The thing about crafting a useful Recap at each quarter’s end? There are times when everyone needs a break from my idea of “useful”. After that weighty tome that I posted as Q4 2016 Commentary? I owe everyone a break for Q1 2017. Never mind that recent shoulder surgery has also rendered me a one-fingered, hunt-and-peck, kind of communicator. For your benefit, and the benefit of my much needed healing, this quarter I am providing a more brief summary to inform you of the factors influencing client portfolios during Q1.
Q1 Review.
Q1 2017 started with high expectations that the incoming Trump administration would deliver on fiscal (spending) stimulus and regulatory relief, both then allowing the Federal Reserve’s FOMC to normalize monetary (interest rate) policy. Economic data, employment, and consumer confidence, were generally strong during Q1, contributing to the Federal Reserve’s March decision to raise short-term interest rates for the second time in four months. Improving economic data served to bolster business and consumer confidence in the strength of U.S. economic growth. Investors remained generally upbeat that a Donald Trump presidency would result in pro-growth policy changes, even though doubts began to mount, and pockets of trouble with select “Trump trades” emerged, after the failed efforts to reform both immigration and healthcare in the first attempts.
A sell-off in energy markets driven by a surge in North American production led investors to question all of the reflationary trades. A 6.58% sell-off in energy, and similar action in select commodity investments, lead to a mid-quarter flight away from risk assets (cyclical equities) and into safe-haven assets (counter-cyclical equities and bonds). This flight to safe-haven assets helped push to interest rates down again even though the FOMC was moving to raise rates. The darlings of the immediate post-election period (small company stocks, financial stocks, infrastructure stocks) all stalled during Q1. Otherwise, U.S. stocks generally continued their trend higher during Q1 with the S&P 500 (measure of large-company U.S. stocks) up 6.07% on a total return basis. The Russell 2000 Index (measure of small- and mid-sized company U.S. stocks) was up 2.47%. International equities bested U.S. counterparts as measured by the MSCI All Country World Index (ex-US) returning 6.37% for Q1. U.S. bonds, despite a lot of news coverage of the FOMC’s policy moves regarding interest rates, did not really do much during the quarter. As measured by the Barclay’s U.S. Aggregate Bond Index, U.S. bonds added about 0.82% for Q1.
All of our client portfolios can generally be categorized as moving along one of three paths during Q1.
(1) With meaningful growth in new relationships and significant new deposits from existing clients during Q4 2016 and Q1 2017, many client portfolios were in a purposeful and steady process of moving towards full investment. Our decisions here were less about macro-strategy structure than they were about taking advantage of market opportunities when presented to execute that strategy.
(2) For many existing client portfolios with more aggressive risk positions, prior to the 2016 Presidential election we had put in place an investment constructed purely for downside protection. We talked a great deal about this in the last two quarters. During the post-election period and throughout Q1 2017 we were methodically reducing, and ultimately eliminating, this protective position as President Trump’s early agenda came into focus. As the protective position was reduced we moved these client portfolios back towards full investment. Our tendency for these portfolios, however, was when moving back towards full investment to dial back unique sector exposures and towards our core target portfolio. Our preference is to be more focused on targets while waiting to see how actual implementation of Trump’s agenda progresses.
(3) For all other client portfolios, Q1 was a fairly uneventful time period in which we executed a number of rebalancing transactions to maintain full investment, but did not undertake significant changes in long-term strategy.
Getting to those long-term, strategic positions that influence Lake Jericho client portfolios, let’s briefly cover each.
U.S. versus International.
The worldwide recovery in industrial activity continued to drive global expansion. While political uncertainty surrounding U.S. economic policy caused a few reversals in post-election, policy-related trades, that uncertainty helped drive down the value of the U.S. dollar. Supported by a weaker dollar, international equities led the global stock market rally for the first time in several years. Emerging-market equities outperformed U.S. large-company stocks on a one-year basis. Our overweights to international investments (with small-company, and emerging market overweights imbedded in those investments) served as a meaningful tail-wind for clients. Our method for building international exposure bested aggregate U.S. equity exposure by 2.22% to 3.82% during Q1. With international exposures of approximately 25% of client portfolios, this added from 0.55% to 0.95% of additional return to client performance during Q1 versus an all U.S. equity portfolio.
Stocks versus Bonds.
Lake Jericho managed portfolios have been defensively positioned against the threat of rising interest rates for the last two years. At times this has hurt performance, and at times it has helped performance. We continue to believe, on balance, that a defensive position is best. However, the way in which a defensive position is constructed is the most important part of the decision to be defensively positioned. Because we structure our fixed income exposure in a statistically somewhat disconnected relationship to standard measurements (again a gross over-simplification) we were able to best the U.S. Aggregate Bond Index by 1.90% during Q1, returning 2.72% for the typical client fixed income position.
Small versus Big.
During 2016, our small- and mid-sized company positions bested large-company U.S. equity investments by 8.60%. As stated above, the Russell 2000 Index returned 2.47% for Q1, 3.03% behind the aggregate U.S. market for the Quarter. For Q1, our small- and mid-sized company positions returned a weighted average of 3.21%. Our construction bested the Russell 2000 Index by 0.74%, but still lagged the aggregate U.S. market by 2.70%.
Investor portfolios should maintain an exposure to, if not an ongoing overweight towards, small- and mid-sized company equity investments at all times. The basic premise is that, although small- and mid-sized companies are inherently more risky in the sense that more of them fail than do big companies, those that do succeed are sufficiently successful such that the return distribution for broadly diversified holdings (mutual funds, ETF’s) is skewed towards superior returns in the long run. So why would one not simply invest 100% of their portfolio in small-company equities and call it a day? Investors are often misinformed, thinking that all risk translates directly into extra reward in the long-run. There is no evidence to support that position. We attempt to coach this often misled belief away from client’s cognitive biases and replace that with a belief in and trust in broadly diversified and efficient risk exposures.
Q1 is an example that in the short-run market leading performance rotates through sectors. 2016’s market-leading performance is an example of why you always want to have some exposure to the space. But none of these time-periods support a position, statistically, that risk taking simply for risk’s sake is its own reward. Statistically, there exists an approximated optimal allocation of small- and mid-sized company exposure to be held in investor accounts that add value over time without exposing too great a level of variability in portfolios. Our answer to best manage this trade-off over time without engaging in unnecessary trade execution is to maintain a fairly constant exposure to the spaces, and to employ three different strategies in the space to best gain exposure to persistent factors of return within the space.
Value versus Growth.
Investor portfolios should maintain exposure to, if not an ongoing overweight towards, value-oriented investments. The basic premise of value investing is that certain securities are underpriced bargains and are likely to outperform once their “real value” is more appreciated by investors. It is a bit of common sense, supported by the statistics, that if you remain mindful of not overpaying for your investments then you are more likely to achieve superior returns over the long-run. Value-oriented investing is one method that helps investors achieve this objective. A gross over-simplification of an entire field of financial study, but that is the basic idea.
Last year, U.S. value equity funds as a group were up 20.79%, according to Morningstar, while U.S. growth equity funds as a group rose only 3.16%. As a value-biased portfolio manager, Lake Jericho clients certainly benefited from that differential during 2016. But with the overwhelming outperformance of our value-biased strategy during 2016, and of certain elements of value-oriented strategies during Q1 2017, one must naturally question the current wisdom of this strategy. Is there a point when the very success of value-biased strategies take away their promise? The reality is that, in the investment arena, all things are cyclical. As our focus is on long-term, strategic positions and not on attempts to trade timing patterns, it is the manner in which we execute our value-bias that is most important.
Sticking with Morningstar measurements, during Q1 2017 U.S. value funds as a group were up 2.58% while U.S. growth funds as a group rose 8.58%. With that type of performance differential during Q1, how could the Lake Jericho managed portfolio compete? Again, I offer a gross oversimplification, but there are two ways in which we managed to offset that performance gap. First, our value-biased positions had increased in value so significantly during 2016 (particularly post-election) that they began to behave statistically more as growth-oriented counterparts. This is a natural outcome of such price appreciation combined with a tendency to buy and hold long-term investments. Second, much of our value bias is represented by both domestic U.S. equities and international market equities. During Q1, international markets simply outperformed U.S. markets. Putting both factor exposures together, our target value bias was able to best the aggregate U.S. market by between 1.8% and 3.4% in client portfolios.
Sector Allocation Decisions.
Finally, strategic and tactical sector weighting, the fifth aspect of our portfolio construction process, was an important part of how we added value during Q1. Few portfolios will match all sector allocations, or sector allocation percentages exactly, or the timing of investments perfectly, and these factors certainly impact exact contribution to performance of our sector decisions. However, our process of underweighting U.S. equity market-neutral benchmark allocations in favor of overweighting higher expected growth sectors (currently materials, medical devices and instruments, pharmaceuticals, biotech/genomics, and early additions to a regional banks exposure) added between 0.46% and 0.53% in excess return to client portfolio during Q1. Materials, medical devices, and biotech/genomics contributed to performance, while the pharmaceutical sector overweight has not performed as expected (but does continue to close its historical performance gap). For portfolios where we began to add exposure to regional banks (after the sector began a price-breakdown late in the quarter) those allocations were very late in the quarter and the overall impact was minimal. We will cover this sector decision in the coming quarters.
So where does that leave us heading into Q2? We continue to see upside in our long-term global economic growth estimates, with higher expectations for both foreign developed markets and emerging markets than for domestic markets. But simply put, client portfolios with limited exception are now fully invested and at long-term strategic targets. We foresee little activity for Q2 unless unforeseen events cause meaningful changes in long-term outlook. Other than period reviews and necessary rebalancing trades, Lake Jericho is in a profound period of “wait and see”. The French election this weekend, along with further international elections this year, and a bit of breathe holding regarding the pace of policy implementation in the U.S. causes us pause to make any strategic changes in client portfolios, near-term.
I am available at any time to discuss specific portfolio needs and performance questions. I will also be in touch with many of you in the coming weeks to conduct our regular and thorough review of goals and objectives, make any needed changes as a result, and to walk through a few administrative tasks that we need to tackle. Until then, be well, enjoy the rest of your weekend, and thank you!
A.J. Walker, CFA CFP® CIMA®
Founder, President, and CEO
Lake Jericho, LLC