The Investment Scientist

The following is a chart I grabbed from the St. Louis Federal Reserve website. It more or less explains why we are experiencing runaway inflation now, and why it may not easily go away.

The chart shows the total M1 money supply. Note that as recently as 2012, the total money supply was just over $2T, but now, only ten years later, it is over $20T. That’s a ten-fold increase. The majority of this increase came during the Pandemic when within a few short months, the money supply increased from $4T to 16T. 

Only after March of this year, when it became clear that inflation is not “transitory,” did that money supply begin to taper off slightly. It does not look like it will ever go back to the level it was at prior to 2020, though.

Since the beginning of this year, the stock market has experienced its worst six months in the last 50 years. At one point, the Nasdaq was down 30%, and the Dow and the S&P 500 were in bear market territory. From its lowest point, the market has recovered a bit, but after Chairman Powell’s Jackson Hole speech, the market seems to have resumed its slide. So the question is, will the market give us even deeper discounts on stocks?

Before we go into that, let me sum up my impression of Chairman Powell’s Jackson Hole speech. He has found his inner Paul Volcker! He has turned from a super dove to a super hawk when it comes to inflation.

What a difference a month can make! At the end of June, the stock market gave us discounts of between 20% to 30% (depending on indexes.) That made the first half of 2022 the worst six months of the stock market since 1970. Many investors were panicky! I, on the other hand, called it a good opportunity to acquire assets on the cheap. 

What a difference one month can make! All through July, the market went up and up despite much bad news like we are now technically in a recession. Now that the month is over, stocks are between 7.5% to 10% more expensive (depending on indexes.) Happy now?

In a previous article, I used the Quantity of Money equation to explain what the Fed had done to rescue the economy from imminent collapse at the onset of the Pandemic. Today I will explain why doing that caused inflation and why that inflation is not unlikely to be transitory unless certain things happen.

I learned this “Quantity of Money” equation during my Oxford program and it has greatly helped me understand Fed’s actions and their implications.

I am writing this article one hour before today’s market close. If there are no surprises, the S&P 500 will end the day in a bear market, meaning the index is giving us a 20% discount  from its peak. As a comparison, the Nasdaq is already giving us a 30% discount. 

As savvy investors, many of my clients and readers want to know: will the discount get deeper? And how long will the discount last? Well, like I always say, nobody can predict the future, but we surely can learn from history. That’s why I have done a study of all twelve bear markets since 1950. The table below illustrates my findings:

If you bought a bond fund three months ago, you may have seen your fund go down about 10% in value! What the heck is going on? Aren’t bond funds supposed to be safe? In today’s newsletter, I will explain what’s going on, I will explain why you should still consider your bond funds safe, and I will even give you some hidden upsides of bond funds going down in value.

What’s Going On?
Last month we saw interest rates rallying. Bonds are essentially fixed future promised payments.  The current value of a bond is the sum of all fixed payments discounted by interest rates. When interest rates go up, it stands to reason that, applying the mathematical formula, the current value of the bond will  go down. This mathematical logic applies to all bond funds. 

From the peak, Nasdaq is down about 24% and the S&P 500 is down about 14%. I am sure when you read your investment statement, you will feel queasy and wonder if you should stay invested. I think this is a good time to review my wardrobe theory of investment. Here is what I wrote in December 2018:

Treat your investment portfolio the same way you would treat your wardrobe…

For simplicity’s sake, let’s say you acquire your entire wardrobe from Neiman Marcus. If Neiman Marcus had an across-the-board 50%-off sale, would you throw up your hands in despair and say, “Darn it, my entire wardrobe just lost half of its value. I better sell it all at the flea market or I will lose everything?”

The US inflation numbers for March just came out – it’s 8.5%, another 40-year high. I am afraid that, with the Ukraine War still raging, inflation will get worse before it gets better.

Shortly after the Russian Invasion of Ukraine, the West adopted the “Nuclear Option” of economic sanctions – expelling Russia from the SWIFT system. SWIFT is the payment system that undergirds international trades. Now that  Russia is no longer part of this, it can not sell its energy and agricultural products to the world market. 

How Would That Affect Global Commodity Prices?
Russia is one of the top three exporters of the following commodities: oil and gas, wheat, maize, sunflower seeds, sunflower oil, and fertilizers. On average it accounts for about 15% of world supplies. When these supplies are pulled out of the global market, the price of these commodities will skyrocket as they already have. Since these are basic commodities, and many products use them as inputs. The price shock is going to filter through downstream products as well. 

In the face of rising uncertainties and the prospect of persistent inflation, today I investigated the historical performance of stocks and gold relative to inflation. Here is what I found:

Over the last few days, I have begun to sense that a number of my clients are worried since the S&P 500 has dropped 13% and Nasdaq, about 20%. 

I would like to argue, if you are going to worry about something, please worry about the inflation rate, which just went up to 7.9% in February even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

Why is inflation so much more damaging?
You could have kept your money in a safe, and yet you still lost 7.9% to inflation in one year. If this level of inflation keeps going for ten years, you will lose 79% of the value of your money. That’s basically a wipeout.

Last Thursday when the news reported that Russia had just launched an invasion of Ukraine, the market opened down nearly 800 points. A client called to ask if we should move to safety, but I was able to persuade him to stay put. I did that without knowing that the stock market would end the day slightly positive, followed by the BEST rally since 2020 on Friday. Such is the unpredictable nature of the stock market. Today I am gonna show you, missing the best days of the market can be extremely costly. 

Below is research from JP Morgan that I found on the internet. You can see that between 1995 and 2014, the annual return of the S&P 500 is 9.85% if invested through the whole duration. But missing just the 10 best days would drop the annual return to only 6.1%. Missing the 20 best days would drop the annual return to 3.62%. Missing the best 30 days would further drop the annual return to only 1.49%. 

Yesterday, when I had a lunch meeting with the chief scientist at Fannie Mae, our conversation quickly turned to inflation.

My view of that is more pessimistic than the Fed and most mainline economists. Somehow, these economists seem to have forgotten a basic economic tenet – the rational expectation theory. This theory, to put it in layman’s terms, basically says that on aggregate, what people expect to happen will happen. That’s why Fed officials have long been extremely careful about what they say that could change people’s expectations. 

Today’s Fed under Jerome Powell has been much less careful. Here are the three acts of the current Fed that have crushed the expectation that inflation will stay low and stable.