Philosophy

A Lesson From An Old Friend

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Surveys indicate that many Americans dislike their jobs. If you are among them, I hope you are not irritated by the enthusiasm I have for my work.

“Job” is the key distinction, however. One individual who had a formative influence on my life did not have a job—he had an enterprise. Dean Sack founded the York State Bank in the World War II years, among many other endeavors, and ran it to the age of 92. If you have ever wondered how I arrived at the goal of working to age 92, this is it. I met Dean when he was 76, eleven years after he retired—a retirement that only lasted six weeks!

Ironically, much of our work is devoted to helping people fund and find fulfilling retirement lifestyles. Most do not have control over their working conditions to the degree that I enjoy. So retirement is a worthwhile and laudable goal for most, if not for me.

When the Depression hit in 1929, Dean was an adult, at work. He fascinated me, a student of history—and face it, not many want to hear an old man’s stories. So we grew close. Among the qualities that Dean showed: a hunger for new ideas, and to learn; consistency and honesty and integrity, no pretense and no bull; a tight focus on the things he could control. He and others of his generation did much to build their communities and the world.

I was fortunate to observe so much wisdom at an early stage in my career. Thirty years ago, nobody talked about ‘work-life balance,’ but Dean was the model for an integrated life: being the same person at work and play, with friends and customers, day and night.

We stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before, as they say. Vast wisdom resides in those generations. The lessons we may learn cost nothing, but can be valuable beyond price. Here’s to our mentors and teachers and wise elders!

Human Nature Creates Investment Opportunity

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Economists like to believe that human beings act rationally. Those of us that know otherwise follow the theory of Behavioral Economics instead.

One of the key findings of Behavioral Economics is that the pain of a loss is twice as great as the pleasure of a corresponding gain. Rationally speaking, $5 is $5, whether it is gained or lost. But we still feel the sting of the loss as a bigger deal than the pleasure arising from the gain. This is human nature in its raw, untrained state.

Confounding this finding is an extremely pertinent point, one that is ignored by the academics and the finance types who trade off their work. They treat a temporary decline as a loss. There is no shortage of expensive products designed to pander to this tendency by selling the promise of stability at a premium.

In the real world, many successful investors treat a temporary decline as either an opportunity, or a matter of no long term consequence. For most of us it takes education and training to overcome our behavioral tendency to feel the pain of a loss over short-term volatility. We’re here to help you with that.

The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual.

The Smell of Money

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The modern world developed from a society of subsistence farmers. The metaphors of nature, crops and orchards and seasons and livestock, have deeply rooted appeal. They remind us of a simpler time. But the metaphor in this story is personal history, not a fairy tale.

As a child I was privileged to visit the Omaha Stockyards from time to time in the company of a friend and his father, a “commission agent” who bought and sold cattle for farmer clients. Mr. G was a master of his work and he loved it. The stockyards were the largest in the world. The vast collection of pens and chutes and loading facilities were a temporary home each day to thousands of cattle, in transit from one place to another.

One might say the stockyards presented a rich tapestry for the senses. The fragrance of thousands of cattle in close quarters is one of those things that cannot adequately be described with pen and ink, or electrons.

Upon my introduction to this sensation, I first heard the words thought by some to be only a cliché. But they came from Mr. G, smiling broadly, breathing deeply, with a twinkle in his eye: “Smell that, son? That’s the smell of money!” For Mr. G and his colleagues and companions, the hundreds of workers at the yards and the customers they served, it was true. And there is value in this old tale to investors today.

As contrarian investors, we are mindful that the sentiment of the crowd is a contrary indicator. High levels of optimism may be associated with market drops ahead. Rotten sentiment sometimes points to future gains. When everyone expects the same thing, that expectation usually does not come to pass.

These days, the country seems to be in the grip of pessimism and foreboding. Sentiment about the future in general and the prospects for the markets in particular is poor by many measures. It stinks.

This too shall pass, sooner or later, and the mood of the country will improve. But for now, in the spirit of Mr. G we smile broadly, breathe deeply, and say “Smell that rotten sentiment? That’s the smell of money!”

The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual.

Niche Market of the Mind

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In every field of human endeavor, it seems that the best of the best are specialized. From the doctor who specializes in one form of cancer to the CPA who works mainly with trucking companies, specialists rule.

In business, the shorthand term is “niche marketing.” Financial advisors may work with people of a specific religion, those with shared hobbies or interests, people who work in a particular field or for a certain company, or those with some other traits or characteristic.

If you know us, it should not surprise you that we are different. Our niche market encompasses retirees and workers and truck drivers and executives and nurses and engineers and teachers and accountants and married couples and widows and single people. At first glance, this may seem to be a poorly defined client group.

But our clients represent a very well-defined group: it is a niche market of the mind.

We work hard to qualify clients by productive attitudes toward investing—and we are not afraid to try to train clients if the right attitudes don’t come naturally. A tolerance for volatility and a fundamental confidence, as a society, we stumble our way through our problems are two of the elements we need to have.

The rewards for pursuing this niche have been amazing. While other advisors cope with massive defections from informed strategy when the outlook darkens, our clients tend to stay the course. We avoid the curse of “cash on the sidelines,” waiting and waiting for that comfortable moment to get back in the game after selling out. We never promise stability, so we spend less time apologizing for the inevitable volatility.

In short, we can do our best work for people who are in the best position to profit from it over the long haul.

Is it always easy? Is it always fun? Of course not. The market goes up and down, and “up” is a lot more fun than “down.” Pessimism and optimism ebb and flow, and it can be tough to buck the crowd. Any rational person has to scratch their head in the toughest times and wonder whether they are doing the right thing. But together we have tended to make appropriate decisions.

Good information communicated well helps drive effective behavior. Behavior can help determine investment outcomes. Good outcomes can increase account balances. And we get paid on account balances. This is why we are doing what we do.

We don’t care if you engineered the truck, or drive the truck, or own the trucking company… if you have what it takes to invest successfully, we specialize in you. This is why we strive for a niche market of the mind.

The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. All performance referenced is historical and is no guarantee of future results.

Things Warren Buffett Never Said

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Warren Buffett may be the most famous investor in the world. The annual meeting of his company is known as ‘Woodstock for Capitalists,’ and is attended by 40,000 people. Countless articles, essays, and books have been written (including by us) about the things he has said.

As far as we know, nobody has ever written anything about things Buffett NEVER said. But here are our top three things Buffett never said:

1. “The stock went down, so I sold it.” Buffett knows the market goes up and down. He studies companies, not stock ticker symbols. When the fundamentals are in place, he buys. Then he holds. Then he holds some more. If the price declines, he typically buys more. This is what ‘buy low, sell high’ is all about.

2. “I’m waiting to invest until we get more economic data to clear up the uncertainty.” In his seven decades of investing, Buffett has noticed that uncertainty is always with us. He reads and studies ceaselessly, and when he finds something to buy, he buys it. Frequently, this turns out to be when the price is depressed because of temporary factors. Others are paralyzed by uncertainty when Buffett is taking action.

3. “A lot depends on what the Federal Reserve does next month.” Buffett has run his company for more than five decades, while seven different people held the chairmanship of the Federal Reserve Board, through innumerable cycles of Federal Reserve tightening and loosening. He can tell you what he paid for his stake in Coca Cola and when it was purchased. He probably cannot say what the Federal Reserve did at the meeting before, or the meeting after, the transaction. Why? Because it doesn’t matter in the long run.

Warren Buffett does not wear a halo. He is a human being and that means he makes mistakes. But he has made more money investing than any other human being on the planet. We think it pays to listen to the things that he has said. But there may be even more value in understanding the things he never said.

If you would like to discuss these concepts or your specific circumstances at greater length, please write or call.

The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. To determine which investment(s) may be appropriate for you, consult your financial advisor prior to investing. All performance referenced is historical and is no guarantee of future results. Stock investing involves risk including loss of principal.

It’s a Market of Stocks, not a Stock Market

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In the financial press you hear a lot of talk about “the market”: the market is up, the market is down, the market is jittery, and so on. Sometimes they’ll cite a specific index, such as the Dow Jones Industrial Average or Standard & Poor’s 500, using them as shorthand for the stock market as a whole.

This is a generalization, of course. There is no single monolithic “stock market” that tracks the performance of all publicly traded companies. What happens with one company’s stock price may not be happening with others—even within the big indexes.

For example, the S&P 500 Index rose 19.81% in 1999: the peak of the dot-com bubble. According to Standard & Poor’s sector research, the tech sector of the S&P Index went up a whopping 98.27% that year while boring sectors like consumer staples and utilities actually went down. “The market” had a great year, but a tech-heavy portfolio fared much better than a portfolio invested in old economy stocks. The reverse was true the next year, when the tech bubble popped and S&P’s tech sector dropped over 40% while banks, utilities, and staples went shooting up.

We find S&P’s index to be a useful barometer for the stock market as a whole and are sometimes guilty of using it as a generalization for all stocks. But it’s important to remember that the index is still made up of individual stocks, each with their own story.

Sometimes when you average all of those stocks together some compelling stories can get lost in the mix. Some advisors recommend a broad-based index approach, hoping that overperforming stocks will balance out underperforming stocks. While there is a time and place for indexing, we would really just prefer to own the overperforming stocks and try to leave the others out of it. Obviously this is not really feasible—we cannot know in advance which stocks will do well. However, we believe we can try.

As contrarian investors, we are interested specifically in stocks that look like they have the potential to buck the trend of the market. When there’s a stampede, we prefer to be running the other way. So it’s little surprise that some of our favorite holdings may be up when the indexes are down (or, unfortunately, vice versa.)

At 228 Main, we often deal with generalizations about the market because of the broad scope of our writings. If you want to talk specifics, call or email us and we’ll see if we can help.

The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. To determine which investment(s) may be appropriate for you, consult your financial advisor prior to investing. All performance referenced is historical and is no guarantee of future results. All indices are unmanaged and may not be invested into directly.

The Problem with Goals

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Scott Adams, creator of the wildly successful comic strip Dilbert, is a man of big ideas. Some of them are fantastic, some of them are questionable, a few of them may be literally insane. However, for all his eccentricity it’s hard to argue with results: over the past three decades Adams has managed to parlay his workplace doodles into a multi-million dollar franchise.

Among his many ideas, there’s one in particular that he credits his success to: he doesn’t believe in setting goals for himself. Instead, he believes in building systems to work towards what he wants. The idea is simple. Most peoples’ goals depend on factors outside their direct control, which leads to frustration. By focusing on what you’re doing to manage those goals, though, you can build a system or framework for trying to achieve what you want. This way, you’re only concerned about the things that you control yourself, rather than worrying about goals that are outside your immediate reach.

For example, suppose a freshly minted high school graduate wants to be a doctor. That goal will take an enormous amount of dedication and training, and no amount of passion or talent is going to replace that. At any given moment, they’re an entire decade away from reaching their goal—it will take them five years of school before they even reach a point with any kind of real hands-on training. When faced with such a distant goal it’s easy to despair of ever reaching it. But while they can’t just up and be a doctor, they can always work on their system for trying to become a doctor. By focusing on their immediate day to day studies instead of their long-term goal, every day is a success. They simply use their system.

We think this makes great life advice in general, but it’s particularly important when it comes to investing. Our goal is to grow our portfolio over time, but what the market does day to day is entirely beyond our control: we can’t force our portfolio to go up. What we can always do, though, is work our system. In our case, this means practicing our three core principles: avoid stampedes in the market, look for the biggest bargains we can find, and own the orchard for the fruit crop. We can’t push a button and make your portfolio grow. But we can practice our investing discipline every day, even when the markets don’t cooperate.

A Time to Reflect

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These are exciting times. With a birthday approaching, I am halfway to 120 years old. It is a natural place to stop and reflect on the journey so far, and the path ahead.

Twenty years ago, I was planning the concept that turned into Leibman Financial Services. At its heart, the idea was to build a business whose success depends entirely on the success of clients. After two prior decades of working with money in most of its forms, the experience and preparation were in place. The interest and passion was there. All we needed was people who would entrust us with their hard-earned wealth and well-thought plans.

Then you showed up. Thank you. The work is gratifying beyond words. And that leads to the next topic, the path ahead.

I plan to work to age 92. Two of my oldest friends, now gone, worked to that age in their own businesses. They were vibrant and active and happy in their later years, a good model for me.

It is amazing how a cherished objective can shape your actions and choices. I often say it is almost embarrassing to be learning so much at such an advanced age. But this is just lame humor. The need to keep learning and adapting and to stay current with developments in the economy and the markets and the business, and to get the resources and people in place to serve your needs, and the constant search for investment opportunities…all of this is invigorating. I feel like I discovered the Fountain of Youth.

The future is not guaranteed to us, in any sense. We can plan a big retirement party for the year 2048 when I turn 92. But we can’t know that any one of us will be there. So we would also like to extend another invitation, for something a little sooner.

If you would like to have breakfast with me at B’s Diner in Louisville, or lunch at the Main Street Café, just call the shop. We are scheduling through mid-July, so there are plenty of slots. The coffee’s always on, too, so if another time would suit you better, we can do that. Thank you all, so much, for the decades–past and future.

Guidelines for Product and Service Providers

We have good news for those who would like us to use their products and services. We will help you use your time more productively. All you need to do is read this before requesting a block of our time.

Seven Things to Know About Us:
1. We work hard to attract, train and retain clients who understand and tolerate volatility as a normal and integral part of long term investing.
2. We believe that ‘volatility is not risk,’ in the words of Warren Buffett.
3. We are a research and portfolio management shop, not a sales organization.
4. We believe conventional wisdom is usually not wise.
5. We value liquidity.
6. The better our clients do, the better off we will be.
7. Our only business objective is to grow the buckets of the clients.

Three Suggestions:
1. Help us find ways to seek to build the client buckets over the long term, without regard to volatility or popularity.
2. Tell us what popular investments are drawing the most money and buzz; that may give us clues about what to avoid.
3. Share perspectives and research and resources, not sales ideas.

Don’ts:
• Don’t try to help us find more people to talk to. We’re busy with our clients.
• Don’t show us new products that have no track record.
• Don’t call us if your organization lacks a stable history of ownership.
• Don’t bring information about non-liquid or high expense products.
• Don’t try to debate our beliefs or principles.

We are voracious consumers of ideas and information. If you can help us, please call. If in doubt, email Greg.Leibman@lpl.com. If we are not a fit based on the information presented here, find a better prospect than us. Thank you.

Screaming Toddlers and the Federal Reserve

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How many times have you read how easy it is to lose weight or build wealth or improve your health simply by developing your capacity for delayed gratification? Relax, we aren’t here to hector you or lecture you. Instead, we would like to explain how and why defective but popular policies are going to cost our future selves.

Resisting the temptation for a smaller but immediate reward in order to gain a larger or more enduring reward later—that is the concept of delayed gratification. The ability to exercise it has been linked to improvements in physical health, mental health, social networks, and wealth. In an economic sense, deferred spending (or saving) is positive because it builds capital that can make us more productive, with potentially higher income and net worth in the future.

Toddlers generally lack a firm concept of “later.” When one decides that a lollipop is needed, talk of waiting until after dinner or tomorrow doesn’t really fly. If you know why they call toddlerhood the “Terrible Twos,” you understand that tantrums work against the idea of delayed gratification.

Our Federal Reserve and other central banks around the world are impatient with the pace of economic growth. One of the supposed “problems” they’ve identified is that we are not spending enough. The savings rate—the part of our incomes that we do not spend—is higher than it has been for quite a while. The Fed knows we could spend more money if we wanted to, but we are stubbornly saving it.

Our economy will be stronger in the future because collectively we are exercising delayed gratification with our money. But the immediate gratification of faster economic growth right now is being sacrificed so that you and I can have stronger balance sheets, less debt, and more money on hand.

You may have noticed that the Zero Interest Rate Policy has drastically reduced the return on savings. And now, in the next step, some central banks are fostering negative interest rates. It is hard to think about, so let’s look at an example. At negative interest rates, you might buy a $10,000 CD and get back only $9,900 at maturity.

Why would the “experts” inflict this upon us? In order to make us spend money instead of saving it. It is like the Zero Interest Rate Policy, only worse. In other words, the central banks are like toddlers who have seen the lollipop and want the lollipop and it better happen NOW!

The Federal Reserve Board has members of varying opinions: some are like toddlers, some behave as adults. Thankfully nobody has begun to institute negative interest rates in the United States.

Our slipping national capacity for delayed gratification is a problem at the leadership level. We want you to know how this might affect you. We are also paying attention and working hard to figure out what we should own, and why, in our investments.

As always, please write or call if you would like to discuss this or other pertinent issues.

The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual.

The economic forecasts set forth in the presentation may not develop as predicted and there can be no guarantee that strategies promoted will be successful.