Investing Basics
Investing Basics
Investing Basics
Liquidity
Current Assets/Liabilities = become cash within 12 months
Long-Term Assets/Liabilities become cash after 12 months or never
Order in liquidity
A company is worth the discounted sum of its cash flows from today until eternity
Discounting Cash Flow
Why is one dollar today worth more than one dollar promised tomorrow?
Risk that you may not receive that dollar
Inflation (consider risk/benefit of deflation)
Opportunities to invest that dollar in higher-returning projects
Simple Example
Q: John is a NFL quarterback who believes he can return 5% per annum investing in bond funds.
Should he take a $75 million upfront payment or a $25 million per annum payment for 3 years?
Assume his probability of collecting over 3 years is the same as the upfront payment (not at risk)
A: The $75 million is vastly preferential as John will have $86.8 million ($75m X 1.05^3) at the
end of three years, as opposed to only $82.5 million ($25m X 0.05 + $50m X 0.05 + $75m X 1.05)
if he receives payment in installments. It is obvious to see that the ability to invest cash flow as
soon as possible is desired
The Value of a Company - Practice
Bonds and Equities have a parity concept (Shkreli Theory)
Bonds have an annual cash flow in the same sense equities have net income
that shareholders may claim. This cash flow is interest and the amortized
principal (even if it is a balloon repayment)
Bonds are theoretically safer than equities as they are senior to equity
in the repayment waterfall
However, for very large companies where the default risk is very low, the
bonds and equity should have a much closer parity than in a riskier enterprise
Fundamental Research
Phil Fisher Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits
Channel Check
Management
Update Quarterly Conference calls and meetings
Press Releases Read at least 1 year of prior releases and update your model with them
Sign up for company press releases OR create google alerts
Forecasting
Traditional
Lateral
True Costs / One-Time Costs / Economic Reality
The Opinion of Others
Ignore other investors
Ignore Wall Street research
Ignore TV/CNBC
Value vs. Growth / Risk
Fundamental Research -
Expectations
1 hour barely any familiarity with the company
Company history, current products, etc.
10 hours slight familiarity with the company
Basic working model, etc.
100 hours reasonable familiarity with the company
Listened to/met with management, etc.
1000 hours decision-making familiarity with the company
It (should) take a lot of time and thinking before you make the
decision to invest!
Fundamental Research - Forecasting
Revenue forecasts
Management guidance and other company results/guidance
Currency adjustments
Parallels
Relate something hard to forecast to some phenomenon that has happened
in the past. E.g. transition from black & white TV to color TV might mirror the
transition from TV ads to internet ads
Anything that is more realistic than a law of larger numbers forecastavoid these
Surveys
Surveys are a very cheap way to keep your finger on the pulse of business
Primary Research
Relevant interviews/contacts (Channel Checks vs. Due Diligence)
Who they are
Current and former employees
Competitors
How to get them
Gerson Lehrman Group/similar matchmaker services
Linkedin/smile and dial
What to say
CIA/KGB interrogation methods
Phil Fisher, Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits (Chapter 2)
Secondary Research: Other Peoples Research (Investment Banks, Investors, News articles)
Pitfalls: Misleading conclusions from poor sample size, confirmation bias, possible insider
information
Capital Efficiency
Capital efficiency is a concept that compares a business required assets to generate profit with that
profit
Is capital efficiency desirable?
Volatility
What does it mean to investors?
Some examples
Intel
Coca-Cola
Ford
WalMart
Facebook
Apple: 253%
Best Buy
Return Ratios
Return on Equity ROE
What does it tell us about Brand/Moat
Return on Tangible Book ROTB
Return on Assets ROA
Return on Invested Capital ROIC
Buffett Return
Ratios & Fundamental Research
Almost all of an equity analysts job is measuring long-term earnings potential
Short-term focus is problematic if myopic
but short-term results can give us hints on the long run (e.g. NOK missing earnings in
2000)
Barriers to competition are a significant part of this exercise
Warren Buffett defined the m word: moat, to describe assets with protection from
competition
What is competition, really?
Competition is the interloping companys attempt to mimic excess ROIC above WACC
No one wants to consume capital to emulate low returns
P/E Ratios (they are almost always
useless)
Many professional investors put too much stock into P/E ratios
P/Es are overly simplistic in that they represent a quotient which relates the value of a company to an
earnings period
They do not reflect the forthcoming changes to the earnings in that period, including the possible end of cash flows,
etc.
Some attempt is made in that high-growth companies get high P/Es and vice versa
The concept of multiple expansion is a fallacy
P/E ratios ignore sub-scale or super-scale dynamics
P/E ratios worthless in the case of cash flow-negative companies demonstrate its limit
P/E ratios are partially valuable in large-cap companies where scale and earnings are unlikely to change
NPV is far superior method which represents the entire area under the curve of
cumulative cash flows
P/E is a simple quotient which contains little-to-no information
Keeping Track of News
Watching the news on companies in your universe is critical here are
some tools to use
Google Alerts set up as-it-happens alerts for the company name, key
products, executive names, etc.
Update your model with any new information as it occurs
Sign up for press release alerts at the companys website
Use the Bloomberg function NLRT
Make a last updated column in your universe spreadsheet to force yourself
to update any model that is one month old STAY CURRENT
Sign up for all sell-side research on the company
Talk to the company as frequently as possible
Scale
The concept of scale is very important in business
Sub-scale companies tend to either
Gain scale
Get acquired by a company with scale
We can define scale as the reasonable spreading of costs on a revenue base
For instance, it would appear to be unreasonable to build the entire infrastructure for a
pharmaceutical company (which requires diverse organization groups: HR, Legal &
Compliance, IT, etc.) but only have one product generating revenue when a second product
would not create substantial incremental costs
We can assume that sub-scale companies will not exist in perpetuity, either
attempting to sell themselves or acquire scale
Therefore, it is unfair to punish a company for its subscale nature in a DCF!
Other Metrics
Deferred Revenue
Cash that will be recognized as revenue when service is provided/good is
delivered
Very useful for forecasting subscription-type businesses as it will be a leading
indicator/predictor of future revenue (think about it!)
Bookings
Billings
Book-to-Bill
Management
How do we access management?
Access is easier than it appears
Revolver
Term Loan
Markets and Portfolios
Markets & Trading
Stocks are traded on stock exchanges
SHORTING is the opposite phenomenon where you first sell and buy later.
This is naturally confusing but there exists a pool of stock owners who will
LEND you their stock as long as you promise to eventually return it. In this
case you would SHORT 100 shares of GM for $50 and then BUY TO COVER
(or simply COVER) the shares at $25 per share. Your profit would be $25 per
share, or $2,500, in this case.
Fund Basics
Using a collection of stocks (also known as a portfolio), fund managers create funds
intended to outperform each other
Two general approaches are passive (or index) and active investing
Passive investing involves selecting a pre-determined portfolio of stocks according to a list or metric
Example: S&P 500, Russell Mid-Cap Index
Active managers attempt to select their securities based on their potential ability to outperform their
benchmark passive index using skill
Some funds can short, invest in private securities and conduct other advanced operations
Mutual fund
Hedge fund
VC fund
PE fund
Portfolio Construction
Market Neutral
No market exposure long and short an equal amount
THIS IS NOT THE CONSENSUS
The consensus is to be long-biased
Long = you own the stock (buy first, sell later)
Short = you are the short (sell first, buy later)
Long-Biased
Popular due to the belief that stock prices go up over time
Universe
List of securities that we will focus on
Sector-focused (tech, healthcare, energy)
Market-cap focused (small cap, medium-cap or large-cap)
Style-focused (growth vs. value)
Geographical (U.S. vs. Global)
Portfolio Construction (Part 2)
Shkrelis First Rule Realistic Expectations
For every 10 stocks you look at, in general:
8 will be fairly valued by the market
1 will be overvalued by the market
1 will be undervalued by the market
Shkrelis Conjecture
As time0, alpha0
As timeinf, alphainf
IRR Details
Portfolio Monitoring
Drawdown
Peak-to-trough loss should be constantly monitored
Just because you were up 100% for 3 years in a row does not excuse you from a 50% loss in year 4!
Stop-Loss
Absolute portfolio stop-loss of 10%-20% is reasonable
Reassess whether this is for you, start again in 3-6 months
Diagnose what happened: bad skill, bad luck, too much risk, etc.?
Individual position stop loss
Concentration Rules
No investment should be more than x% of portfolio (usually 5-10%)
Sample Portfolio
Long
Microsoft (7%), IBM (6%), Facebook (5%), Oracle (5%), Alarm.Com (3%), SAP (3%), Tata (3%),
Alibaba (3%), Softbank (2.5%), Baidu (2.5%), Canon (2.5%), Wipro (2%)
Total gross long exposure = 44.5%, or $44,500,000 of a $100,000,000 portfolio
Short
AT&T (7%), Apple (6%), Amazon.Com (5%), Intel (5%), Cisco (3%), Google (3%), Salesforce.com
(3%), Nokia (3%), Infosys (3%), Qualcomm (2.5%), VMWare (2.5%), Applied Materials (2%)
Total gross short exposure of 45.0% or $45,000,000 of a $100,000,000 portfolio
This is a market neutral portfolio with 89.5% gross exposure and -0.5% net
exposure
Stocks in Foreign Companies
Local Shares
Shares that are traded on a local exchange
Example: Roche, Nestle, Novartis (NOVN VX) etc.
Local shares are always traded in local currencies
ADRs (American Depository Receipts)
Alibaba, Novartis (NVS)
ADRs often have a ratio of 1:1 (1 ADR:1 local sharebut not always!!!)
Level 1 ADR sponsored by the company
Level 3 ADR not sponsored by the company, the company does not make American
filings
Equities Over The Long-Term
It is my contention that equities do not rise over the long-term, as
opposed to conventional wisdom
Our study found, at best, U.S. equities deliver +2% (performance net of taxes
and inflation) but harbor substantial survivorship bias
Wall Street
Buy-Side, Sell-Side, Investment
Banking
BUY-SIDE or simply INVESTORS SELL-SIDE or INVESTMENT BANKS
Win the long-short game of how to use your time. Shorting others thoughts and long your own
Hedge Funds Overview
Typically structured as Limited Partnerships or LP entity
Typically formed in both Delaware (onshore) and typically in the Caribbean (offshore)
Most hedge funds charge a management fee as well as a performance fee
Mutual funds typically only charge a management fee
For example, if a hedge fund returns 20% on its $100 million in investments in a given
year, and has a 2% management fee and a 20% performance fee:
$20 million in gross profits for investors
$2 million in management fees (2% X $100,000,000)
$4 million in performance fees (20% X $20,000,000)
GROSS RETURN of 20% and NET RETURN of 14%
HEDGE FUND FEES GREATLY IMPACT PERFORMANCE Management fees are independent of profits while
performance fees require profits
Hedge Funds Overview
Hedge funds typically report results monthly
Most hedge funds have a goal of not having a year of losses
This expectation has changed dramaticallythe good old days of Soros,
Steinhardt, Tiger, etc. are over
Hedge funds try to avoid betaaka exposure to the marketinvestors can
buy beta without fees through other instruments (SPY)
They often fail at this
Hedge fund investors typically have limited liquidity with substantial
restrictions in their ability to withdraw funds
Generally governed by various legal documents
Hedge Funds Today
More focused on fees than performance (makes sense!!!)
Pedigree important predictor of success
More involved in private equity
2011-2020: source of extra alpha?
Activism no longer a source of alpha?
2000-2010: source of extra alpha?
Renaissance Technologies
Renaissances Medallion Fund is probably the most successful fund of all time
Fully automated (computerized) and quantitative
Mean-reversion, Hidden Markov Model (Baum-Welch), HFT
Dr. Jim Simons, founder of Renaissance
Started fund at 40 years of age
Assets under management (Form ADV): $43,297,173,710
Latest reported equities holdings (13-F): $45,891,877,000
40-80% annualized gross returns since inception?
+98% in 2008 (after a 40% fee)
290 employees
Mostly PhD mathematician/scientist background
Steinhardt Partners
Variant Perception, Careful risk management, Greater Fool Theory,
Information Arbitrage, Wall Street Arbitrage, Macro/Net Short
$7.7 million initial capital in 1967
30% average annual returns for 28 years
No Bull
Steinhardt Process
1. The Idea
2. The Consensus View
3. His Variant Perception
4. Trigger Event
Bridgewater
Largest hedge fund in the world ($150bn AUM)
Founded in 1975 in NYC apartment by Ray Dalio
Macro style hedge funddoes not trade stocks
Radical transparency, principles, etc.
Risk parity
https://www.aqr.com/~/media/files/papers/aqr-understanding-risk-parity.pdf
$45,000,000,000 in total cumulative gains since inception (#1)
Tiger Complex
Julian Robertsons Tiger
Original fund closed in 1980-2000, +31.7% CAGR over 20 years
New fund Tiger Technology Tiger Global (Chase Coleman)
Original Tiger Cubs Maverick, Lone Pine, Viking
Tiger SAC
Autobiography
No Bull (Michael Steinhardt)
Snowball (Alice Schroeder)
Principles (Ray Dalio)
Confessions of a Street Addict (Jim Cramer)