Rotation out of momo/growth to value

[longlake95]

Do you all think this rotation has legs? Who is buying?They have hated value for 10 years - why now?

 

 

[DTEJD1997]

Do you all think this rotation has legs? Who is buying?They have hated value for 10 years - why now?

 

Maybe the bull market is getting long in the tooth?  It has been going for quite a while?

 

Maybe even the MOMO players are getting tired of "silly" companies, such as "We Work"...Thing was supposed to be IPO'ing at something like $40BB of value.  They are burning cash at an alarming rate...no hope of attaining profitability in the short to medium term.

 

Imagine a WeWork buyer...will the company be worth DOUBLE what it is today in 10 years?  Not an unreasonable hope/aspiration.  So then, the company would be worth about $80BB.  In 10 years, I would imagine that they would have to be making money.  In 10 years, I would think it would be reasonably profitable?  Say a 15 P/E?  So they would have to be netting $5BB a year, maybe $6BB a year?

 

That amount of PROFITABILITY would be DOUBLE it's current REVENUE!  Is that going to happen in 10 years?  Just how much of an addressable market is there for this kind of thing?

 

Meanwhile, something like FCAU is trading for a 4 P/E....

[ValueMaven]

Low Vol has been getting KILLED recently ...

[scorpioncapital]

I don't see much evidence of rotation out of growth into value. But it's not so much a battle between growth and value as it is between earnings today and earnings tomorrow. The bridge is the interest rate and growth rate. Watch those variables both inside a company and in an economy.

[CorpRaider]

Glamour by any other name.

[Liberty]

Here's the rotation that has been taking place the past 4 days:

 

 

Though as with everything, if you change the perspective a bit (from week view to 3y view), things look different:

 

 

Of course, these are 'mechanical' factors. Actual bottoms up investing shouldn't care about that... Value investing is about determining the value of something and paying less. Some companies are worth higher multiples, and some low multiple companies are worth even less... So it's interesting to look at, and these large flows can mean that portfolions will indiscriminately be pulled up or pulled down (good companies sold with bad ones and vice versa), but over time it doesn't matter that much.

[SHDL]

Bloomberg had a story about this today:

 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-12/carnage-in-crowded-hedge-fund-stocks-may-mean-some-don-t-survive

 

In short, a number of long short hedge funds appear to be getting squeezed out of their crowded positions and this could be causing/amplifying these effects.  That sounds somewhat more plausible to me than a “value strikes back” narrative given how certain names like TSLA, which are heavily shorted but are almost certainly not value investments either, have been rallying recently.

[CorpRaider]

It seems Burry was right, timely, causal, on the small cap value opportunity.  I think he's probably right that there will be more flash crashes and the like in the future due to index etfs; maybe a really nasty one to shake loose some of the money. 

 

One thing I would like to ask him or others of similar talent: "How could securities lending by index funds blow up?"  It is purported to be risk-free lending by many but I've never known such a thing.  I just wonder as more marginal/desperate players get into offering "free" index funds and try and make up the profits on securities lending, what risks (if any) lurk?

[Cigarbutt]

It seems Burry was right, timely, causal, on the small cap value opportunity.  I think he's probably right that there will be more flash crashes and the like in the future due to index etfs; maybe a really nasty one to shake loose some of the money. 

 

One thing I would like to ask him or others of similar talent: "How could securities lending by index funds blow up?"  It is purported to be risk-free lending by many but I've never known such a thing.  I just wonder as more marginal/desperate players get into offering "free" index funds and try and make up the profits on securities lending, what risks (if any) lurk?

Humble contribution: I disagree with Mr. Burry, at least on the extent of securities lending risk versus systemic risk as compared to CDOs in the years 2000's.

 

The CDO issue was based on a significant growth of securities, backed by real estate collateral and resting on the assumption that the real estate price rise would continue to shift from fundamentals and that, if there would be price declines, it would be mild, would happen in pockets and not in a correlated way. Evaluating this using a solvency to liquidity spectrum, along the value chain, there was a clear problem with liquidity and solvency of home owners and that resulted in questioning the solvency of financial institutions which were highly leveraged and dependent on wholesale short term funding which was mismatched with price discovery of the underlying collateralized asset. A side effect of this was the relative questioning of the solvency of money market funds, which broke the buck, but this was mainly a liquidity issue, was recognized as such and dealt with rapidly with liquidity measures.

 

I think the securities lending issue with ETFs, if it comes to materialize in a declining environment, would correspond to, essentially, a liquidity issue that may require central money assistance. Securities lending has grown relatively little in the last few years and, even if the collateralized assets vary and may raise questions in certain environments, this, in itself, would not result in a systemic and long lasting issue. Also a lot of the passive inflows have occurred at the expense of 'actively' managed mutual funds, a large part of which tend to follow the crowd and their respective benchmarks. So, the active to passive mindset has happened only to a degree and not as a paradigm shift. Market declines tend to be more concentrated and steeper than market rises and the new relatively passive era has not been tested and the securities lending issue may accentuate underlying trends but I think it is not a systemic issue in itself.

 

Interesting times: with increased securities lending activity, it is possible that ETFs carrying negative fees will become the norm.

 

Caveat: Perhaps Mr. Burry has noticed an increasing and inadequate level of securities lending in some areas and perhaps he has detected gradually deteriorating behavior with the management of the 102-105% collateralized assets.

A 2018 regulatory report has some data on this (pages 45-46 of the underlying document)

https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/261/FSOC2018AnnualReport.pdf?46

 

[UK]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/values-rebounding-but-dont-get-your-hopes-up-11568462580?mod=rsswn

 

"This week has seen the biggest swing from momentum stocks to cheap value stocks since the 2008 bank bailouts. But it isn’t likely to last."