Tiho Brkan Profile picture
May 18, 2022 20 tweets 8 min read Read on X
1/ The recent survey of global fund managers by Merrill Lynch is quite interesting from a contrarian's perspective.

Over 300 money managers with circa trillion in assets under management very polled on the various portfolio, finance & economy questions.

#sentiment update 👇
2/ Cash balance happens to be the highest since September 11 crash in 2001 (@ 6.1%). 😲

To say they are quite worried would be an understatement.

Yes, it is a small sample size (the law of small numbers leads to errors) but when others are fearful, we should be greedy.
3/ Do you remember that classic line from Back To The Future:

"Marty McFly, are you chicken?" 😂

It looks like global managers have chickened out from taking risks, as their exposure to risk sinks to the lowest since the Global Financial Crisis.

The sentiment is in the gutter.
4/ Additionally, they are all panicking about the future hawkishness of central banks and the possibility of a global recession.

The questions on our minds:

• if it's so obvious to the managers is it obviously wrong?

• has it already been discounted with the recent carnage?
5/ Fear levels have spiked swiftly and with intensity.

Once again, small sample size, but the only other time managers were this fearful was during the depths of the GFC in 2008 or briefly in Q1 of 2020 (Covid-19).

Too much fear is always a fantastic opportunity to deploy cash.
6/ Why am I asking those questions in tweet #4?

Well, it seems every single fund manager thinks the economic prospects can only get worse from here.

Growth expectations are the lowest on record! 😲

"When everyone thinks the same, nobody is thinking." — Walter Lippmann
7/ Oil & Gas is by and large the groupthink, overweight, overcrowded trade of the moment. I would probably stay away from this sector as it could suffer meaningful drawdowns.

Other than energy & commodities in general, cash is the other most favored investment by fund managers.
8/ Additional fund manager exposures:

• managers are underweight the global tech sector for the first time in 16 years

• short Treasuries, short China stocks, and underweighting EM tech are some of the most overcrowded bearish & very hated securities
9/ Q: what has undone the stock market rally?

A: a spike in inflation pressuring central banks to tighten monetary policy, contracting risky asset multiple as bond yields rose rapidly.

The expectation for bond yields to rise further is now held by only 30% of fund managers.
10/ Managers were also asked at what point do they think the Federal Reserve will come to the rescue (the so-called Fed's put)?

Observing the world's most popular index, it was a range between 3,500 and 3,750 points on the S&P 500.

The recent low was 3,859.
11/ You never want to be completely blinded by confirmation bias. A good way to fight it is via searching for disconfirming evidence.

So, to pour some cold water on this thread, the same investment bank showed extremely long exposure by private clients in the same month.🤔
12/ I've posted the AAII sentiment survey vs AAII allocation survey last week, but @WillieDelwiche does a great job of combining public opinion vs their exposure.

Investors say they are pessimistic but are they?

Don't listen to what they say, watch what they do.
13/ One thing is for certain, I would definitely stay away from the Oil & commodities long trade.

Considering that 2011 was a secular peak for natural resources, it is mind-blowing to see just how overexposed fund managers are today to this sector.
14/ Commodity spikes go hand in hand with geopolitical risk, and unsurprisingly, the risk has reached levels equivalent to the last two Iraq wars.

Once again, small sample size, but the previous two instances signaled a stock market bottom (under much lower valuations, though).
15/ Fund managers think monetary risk (policy error by central banks) is as high as its ever been.

This is obviously why every man and his dog are underweight Treasuries.

From the contrary perspective, such fear could signal a rebound in bonds (fall in yields).
16/ Conclusion?

In many regards, managers' sentiment towards global equities is as low as the 2008/09 period.
17/ Net exposure (longs - shorts) is now below 25%, which isn't ultra bearish but getting quite pessimistic.
18/ Having said that global money managers have not cut their exposure to global equities the way they did in 2008.

Then again, the market has not crashed -60% like in 2008, rather only -20% from the recent highs.
19/ The last chart focuses on the "buzz word" of the day: stagflation.

I recently visited my dentist for a regular checkup & he kept talking to me about stagflation the whole time.

It doesn't surprise me that fund managers are also obsessing about it. Humans herd as do animals.
20/ One thing I have repeated in this thread is the law of small numbers (Faulty Generalization Fallacy).

Pay attention to cognitive biases, mental shortcuts, fallacies, folly, anecdotal evidence, casual linking & arguments by analogy — all of which lead to poor decision making.

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More from @TihoBrkan

Sep 14
Unless there is a year-end rally, the Chinese stock market is on track for the fourth down year in a row. This is exceptionally rare for any global market.

Several key names — Alibaba, JD, Tencent, etc — show just how much corporate value creation fundamentals (FCF per share in blue) have completely disconnected from sentiment-driven, market expectations (share price in black).

In many cases, FCF per share is at or near record highs while the share price is near multi-year lows (in some cases decade lows).

See the $JD chart below.Image
Alibaba $BABA corporate value creation fundamentals (FCF per share in blue) have completely disconnected from sentiment-driven, market expectations (share price in black).Image
Tencent $TCEHY corporate value creation fundamentals (FCF per share in blue) have completely disconnected from sentiment-driven, market expectations (share price in black). Image
Read 4 tweets
Jul 20, 2023
Despite a very strong 10-month rally in stocks, most global fund managers are still overweight bonds (risk averse) and underweight stocks (risk seeking).

Some sentiment surveys do suggest bulls are back, but the lion's share of capital (managed by funds) is still defensive. Image
Asset allocation by an average retail investor (AAII) and an average fund manager (BofA).

The sentiment correlation is quite close over the last two decades, but it starts breaking down in 2016.

We think more & more passive LT indexers, hence retail is persistently bullish. Image
In February of this year 4 out of 5 fund managers expected China's GDP to outperform. We know quite a few investors who held this consensus view, as well.

The Chinese economic GDP has disappointed since. Today, only 1 out of 5 fund managers believe China's GDP will reaccelerate. Image
Read 5 tweets
Jul 2, 2023
1) Global economy has completely changed since the 1970s.

Today, intangible asssts (brands, patents, software, licenses, IP, etc) are twice as large as tangible assets (factories, plants, etc), which dominated the company investments 50 years ago.

This has many consequences.
2) Intangibles are expensed via the P&L statement, so they often don’t show up on the balance sheet the way tangible assets do (they are capitalised via cash flow statement).

Now, think how framing an investment as an “expense” will have a meaningful on financial metrics.
3) Intangible investments artificially suppress the net income (all of a sudden you have all these additional “expenses” which are really investments).

Therefore the P/E ratio is becoming obsolete and probably (almost) irrelevant.
Read 17 tweets
May 18, 2023
If ROC is higher than WACC, growing revenue adds shareholder value.

If ROC is lower than WACC, focusing on growth destroys shareholder value.

If a money losing business attempts to grow faster by cutting prices to gain even more market share, it leads to an adverse outcome.
How should management think about growth vs profitability?

If the business is generating excess ROC (above WACC) then focus on stable growth is intelligent.

However, if the business isn’t generating excess ROC, the focus should turn from growth to improvement in profitability.
The management teams should refocus on growth drivers only when the cash return on operating capital employed has increased in excess of weighted cost of capital and that is now validated & consistent pattern (not a multi year cyclical event, like with commodity businesses).
Read 5 tweets
May 1, 2023
Buffett repeatedly stated that value and growth are two sides of the same coin.

Graham purists (who disregard the asset's quality) commonly fall into value traps, because valuations tell them nothing without understanding the business's growth potential.

Simplified example. 👇🏽
Alphabet $GOOGL currently trades at 15.7x forward operating income.

Is that cheap or expensive?

We think that using such quick-and-easy metrics cannot help us in our due diligence process — it only leads to decision-making errors. Image
Simplified answer:

a) if the business can grow meaningfully from here the current multiples entry will prove to be cheap

b) if the business's economic moats start narrowing abruptly, resulting in disappointing grow and market share loss, it might prove to be a value trap
Read 5 tweets
Apr 29, 2023
We are shareholders in Alibaba. $BABA

However, just because we are long the stock does not mean we should turn a blind eye to the folly going on in recent months.

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
"What the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact." — Warren Buffett

It seems Alibaba investors are falling victim to confirmation bias the whole way down the slippery slope, which started in October 2020.
While some disagree, an attempt to pump the IPO by cutting the prices of services is a clear sign of management's short-termism culture and lack of capital allocation discipline.

Artificially generating revenue at any cost is not how most great CEOs and management teams think.
Read 5 tweets

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