Newsletter

April 2024 Investing Newsletter

By: Robert Silaghi

Short-Term Trading

The Time Value of Money

I enjoy short-term swing trading for many reasons. First and foremost, I have much more discretion over my decisions because of liquidity. 

Less Research

Swing trading in general is much less fundamental than long-term investing. Week-to-week, the stock market is a voting machine; only on a longer basis will a lot of company fundamentals be appropriately priced and realized by the market.

Emotional Superiority

In fundamental long-term investing, it is often hard to form a thesis that isn’t priced into the market because of how readily available information is nowadays. However, it is easy to have the upper end over the long term in swing trading. This can be done through emotional superiority. Retail investors often sell at low prices or buy at high ones, following a confidence bias. This is why buying on emerging trends or high probability patterns at good entry prices is a successful strategy. By properly managing risk by consistently accounting for open risk units and using stop losses, any investor can expect good returns over time. 

Long-Term Investing

In markets, risk is often rewarded with additional expected returns. The best example that I can think of is bonds: lower-grade bonds provide a larger yield, but also come with a higher probability of defaulting. This same principle can be applied to the equity market. Because stocks are considered riskier than most bonds, investors expect higher annual returns. This relationship between risk and return is very important and is commonly represented through the capital asset pricing model. 

The Capital Asset Pricing Model can be used as the discount rate for a company with no debt

When working with future cash flows for projections, it is important to discount them because of the principle that money loses value over time. $1,000 next year may only be worth $900 today because you could invest in another asset that generates more cash during that time. The Capital Asset Pricing Model is a simple equation:

CAPM = Risk-Free Rate + Beta (Expected Market Return - Risk-Free Rate)

The Risk-Free Rate is commonly referred to as a 10-year Government Treasury bond yield because the stability of the US economy makes this as close to no risk as possible. For those who are statistically inclined, this equation can be viewed as a proxy for the regression of expected market return minus the risk-free rate on the expected return of the stock. Beta is just a measure of volatility when compared to the market. A Beta of 1 means the underlying asset moves in union with the broader market; a Beta of 2 means that the underlying asset moves twice as much in either direction when compared to the market, a risk that investors expect to be compensated for. Lastly, the expected market return is the projected long-term growth rate of all equities, which for simplicity is commonly considered 10%. For a company with no debt, the only risk that investors incur is in equity. The equation starts with the risk-free rate because this is the minimum expected return of investors, or else they will just invest in the risk-free asset. Because stocks are not risk-free, the additional expected return is the equity risk premium, or the beta(expected market return - risk-free rate). Using this equation can lead to a clearer rationale behind investments.

Macroeconomic Conditions

Core PCE inflation over the last 3 months was a 4.4% annual rate. 

This represents highs between any time from January 2009 to March 2021. As discussed in the last newsletter, the expected rate cuts this year were a large part of the surge in stock prices within the last six months. This makes sense because lower interest rates mean that bonds have lower yields and people can borrow money more easily, making stocks more attractive. 

However, such high inflation is making these cuts seem less and less likely this year. Certain Federal Reserve representatives across the country are coming out and claiming that there may not even be any more rate cuts this year. With growing inflation concerns and more than two rate cuts already priced into the market according to Bloomberg, this would cause the equity market to decline. Price action within the past few weeks has shown such a reaction, with high levels of volatility and a decrease of close to 3% in less than a month. This is something that I will keep a close eye on when deciding how to diversify my investments in the coming years.

Disclaimer: This newsletter is for informational purposes only and not financial advice.

March 2024 Investing Newsletter

By: Robert Silaghi

There are many different ways to invest, and there are an infinite amount of strategies that can be used. Many people have tried to convince me that there is only one “correct” way to invest: looking at a company’s intrinsic valuation by analyzing its cash flows and making projections. While this is a very viable approach, it is certainly not the only one, and it has its own limitations. An investing strategy is really any set of rules that can be written out to make money over time.

Short-Term Trading

To start, I’ll cover shorter-term trading, which I consider to be any investment held for under a year. Here are some of the key things that I have learned to be important considerations when implementing an investment strategy on this time horizon. 

"In the short term, the only way to really differentiate yourself from other traders is to not let your emotions affect your trades." 

It is important to have a systematic process to leave as few choices to discretion as possible. Many times, shorter-term traders use technical analysis. They will create support and resistance lines. However, these are all arbitrary levels. Therefore, I want to introduce a new way of thinking about the markets. 

"View your portfolio in terms of risk in the scheme of your next 100 trades." 

A written trading plan will help keep you organized. A trading log is also really important because it allows you to reflect on the risk parameters of your investment strategy. Consistently good habits will bring good results, just like with anything else in life. To effectively view trades in terms of risk, you will need to use a few tools. First, you want to have a stop loss on every trade. This level will depend on a lot of factors, but most importantly the average true range of the stock and your self-emotional control. If the price of the underlying stock increases, you want to make sure to adjust your stop loss accordingly. Once your stop loss is at your break-even point, you effectively assume no risk anymore, allowing you to expose yourself to new risk units. If the stock price keeps increasing, keep adjusting this level. Never sell the stock yourself; the stop loss will one day do this for you. 

"There is no way to predict these bullish trends, but by using risk mitigations, you will be able to profit from them." 

Never expose yourself to too many risk units. They are easy to calculate because you already know the maximum amount that you can lose: the difference between your entry price and stop loss multiplied by the number of shares you own. Further breaking up the maximum risk units that you are exposed to into sectors is recommended for diversification purposes. Inherently, investing in bearish trends will bring along more risk; therefore, I always try to place buy orders in established bull trends and short orders in established bear trends. More detailed explanations of risk mitigation will be released in future newsletters.

Long-Term Investing

For longer-term investing (any position over a year) it is much more important to understand the underlying company. However, when analyzing a company, it is important to target organic growth in your investment thesis. This can come from numerous factors, including better operating margins or investment synergies. By using such metrics, your future projections will be a lot less speculative but instead based on high-probability reasoning, making your implied share price a lot more reliable. This should be done through an average weighting of multiple financial models, including comparables, precedents, discounted cash flows, and leveraged buyouts, to ensure greater accuracy. 

Purchase entry price is incredibly important as it will best help you profit off of market inefficiencies. Almost always, the markets are incredibly efficient, but because people are naturally emotional, this will not always be the case in large price fluctuations. Large crashes are the perfect opportunity to begin making long-term investments in growth or value stocks. This reasoning covers just the basics, but for now, it is important to grasp a consistent and logical long-term investing framework to be successful.

Macroeconomic Conditions

The market is incredibly bullish right now, with major indices increasing more than 10% year-to-date. However, it is important to pose the question "Why have markets been going up so much these past few months?" It is because of the three expected rate cuts later this year. Throughout my time investing, this is one of the most publicized rate cuts that I have witnessed. Therefore, because everyone is so aware, the market is baking them into current prices. 

What happens if the FED does not end up cutting rates? Even though I definitely think this isn't too likely, it is still a possibility for several reasons. For one, the election is this year, so the FED may not want to intervene with the results. Additionally, the personal consumption expenditures inflation report that came out recently was worse than expected. Lastly, certain indicators such as credit card delinquencies and the Empire State Manufacturing Index are showing concerning signs. 

Therefore, if macroeconomic concerns cause the FED to not deliver on their promised rate cuts, not only will the market react negatively, but also a lot of the new AI companies will not be able to refinance their debts at lower rates than expected. Because of the large impact that AI has had on the markets, this could very well trigger at least a mild crash. Therefore, macroeconomic conditions will be incredibly important to watch moving forward. While I do think the market will continue to be bullish until the election, a few bad macroeconomic signals could cause considerable negative price fluctuations. 

Disclaimer: This newsletter is for informational purposes only and not financial advice.