative easing by the Fed) may not be reversed without adverse consequences. We all know how Ponzi schemes end, but I do not see signs that it will happen soon. (Although JP Morgan just informed their wealthiest retail banking clients that the U.S. dollar is losing it’s world reserve status so they should begin diversifying their assets into gold and Swiss Francs). Prudent risk management of your money is always important. Planning for unfavorable economic scenarios, even during these current times of high employment, is highly advised.

What will a financial crisis look like? The same as they usually do:

  • Liquidity will freeze in a specific market (buyers will step away from making a price in an industry that is in a speculative bubble at the time, and those asset prices will fall).
  • That liquidity crisis will begin a credit crisis (lenders will withdraw from making loans, it could begin in junk bonds, overnight repos, real estate loans, corporate bonds, or loans in industries in a speculative bubble like student loans or small oil frackers).
  • The lack of lending will begin loan defaults from companies relying too heavily upon them.
  • Those defaults will begin a cascade of secondary and tertiary defaults as solid loans are called-in by banks to be paid off immediately.
  • The expectation of further defaults will cause the stock market and bond market to fall.
  • The cascade of defaults will begin a currency crisis as demand for the dollar will fall.
  • Jobs are quickly reduced, financial markets fall, businesses retreat, and a recession begins.

Much of this volatility will occur simultaneously, over hours and months, as government officials get in front of any camera, repeating that, “The problem is contained, there is absolutely nothing to worry about,” (exactly as they did throughout 2007-2009).

The critical element in retiring wealthy

There is an audio recording of personal finance expert Dave Ramsey talking about a study that he had read. This was a large study of retirees that had become wealthy and the researchers looked into the most important element that made that happen. Some of the usual suspects for building wealth for retirement are: a high rate of return on investments; low fees and costs on investments; or choosing a specific type of investment, such as stocks or real estate. None of these mattered as much as the #1 predictor of retiring wealthy.

This very important element is: how much money you add to investments each year. Obvious, of course, but most people skip right past this concept. Instead, the average investor focuses upon growing their money with unrealistic returns and beating up their financial advisers to lower their costs and fees. Or they think they will add money later, in a few years when it is easier but rarely actually do so. Meanwhile, sitting there, clear-as-day, is the simple practice of adding more money.

This exact lesson was repeatedly driven into me by my father as he built up his net worth:

  • “Your return is a meaningless amount of money until you reach over $100,000 in your account, so focus on adding money and not fantasy returns,”
  • “Everybody gambles and loses on risky stocks and exotic mutual funds while the tortoise passes by ALL of them. I see this happen over and over with speculators for capital gains falling behind the simple income investors,”
  • “Just use prudent investments earning a stable 4-6% return and you’ll do great; passing by the stock index investors after a couple big market downturns,”
  • “There is always an investing bubble-of-the-day and nearly all bubbles collapse. Just keep adding money and seek a reasonable return. Then, after the collapse, you’ll be well ahead of any average investor,”
  • “Compound interest isn’t anything of note until you’re 20 years in, so you have to build up a meaningful balance well before then. Speed matters – and the fastest way to do that is adding new money,”
  • “Stop looking for the quick buck and pile it up in a few solid stocks that grow their dividends, or even a stock index fund,”
  • “Don’t even think of putting money into an individual stock until you have over $50,000 to $100,000. Just put your money into a safe very-short term bond fund and keep adding,”
  • “The most important thing for wealth accumulation is to keep putting in money. Otherwise, you have nothing to compound over the years,”
  • “Wealth is not a dollar amount, it is your perspective about how you view money and manage it. $100 can be spent on a concert ticket – or – it could kick off a new investment and habit to build an early retirement.”

This critical lesson of “keep adding money” was highlighted when a former neighbor gave me a recent update. He had retired 5 years ago but was recently forced to get a part-time job at a library because money was too tight. He says, “We had saved very little for retirement and unexpected expenses were killing us.” Since he had earned a very-good salary, his lack of retirement savings was not due to a lack of income or some hardship; it was because of his spending priorities. (This is common: 68% of Americans age 55-65 have less than one year’s salary in a retirement account). It is my best advice that you make it your priority to continually add new money to your investments.

Mismanagement at any income level

No matter what level of income you may have at the moment, there are businesses ready to take advantage of your financial situation. There are billion-dollar industries designed to extract the maximum amount of money from your financial decision making. These businesses are dependent upon poverty, poor cash management, poor financial planning, or pressing your weaknesses. Even with a very-low income, if you have any financial literacy then you can sidestep these vultures and remain on your upward financial trajectory. Below are a few examples of these businesses.

Money extractors of the poor:

  • Pawn shops
  • Payday loans
  • Car title loans
  • Check cashing
  • Cash for gold/jewelry

Money extractors of the middle class:

  • Credit cards
  • No-money down sales
  • Car leases
  • Tax refund loan
  • Layaway

Money extractors of the wealthy:

  • Over spending from lifestyle creep
  • Bad financial advisers
  • Public philanthropy
  • Multiple homes, cars, and boats that isn’t financially sustainable for you

I understand that an unusual set of circumstances can warrant stepping on one of these financial land mines. But if they become a routine part of your life, you are heading in the wrong financial direction. It is a red alarm that you need to make some drastic changes in your life and improve your financial literacy and capability.

Passive-index investing perils

In the long, long ago, when a stock, industry, or the overall stock market fell in price, there were bargain hunting investors willing to step in and purchase shares once they fell low enough to be a good deal. Today, passive investing into index funds accounts for over 40% for all stock institutional trading – and this percentage is rising. When passive index investing grows well beyond 50%, there is a new and substantial structural risk slowly being drizzled upon the portfolio of unknowing investors.

There are several reasons why an index fund may need to sell their shares of a stock: company names are added and deleted from indexes all the time, individual or institutional investors may sell their fund shares, forcing the fund to sell stocks to free up cash, to name a few. Now, imagine a scenario where the increasing trend toward index investing grows for another 15 years. Perhaps by then 90% of all stock shares are traded by index funds. In this future scenario, a company named XYZ is removed from a major index. Then, 90% of market participants will be trying to sell their shares at the same moment but only 10% of the entire stock participants are even available to buy any of it. The price of XYZ shares must plummet and may be in a freefall because there simply isn’t enough money available to support the old stock price. Now, what about other scenarios where index fund managers decide to get out of an industry or reduce their exposure to the whole market altogether – again, we’ll have a plummeting sector, or stock market, with no index-fund manager using reason to make a purchase.  

This is because passive index investing requires active money managers to generate “price discovery.” It is only this free-market price discovery that creates a fair price. If passive index investing dominates the stock market, then there is no one left to create a fair price; so what remains is price instability and unfair pricing (meaning prices far above and below a reasonable fair-market value). I won’t add algorithmic trading to this caldron today, but you can correctly guess that it does not add price stability.

If passive index investing continues to increase their market share, is there anything we can do to lower our exposure to a potential for flash crashes? Yes, there are two ways to hedge your portfolio:

  1. The simplest way is to move some money from stocks and bonds to cash and gold. It is a personal decision to determine a correct ratio for your portfolio, but consider holding 10%-25% of your money out of riskier stocks and bonds into cash and something non-correlated like gold and silver.
  2. Employ a “Risk Parity” method of portfolio construction. A common asset allocation model could be something like a portfolio made up of 70% stocks and 30% bonds. Risk Parity uses math to evaluate how much risk you have added to the portfolio with each asset component. For example, your portfolio’s components may be stocks, bonds, real estate, commodities, and cash. Perhaps your stocks add so much risk that to equalize its portion (parity), you should only have 24% of your portfolio in stocks. This method is something you can learn about online, but just consider that most money managers consider “managing risk” one of their most important priorities.

The future scenario of stocks plummeting from index fund activity 15 years from now may never occur. However, the more knowledgeable you are as an investor, the more you can prepare your portfolio from any potential risks on the horizon. If you can partially sidestep just one market downturn, you’ll be miles ahead toward your financial goals.

State tax competition

No matter which country, culture, or time period, anytime someone’s total income tax rate approaches 40%, they scramble to lower it. High income earners in several states are now breaching that 40% barrier, and residents have begun taking action in 2019.

There are several high-tax state candidates, the usual suspects, such as Illinois, Connecticut, and New Jersey. But this is occurring in the largest numbers in the high-tax states of New York and California. New Yorkers are streaming into no-tax Florida and Californians are streaming into no-tax Texas. (Mansions in Florida have seen prices rise all year) For the high-income earners that are remaining where they are, they are moving billions of their investment dollars into tax-exempt bonds. This is the easiest way to reduce the tax bite until they get into more serious tax planning and moving their primary residence.

As for corporations, they have been abandoning high-tax states for several years. While California gets the most press about this, the states of Illinois and Connecticut are also facing this problem. Connecticut chased the hedge funds and trading desks back to New York City, and their insurance and banking companies to the Carolinas – even as far as Oklahoma (Oklahoma city is booming). Taxes are most everyone’s largest expense so it is critical to your financial stability and success to minimize your tax burdens. If you evaluate both your personal and business taxes, you too may be better off in a different state or jurisdiction.

A tale of two estates

Nothing highlights advantages and disadvantages better than a real-life side-by-side comparison. In this case, a colleague was the executor for the modest estates of two relatives, in the same state, only a year apart.

The background: relative #1 kept meticulous records so she refused any kind of estate planning beyond a Will. Relative #2 had performed no estate planning beyond setting up a Revocable Living Trust and then placed his assets into it (re-titled the house and a few financial accounts). This was no fancy estate plan, just the most basic mechanism that every estate planning attorney would recommend for most people.

So how did these estate plans work out? Settling the estate of relative #2 consisted of two phone calls and a few paperwork filings. Extremely easy, very efficient, and the entire estate was settled within a few weeks.

The estate of relative #1 (who had a Will and meticulous records) took two years, triple the attorney fees, court drama, and one of the assets was unable to be maintained during some of this period, reducing its value for the heirs. All of this occurred within a state with a “relatively easy” probate process with low fees.   

My colleague now says: “It is a rude burden to pass on an un-prepared estate without a revocable living trust.” She calls it irresponsible and unloving to dump all the work and expense on heirs. She will no longer be the executor for estates without some minimal planning. She says, “If they aren’t willing to let me help them upfront – which reduces my burden and expense by 80% with a couple steps, then they can find someone else.”

Hey buddy, wanna buy some SLABS?

Wall Street is skilled at turning financial products (loans, leases, royalties, bonds) into securitized investment packages. Many of these turn out to be garbage which create huge losses for investors; such as: sub-prime auto loans, sub-prime home mortgages, trailer-park loans, credit card loans, and more. Some of these securities have collapsed on their own or are subsumed from an industry downturn. The most famous of which is the collateralized-debt obligations (mortgage CDOs) that were central to the 2008 financial crisis.

Since 2007, there has been an asset-backed security nicknamed SLABS (Student Loan Asset-Backed Securities). Public loans to college students are owned by the U.S. Treasury Department but private student loans are packaged and sold as SLABS. The student loans outstanding today is $1.5 trillion and growing; which some analysts are calling the next potential ‘debt bomb’ on the economy.

When interest rates are relatively low (as they have been since 2008), then some investors jump on any ridiculous and risky investment in order to gain a higher return. One of these was SLABS – they have been over-subscribed by a market that is starving for a reasonable yield. Investors that jumped in big overlooked two important factors: 33% of student loans are in deferral (not being paid currently) and 11% are in default. SLABS are a very poor risk pool with no collateral and, in my opinion, investors are not being nearly compensated enough for the risk that they are taking. Meaning that a portfolio of SLABS will most likely result in a net loss for investors no matter how well the future job market becomes. So, in 2016, it was not surprising when many tranches of SLABS were downgraded to junk credit. These ‘investments’ were issued with a high credit rating and just a few years later, their credit rating has fallen below investment grade to a junk rating.   

SLABS are an investment that you do NOT want in your portfolio. Well, how about buying the U.S. public entity servicing these student loans? Navient (that trades like a stock with ticker symbol NAVI) is a candidate which is currently yielding 4.9%. Is this something to buy? Just the opposite: there are more investors talking about shorting this than buying it. This is partly because investors want to profit like the movie The Big Short when a few smart people made a fortune from the real estate downturn in 2008. Similarly, these investors are looking at NAVI as a short candidate to profit from the student loan defaults, and then, capture profit when the economy softens and the student loan default rate will soar.

Context for U.S trade dispute with China

The U.S. stock market fell 5% this week when the Chinese currency, the yuan, hit a record low. What is going on in this trade dispute?

China was approved into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, allowing them access to free trade with the largest economies in the world. At the time, U.S. President Bill Clinton claimed that, “now we will be able to sell cars, have distribution there, open up telecommunications, lower their tariffs, and a hundred other favorable deals for us. Plus, it will make them more democratic and capitalist.” None of this occurred. Instead, China has stolen intellectual property, illegally dumped goods in the U.S., and the communist leaders still control their economy. The net result has been 4.5 million jobs leaving the U.S. for China, along with zillions of dollars in trade deficits.

Since 2001, not a single country or U.S. President has pushed back on China’s illegal and damaging behavior. That is, until President Trump. Trump has slowly been ratcheting up rhetoric and tariffs against China to level the playing field and force them into a fair and accountable trade agreement. Since China hasn’t been forced to back down in the last 18 years, they are not inclined to now, setting an unfavorable precedent. China is using every negotiating trick in their book in return – walking out of meetings, increasing tariffs on U.S. goods, and this week, lowering the yuan. This currency manipulation (which is also illegal) meant that China has more economic weapons they are willing to employ to avoid a Trump trade deal. Lowering the yuan could be a repeat of 2015 when other Asian countries were forced to lower their currency as well to keep their economic growth on track.

It is impossible to predict whether there will be some kind of trade deal and how that will impact Americans. For example, someone may have to pay an extra $2 tariff for a Chinese made shirt, however, the drop in the yuan may be $2 so the net effect may be zero on some items. (Although today for example, one of the U.S. tariffs is 25% and is only offset by a 5% drop in the yuan).The largest impact could be a reduction in the relentless intellectual property theft and counterfeiting out of China, boosting the economy of the U.S., Europe, India, etc. What is important to keep in mind is that any trade deal is a long-term game and worth any short-term volatility to get to a fair trade deal, for the first time, with China. While some business pundits whine over a Trump tweet during stock market trading hours that results in a few million temporarily lost, they should instead focus upon the result of the trade deal which will impact trillions of dollars and millions of jobs for generations.

Lessons from industry journals

If you owned a small laundry mat, you’d probably subscribe to all kinds of industry publications. This way, you’d keep up with: technology changes, trends, risks, best practices, new income sources, and more. Reading these would simply be a prudent business practice. For many people, their retirement accounts are among their largest assets and yet, very few read the trade journals to have any idea what is going on. I am not referring to fluffy retail magazines but the publications that industry professionals read – such as finance journals and financial planning publications. A few things I learned from reading these this week.

1. Betterment.com is offering a 2.69% savings account to lure new accounts with FDIC insurance. (I opened one myself to earn more on savings).

2. Target Date funds may not work as planned, even though this is the MOST commonly selected fund for 401(k) plans. Research is indicating that stock equity exposure should be a U-curve over time, instead of constantly decreasing. The low-point of the ‘U’ is the date of your retirement.

3. The U.S. Department of Labor wants to allow the worst financial product into 401(k) plans: annuities. Annuities are the most overpriced, complicated, and problematic investment product that, in my opinion, are suitable for almost nobody. Yet, the U.S. Congress is considering exposing more savers to the insurance wolves. No surprise that the congressman who introduced the bill has received huge donations from insurance companies and Fidelity Investments.

The investing landscape is always changing, and some fairly important news items (like those above), are available but very few people make themselves are aware of them. Managing your money is an unavoidable and tiny part-time job for everyone: so how are you allocating your investment time each month?

Parkinson’s Law for personal finance

Cyril Parkinson wrote an essay in The Economist magazine published in 1955. Included is his First Law that, “Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.” As you can imagine, this concept can be applied to numerous behavioral traits, which includes all aspects of managing money. Parkinson’s Second Law states, “Expenditure rises to meet income.” The remedy for all types of Parkinson’s Law applications is the exact same: you must set your own internal limits. Exert your willpower, creativity, and planning to set and enforce your own personal limits. In the case of money, this means that without your own limits you will likely find yourself spending all of your income, leaving nothing for maintenance, repairs, or replacements, let alone emergency savings to investments.

You have likely heard a few of these self-imposed money rules before:

  • Save 10% of your income
  • Save 50% of any salary increase
  • Save 100% of any inheritance or unexpected money
  • Purchase only used cars

These rules may be appropriate to your situation, or maybe not, but you must discover, create, and refine some of your own personal money rules and limits. Otherwise, you may end up like the average person that falls into the rut of Parkinson’s Law with scant savings, no retirement assets, and unnecessary financial struggle.

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