Tag Archives: Fidelity

06.23.16
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Market response to Brexit demonstrates why cheap passive funds aren’t good value for the economy

The volatility and volume of trading in the global market response to the surprise result of the Brexit vote on Friday is an excellent example of why cheap passive funds are not good value for the economy, or the markets.

The crashing market, provoked by the panic of what the vote result might mean, was exacerbated by passive funds scrabbling to meet their investment mandate, which is to replicate particular indices.

Passive investment managers aim to create a portfolio of stocks that replicates the performance of a nominated index, such as the S&P/ASX 200, the FTSE 100 or the S&P 500. Their investment decisions and trading activity only reflect changes to the index, not a considered investment decision by an investment professional. There is no consideration of what each company is doing and the economic value they are creating for shareholders, rather the trading is focused on responding to what other investors are doing.

This trend also reflects the rise of the importance of trading over investing. The desire for the quick return, matched with the short-term quarterly reporting culture rewards the buying and selling of assets rather than investing in companies that will produce longer-term growth.

The funds merely replicate an index, which is just a collection of companies that are acknowledged by size, rather than quality. And trading in and out of them is based on a logarithm that is adjusts to continually reflect the market, which moves based on other people’s decision making. It is not based on an assessment of the future growth of the company, the quality of the management and the value the company adds to the economy.

The rise of the passive fund management industry reflects the belief of quantitative analysis as a ‘cost-effective’ way to invest and not have your returns eaten away by asset management fees.

Indeed one of the great active management houses, Fidelity Investments, has decided to start offering passive funds on third party platforms in response to customer demand.

The Financial Times reported recently that passive funds have risen to have $US6bn, up 230 per cent since 2007 and growing at four times the rate of active fund management, according to Morningstar. The focus of passive investing is on the cost of the investment, rather than the value of the investment. Indeed, the marketing of passive funds has focused on the cheapest of the option to invest in a market, because over the long-term equity markets rise.

Active investors haven’t helped themselves with eye-watering fee structures for often ordinary performance. The ‘long-only’ funds, which are allegedly designed for fund managers to buy and hold equities they believe will grow over the long term, have vast pockets of mediocre performance, sometimes due to mediocre managers, sometimes risk parameters that make it nigh on impossible to produce a decent return and sometimes because the fee structure rewards average performance and robs the end investor.

Hedge fund managers, who market themselves as superior to long-only traders because they also bet against stocks they think will fall, leech about half of pre- fee returns  but very often produce mediocre returns as well.

Passive funds do not participate in corporate governance discussions, they do not add to the public debate about company decisions nor do they invest on the basis of good company management decision making. They may be cheap, but they add no value. Indeed, as the events of the past few days have shown they add to the problem.

Active managers need to be less greedy and prove how they can add the value that company management so desperately needs.

03.16.16
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Peanuts, monkeys and why the idea of investing for the longer term is a no brainer

As part of my multi-disciplinary Master’s degree, I did one unit in the Business School about business strategy. There I sat in a lecture room full of keen-eyed, shiny business students and me, the curious arts student whose entire career has been in the private sector, a large chunk working in investment.

As with many clichés that were trotted out during that course, the one that just made my heart sink due to its sheer lack of critical thinking, was the old chestnut “if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys”. I countered that actually, sometimes if your incentive packages have large sums of money tied to short-term performance at its centre, you create the perfect environment for monkeying around. Sub-prime mortgages and the GFC anyone?

So imagine my reaction when I read last month that some of the gorillas of the investment world were holding secret summit meetings to “encourage longer-term investment and reduce friction with shareholders”. The Financial Times’ supplement FTfm reported that meetings were held with Warren Buffet, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase Jamie Dimon and the heads of heavyweight investment houses Fidelity, Vanguard, BlackRock and Capital Group.

The investment industry were obviously concerned that they were not aligned with the requirements of listed companies looking to grow their business; or their actual end-customers, you and me, who invest for long-term wealth development. At the top of the companies’ complaint list was the institutional shareholders focus on short-term returns, compared to long-term growth goals of companies.

The problem is that the investment industry markets its short-term performance to get more of the real capital owners, you and me, in the door and boost their funds under management. It then also creates incentives for its investment staff based on their short-term performance. They are not all like that, the best active fund managers do take long-term views and engage with companies and their trading volumes tend to be less. But many others churn through trades in passive or shadow-passive funds just trying to replicate an index to make their performance targets, which are very often tied to their performance versus the index. It would be more useful for the investment industry to tie incentives to longer term performance, in line with us, the customers, many of whom are saving over the long-term for retirement.

The Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia estimates there is $AUD2 trillion invested in superannuation, of which $AU317 billion is invested in Australian equities with a further $AU183 in Australian fixed interest. Australia is the fourth largest superannuation market in the world, behind the United States, Japan and the United Kingdom.

The United States had an estimated $US23.5 trillion in retirement savings as at 30 September 2015, according to the Investment Company Institute inside a variety of retirement savings vehicles. This does not include other investment savings, just the money in vehicles designed for long-term investing. According to Goldman Sachs, 69% of the US stock market is owned by US households, mutual funds and government and pension funds. The remaining 31% is made up of predominantly international investors (16%) with the much-talked-about hedge funds holding only 4%.

The British Investment Association stated that 38% of the £5.5 trillion of funds under management are British pension funds in 2013. According to Towers Watson, the Japanese pensions funds had $US2.8 trillion under management.

That is a lot of people looking for long-term investments to give them financial security at retirement. Surely the stewards of their money should align their activities with their end-customers.

11.19.14
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Tax avoidance is rewarded by the financial markets

This weekend the leaders of the G20 nations met in Brisbane and corporate tax avoidance, or ‘minimisation’ was on the agenda. There has been outrage in recent months as it was revealed that large companies have routed money through complex structures in countries such as Luxembourg in order to minimise the tax. The objective is to maximise profits for shareholders and minimise a company’s contribution to the community benefits derived from tax payments.

Some of the companies are global household names such as Ikea, Pepsi, Deutsche Bank and use these methods. Apple and Amazon have been at centre of similar controversies in the recent past. While many commentators are focused on the impact on the public purse of those countries where revenue is generated, very few are asking why the dominant value of profit maximisation is allowed to continue to reign. It is just assumed that is what companies will do and markets will accept it.

Why is profit maximisation more important than paying reasonable tax to help develop the countries from which corporations derive their revenue? Why does short-term earnings results designed for the investment markets get more senior management attention than long-term investment in the future of societies for hospitals and health care, schools, roads, public transport and the like? This community investment through tax payments also benefits the very same companies which use the infrastructure networks such as roads, rail, airlines and ports, and whose employees and their families go to the schools and use the hospitals.

It is because those in senior management at these companies and those that control the investment decisions at large institutional investment groups, prioritise a very narrow set of short-term profit-driven values over the longer term goals of a rise in living standards for all. We know that they share the same values because investment funds participate in the same tax minimisation schemes. Public investment funds from Canada, Australia, as well as investment giants like Citigroup, Credit Suisse, ABN Amro, AIG, Dexia, Fidelity, Schroders, State Street and UBS were also on the list of tax offenders released by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

These investment houses manage billions of dollars of citizen’s retirement and other savings through a variety of mutual funds. And because they have the power to make the investment decision, they impose a narrow set of profit-driven values on their decision. They do very little to gather the views of the citizen investors or reflect them in the investment decisions.

As those who provide the money for these funds to invest, we have a responsibility to make it clear that we are not only the ultimate shareholders of these funds who want a long-term return from our savings but we are also the people who use the infrastructure, the schools and the hospitals that improve our societies’ standards of living, as opposed to wanting our investments to produce a short-term return to boost the bonus payments of our professional money managers.