Monday, November 30, 2015

Oil, Defaults and Human Behavior



Economics has been greatly enriched by the spread of behavioral insights.

Until the 1990s, economic analysis was dominated by ideas such as “efficient markets” and “rational expectations.” These doctrines were based on the notion that people were robots and would act to maximize wealth in all aspects of their behavior.

It was assumed that if markets were declining, rational investors would enter the market to scoop up bargains. This behavior would tend to stabilize markets and reduce volatility.

It turns out that human behavior is far from “rational” (as economists define it). As the result of some ingenious social science experiments conducted by Daniel Kahneman and others in the 1970s and 1980s, it has been demonstrated that people act in accordance with all kinds of biases and irrational impulses.

If markets are crashing, most investors will panic and dump stocks rather than look around for so-called bargains. More often than not, human behavior tends to amplify extreme movements rather than calm them down.

These biases come in many forms. There is herding (the tendency to follow the crowd), anchoring (the tendency to give too much weight to a particular event) and confirmation (the tendency to embrace data that we agree with and ignore contrary data).

If the crowd tends to be irrational, is there a way for you to remain focused and exploit the irrationality to your advantage as an investor?

The answer is yes, but only if you can overcome the biases of human nature. You need to look for signals (what we call “indications and warnings”) that show you what is really going on.

There is no better example of the tug of war between human bias and market fundamentals than the oil market.

Remember $100 per barrel oil? It wasn’t that long ago. As recently as July 25, 2014, less than 15 months ago, oil was $102.09 per barrel.

What kind of behavior did this high price produce? Many oil producers assumed the $100 per barrel level was a permanently high plateau. This is a good example of the anchoring bias. Because oil was expensive, people assumed it would remain expensive.

The fracking industry assumed oil would remain in a range of $70-130 per barrel. Over $5 trillion was spent on exploration and development, much of it in Canada and the U.S. This led to a flood of new oil, which reduced the market share of OPEC producers. Saudi Arabia was losing ground both to OPEC competitors and the frackers.

In mid-2014, Saudi Arabia developed a plan to destroy the fracking industry and regain its lost market share. The exact details of the plan have never been acknowledged publicly but were revealed to your editor privately by a trusted source operating at the pinnacle of the global energy industry.

The Saudi plan involved a linear optimization program designed to calculate a price at which frackers would be destroyed. But the Saudi fiscal situation would not be impaired more than necessary to get the job done.

A $30 per barrel price would surely destroy frackers but would also destroy the Saudi budget. An $80 per barrel price would be comfortable from a Saudi budget perspective but would give too much breathing room to the frackers. What was the optimal price to accomplish both goals?

Such optimization programs involve many assumptions and are not an exact science. Yet they do produce useful answers to complex problems and are much more reliable than mere guesswork or gut feel.

It turned out that the optimal solution for the Saudi problem was $60 per barrel. A price in the range of $50-60 per barrel would suit the Saudis just fine. That was a price range that would eliminate frackers over time but would not unduly strain Saudi finances.

What makes Saudi Arabia unique among energy producers is that they actually can dictate the market price to some extent. Saudi Arabia has the world’s largest oil reserves and the world’s lowest average production costs. Saudi Arabia can make money on its oil production at prices as low as $10 per barrel.

This does not mean that the Saudis want a $10 per barrel price. It just means they have enormous flexibility when it comes to setting the price wherever they want. If the Saudis want a higher price, they pump less. If they want a lower price, they pump more. It’s that simple. No other producer can do this without depleting reserves or going broke.



- Source, Jim Rickards via Daily Reckoning


Wednesday, November 25, 2015

A Massive Wave of Defaults

Debt comes in many forms, including high-quality US Treasury debt, high-grade corporate debt and junk bonds. Debt is also issued by both US companies and foreign companies. Some of the foreign corporate debt is issued in local currencies and some in dollars. In discussing debt defaults, it’s necessary to keep all of these distinctions in mind.

The US companies sitting on hoards of cash, such as Apple, IBM and Google, are not the ones I’m concerned about; they will be fine. The defaults will be coming from three other sources.

The first wave of defaults will be from junk bonds issued by energy exploration and drilling companies, especially frackers. These bonds were issued with expectations of continued high energy prices. With oil prices at $60 per barrel or below, many of these bonds will default.

The second wave will be from structured products and special purpose vehicles used to finance auto loans. We are already seeing an increase in subprime auto loan defaults. That will get worse.

The third wave will come from foreign companies that issued US dollar debt but cannot get easy access to US dollars from their central banks or cannot afford the interest costs now that the US dollar is much stronger than when the debt was issued.

The combined total of all three waves — energy junk bonds, auto loans and foreign corporations — is in excess of $10 trillion, more than 10 times larger than the subprime mortgages outstanding before the last crisis, in 2007.

Not all of these loans will default, but even a 10% default rate would result in over $1 trillion of losses for investors, not counting any derivative side bets on the same debt. This debt will not default right away and not all at once, but look for a tsunami of bad debts beginning in late 2015 and into early 2016.

Regards,

Jim Rickards

Friday, November 20, 2015

Jim Rickards Personal Portfolio

My personal portfolio is a blend of cash, fine art, gold, silver, land and private equity. I do not own any publicly traded stocks or bonds, partly due to restrictions under various regulatory requirements applicable to my role as a portfolio strategist and newsletter writer.

The mix in my portfolio changes from time to time based on valuations of the particular asset classes. My recommended mix is 10% precious metals, 10% fine art, 30% cash, 20% land and 30% alternatives such as hedge funds, private equity and venture capital.

Currently, my personal allocation is overweight land, fine art and private equity and underweight cash and precious metals. However, this will change, because the fine art fund is currently making profit distributions, which are being reallocated to gold, at what I consider to be a good entry point, and to cash.

All investors should be able to purchase precious metals and land and hold cash without difficulty. Alternatives such as hedge funds, private equity and venture capital are not open to all investors, because they are frequently traded as private funds limited to accredited investors with high minimum subscription amounts.

There are also publicly traded equities such as high-quality bond funds and companies holding hard assets in energy, transportation, natural resources and agriculture.


- Source, Daily Reckoning

Sunday, November 15, 2015

Jim Rickards: Oil Shocks & The Global Economy


Jim Rickards appears on Russia Today, where he discusses global growth and the ongoing slowdown in China. Is the Death of Money on the way?

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Jim Rickards: Recession will force Fed to ease in 2016


Jim Rickards tells Lelde Smits there is no way the US Federal Reserve will hike rates. Instead, Rickards believes the next move will be easing in March 2016 and predicts the impact on markets, metals and currencies.