Big Pharma: Even Worse Than Used Cars as a Market for Lemons?
by ilene - September 10th, 2010 9:40 pm
Big Pharma: Even Worse Than Used Cars as a Market for Lemons?
Courtesy of Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism
Some readers have wondered why this blog from time to time runs posts on the US health care system. Aside from the fact that it’s a major public policy problem in America, it is also a prime example of bad incentives, information asymmetry, and corporate predatory behavior. It thus makes for an important object lesson.
Reader Francois T pointed to an example, a commentary on a paper presented by Donald Light at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, “Pharmaceuticals: A Two-Tiered Market for Producing ‘Lemons’ and Serious Harm.” It still appears to be embargoed, but Howard Brody provides an extensive summary on his blog.
Light uses George Akerlof “market for lemons” as a point of departure. For those not familiar with the famed Akerlof paper, a “market for lemons” can occur when consumers are unable to distinguish product quality. The used car market is the paradigm, since the dealer has a much better idea than the buyer of whether a particular car is any good. Unscrupulous operators can stick a lot of hapless chump customers with overpriced clunkers. However, as crooked vendors become more common, buyers wise up a tad and are not longer to pay as much for cars they cannot evaluate. So while the prices buyers are now willing to pay are probably still too high for rattletraps, they are too low for decent cars. People with good merchandise start to look for other channels. Akerlof posits that the market eventually falls apart.
Note that used cars dealers did not set out to create lemons; the cars were bad deals by being overpriced (presumably, if they had been presented, warts and all, they still would have found purchasers, presumably people who thought they could repair them and those who wanted them for parts and scrap). Light contends, by contrast, that major pharmaceutical companies create bad products:
[T]he pharmaceutical market for ‘lemons,’ differs from other markets for lemons in that companies develop and produce the lemons. Evidence in this paper indicates that the production of lemon-drugs with hidden dangers is widespread and results from the systematic exploitation of monopoly rights and the production of partial, biased information about the efficacy and safety of new drugs…Companies will design and run their clinical
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DiggThe Big Boys Discover Options
by ilene - September 5th, 2010 4:04 pm
The Big Boys Discover Options
Other institutions follow Pimco in using puts and calls to battle stock-market risk. Global volatility leads to less reliance on modern portfolio theory.
IN THE RAREFIED WORLD OF endowments, pension funds and major asset- management companies, worries about risk are often quashed by modern portfolio theory.
The Nobel Prize-winning concept essentially contends that asset diversification alone is enough to reduce risk. Options, though designed for that very purpose, are historically viewed as an inelegant solution.
But the old biases could be fading, according to a study released last week by the Options Industry Council, an educational marketing group primarily funded by the options exchanges.
THE GYRATIONS in the global financial market seem to have upturned longstanding ideas in the investment community, including those about owning a variety of stocks or bonds to reduce investment risk. Even now, correlation is damaging many portfolios as different assets, including some stocks and bonds, increasingly trade like each other.
The OIC study suggests that the financial crisis has made endowments, pension funds and major asset managers more open to using options to reduce portfolio risk. This is a significant development. The common experience for derivatives salesmen traveling to Boston and other bastions of the money-management industry, is to be viewed by portfolio managers as people with two heads and one eye, trying to peddle exotic financial detritus.
The Dark Side of Deficits
by ilene - August 28th, 2010 6:30 pm
The Dark Side of Deficits
Courtesy of John Mauldin at Thoughts from the Frontline
Secular Bull and Bear Markets
It’s Not the (Stupid) Economy
The Consequences of a Credit Crisis
The Dark Side of Deficits
LA, Europe, Kansas City, and Houston
In the pre-crisis days, I used to write about things like P/E ratios, secular bull and bear markets, valuations, and all of the things we used to think about in the Old Normal. But what about those topics as we begin our trip through the New Normal? It’s time to reconvene class and think through what might change and what will remain the same. I think this will be a fun read – and let me tip my hand. I come out on the side of a new secular bull that gets us back to trend – but not just yet. The New Normal has to have its turn first. (Note: this will print out longer than usual, as there are a lot of charts.)
And speaking of first, I once again need some help from readers. I will be in "jail" next week for the Muscular Dystrophy Society. I need you to help bail me out. You can go to https://www.joinmda.org/downtowndallas2010/johnm and make a donation to help kids and families who really need help in these difficult times, and also help sponsor research that will eventually cure this disease. If you follow the link, you can see a cute video – and then make your donation!
I thank you and I am sure Jerry’s kids thank you too!
Secular Bull and Bear Markets
Market analysts (of which I am a minor variety) talk all the time about secular bull and bear cycles. I argued in this column in 2002 (and later in Bull’s Eye Investing) that most market analysts use the wrong metric for analyzing bull and bear cycles.
(For the record, even though I am talking about the US
"Cycles" are defined as events that repeat in a sequence. For there to be a cycle, some condition or situation must recur over a period of time. We are able to observe a wide variety of cycles in our lives: patterns in the weather, the moon, radio waves, etc.…
Just say no to bonds
by ilene - August 27th, 2010 2:51 am
Baruch’s part two – not only are equities the asset class of the future, bonds can be taken out and shot for all the trouble they’ve caused. – Ilene
Just say no to bonds
Courtesy of Ultimi Barbarorum
In these pages we have often defended equities against their naysayers in the great bonds vs stocks debate that seems to be currently raging. But defence is only half the job. It is time to go on the attack! Note well, dear reader, that I know very little about bonds, and I don’t want to know any more in case I have to change my views. However knowing very little about an asset class doesn’t stop bloggers from talking about it with authoriteh, especially if it is bond apologists harping on about equities. So I, Baruch, am going to give them a dose of their own medicine.
OK, so some of the stuff below is a bit tongue in cheek. But tell me if any of it is actually untrue:
1. Bonds are zero sum games. Baruch doesn’t get out of bed on an investment if he doesn’t think he can make 30%. Ex junk, about a 10-15% swing move is the best you can hope for with bonds. Bonds don’t really make you very much money; they shouldn’t. After all, the basic proposition is you lent whoever it was a certain sum of money, and they promised to pay it to you back. Except for the interest, and you can also forecast the nominal amount of that to the penny, they’re not ever going to pay you any more than that amount. The only way you can make any real bucks on a bond is after something has gone wrong, and the poor schmoe who bought it at par sells it to you and takes a loss. Then you hope it gets better again. This means that for the most part. . .
2. To make any real money off bonds you have to be levered up. Ironically, most bonds are quite illiquid, except of course for government paper. Illiquidity and leverage are amusing bed partners and when together can create incredibly spectacular blowups. This means that bonds’ susceptibility to Black Swan events is much much higher than you think. Positive Black Swan events won’t help you so much when you own bonds…
Welcome to the Wolf Market?
by ilene - August 22nd, 2010 5:36 pm
Courtesy of Leo Kolivakis
A couple of interesting articles appeared this Sunday. Graham Bowley of the NYT reports, In Striking Shift, Small Investors Flee Stock Market:
Renewed economic uncertainty is testing Americans’ generation-long love affair with the stock market.
Investors withdrew a staggering $33.12 billion from domestic stock market mutual funds in the first seven months of this year, according to the Investment Company Institute, the mutual fund industry trade group. Now many are choosing investments they deem safer, like bonds.
If that pace continues, more money will be pulled out of these mutual funds in 2010 than in any year since the 1980s, with the exception of 2008, when the global financial crisis peaked.
Small investors are “losing their appetite for risk,” a Credit Suisse analyst, Doug Cliggott, said in a report to investors on Friday.
One of the phenomena of the last several decades has been the rise of the individual investor. As Americans have become more responsible for their own retirement, they have poured money into stocks with such faith that half of the country’s households now own shares directly or through mutual funds, which are by far the most popular way Americans invest in stocks. So the turnabout is striking.
So is the timing. After past recessions, ordinary investors have typically regained their enthusiasm for stocks, hoping to profit as the economy recovered. This time, even as corporate earnings have improved, Americans have become more guarded with their investments.
“At this stage in the economic cycle, $10 to $20 billion would normally be flowing into domestic equity funds” rather than the billions that are flowing out, said Brian K. Reid, chief economist of the investment institute. He added, “This is very unusual.”
The notion that stocks tend to be safe and profitable investments over time seems to have been dented in much the same way that a decline in home values and in job stability the last few years has altered Americans’ sense of financial security.
It may take many years before it is clear whether this becomes a long-term shift in psychology. After technology and dot-com shares crashed in the early 2000s, for example, investors were quick to re-enter
…
Preserve and Protect: Mapping The Tipping Points
by ilene - August 21st, 2010 1:50 pm
Preserve and Protect: Mapping The Tipping Points
Courtesy of Gordon T Long of Tipping Points
The economic news has turned decidedly negative globally and a sense of ‘quiet before the storm’ permeates the financial headlines. Arcane subjects such as a Hindenburg Omen now make mainline news. The retail investor continues to flee the equity markets and in concert with the institutional players relentlessly pile into the perceived safety of yield instruments, though they are outrageously expensive by any proven measure. Like trying to buy a pump during a storm flood, people are apparently willing to pay any price. As a sailor, it feels like the ominous period where the crew is fastening down the hatches and preparing for the squall that is clearly on the horizon. Few crew mates are talgking as everyone is checking preparations for any eventuality. Are you prepared?
What if this is not a squall but a tropical storm, or even a hurricane? Unlike sailors, the financial markets do not have the forecasting technology for protection against such a possibility. Good sailors before today’s technology advancements avoided this possibility through the use of almanacs, shrewd observation of the climate and common sense. It appears to this old salt that all three are missing in today’s financial community.
Looking through the misty haze though, I can see the following clearly looming on the horizon.
Since President Nixon took the US off the Gold standard in 1971, the increase in global fiat currency has been nothing short of breath taking. It has grown unchecked and inevitably has become unhinged from world industrial production and the historical creators of real tangible wealth.
Do you believe trees grow to the sky?
Or, is it you believe you are smart enough to get out before this graph crashes?
Apparent synthetic wealth has artificially and temporarily been created through the production of paper. Whether Federal Reserve IOU notes (the dollar) or guaranteed certificates of confiscation (treasury notes & bonds), it needs to never be forgotten that these are paper. It is not wealth. It is someone else’s obligation to deliver that wealth to the holder of the paper based on what that paper is felt to be worth when the obligation is required to be surrendered. It must never be forgotten that fiat paper is only a counter party obligation to deliver. Will they?…
The Question “Are Stocks a Screaming Buy Relative to Bonds?” Creates False Premises
by ilene - August 18th, 2010 4:49 pm
The Question "Are Stocks a Screaming Buy Relative to Bonds?" Creates False Premises
Courtesy of Mish
Josh Lipton writing for Minyanville is asking the question Are Stocks a Screaming Buy Relative to Bonds?
Dr. Ed Yardeni of Yardeni Research takes one side of the debate and says "stocks are cheap" according to a model, now dubbed the “Fed’s Stock Valuation Model”.
I am quoted in the article, taking a different view of course, but I want to add to the thoughts I expressed in the article.
First a few snips from Lipton’s article …
Certainly, by employing some basic measures to compare the relative value of stocks and bonds, equities appear attractive. Dr. Ed Yardeni of Yardeni Research made the case this morning that stocks seem cheap and bonds seem expensive according to a simple model that compares the market’s earnings yield to the US Treasury bond yield.
Yardeni first started studying this model after seeing it mentioned in the Federal Reserve Board’s Monetary Policy Report to the Congress dated July 1997. The strategist dubbed it the “Fed’s Stock Valuation Model” (FSVM), and that’s what it’s been called ever since.
During the week of August 13, Yardeni says, the forward P/E of the S&P 500 was 11.8. The forward earnings yield, which is just the reciprocal of the P/E, was 8.5%. The 10-year Treasury bond’s yield is 2.60% this morning. So its P/E, which is the reciprocal of the yield, is 38.5.
According to the FSVM, that means stocks are 64.8% undervalued relative to bonds.
James Swanson, chief investment strategist at MFS Investment Management, agrees that stocks now look cheap relative to bonds and that, as an asset class, equities boast more opportunity for investors looking ahead.
In short, the stock market is now priced for an economic future that Swanson thinks remains unlikely. “This only makes sense if the world is going into a deflationary scenario,” the strategist says. “Otherwise, this is a mispricing.”
Yes, stocks might look cheap relative to bonds, but that’s because the economic outlook remains bleak. Mike Shedlock, a well-known registered investment adviser for Sitka Pacific Capital Management, argues that the economy is already mired in deflation, a dangerous downward spiral in prices that will prove lethal for corporate profits.
"Why are Treasury yields low?" Shedlock asks. "It’s because the economy is in recession."
Furthermore, Shedlock argues that investors are ultimately best advised
…
Nassim Taleb Says The Financial System Is Now Riskier Than It Was Before The 2008 Crisis
by ilene - August 11th, 2010 2:33 pm
Nassim Taleb Says The Financial System Is Now Riskier Than It Was Before The 2008 Crisis
Courtesy of Tyler Durden
Nassim Taleb is out making waves once again, this time at the Discovery Invest Leadership Summit in Johannesburg today, where he said he was “betting on the collapse of government bonds” and that investors should avoid stocks. To be sure this is not a new position for Nassim, who in February had the same message, when he said that "every single human being" should be short U.S. treasuries. Indeed since then bonds have gone up in a straight line as the bond bubble has grown to record levels, and with the ongoing help of the Fed, is it any wonder. The only question is when will this last bubble also pop.
More from Bloomberg:
“I’m very pessimistic,” he said at the . “By staying in cash or hedging against inflation, you won’t regret it in two years.”
Treasuries have rallied amid speculation the global economic recovery is faltering, driving yields on two-year notes to a record low of 0.4892 percent today. The Federal Reserve yesterday reversed plans to exit from monetary stimulus and decided to keep its bond holdings level to support an economic recovery it described as weaker than anticipated. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index retreated 16 percent between April 23 and July 2, the biggest slump during the bull market.
The financial system is riskier that it was than before the 2008 crisis that led the U.S. economy to the worst contraction since the Great Depression, Taleb said.
Will the Black Swan author be correct? Perhaps (and given enough time, certainly), although as virtually everyone is expecting a dire outcome in both the public and private sector, courtesy of the untenable balance sheet, the surprise will most certainly have to come from some other place. And with even The Atlantic now posting cover stories on the Iran war spark, it is increasingly less likely that geopolitics will be the issue. Is every possible dire outcome priced in? If so, Taleb should focus his formidable intellect on answering just what the market is missing.
EXTEND & PRETEND: Stage I Comes to an End!
by ilene - July 30th, 2010 12:58 am
EXTEND & PRETEND: Stage I Comes to an End!
The Dog Ate my Report Card
Courtesy of Gordon T. Long
Both came to an end at the same time: the administration’s policy to Extend & Pretend has run out of time as has the patience of the US electorate with the government’s Keynesian economic policy responses. Desperate last gasp attempts are to be fully expected, but any chance of success is rapidly diminishing.
Whether an unimpressed and insufficiently loyal army general, a fleeing cabinet budget chief or G20 peers going the austerity route, all are non-confidence votes for the Obama administration’s present policies. A day after the courts slapped down President Obama’s six month gulf drilling moratorium, the markets were unpatriotically signaling a classic head and shoulders topping pattern. With an employment rebound still a non-starter, President Obama as expected was found to be asking for yet another $50B in unemployment extensions and state budget assistance to avoid teacher layoffs. However, the gig is up: the policy of Extend and Pretend has no time left on the shot clock nor for another round of unemployment benefit extensions. A congress that is now clearly frightened of what it sees looming in the fall midterm elections is running for cover on any further spending initiatives. The US electorate has been sending an unmistakable message in all elections nationwide.
The housing market is rolling over as fully expected and predicted by almost everyone except the White House and its lap-dog press corp. Noted analyst Meredith Whitney says a double dip in housing is a ‘no brainer’ with the government’s HAMP program clearly a bust as one third of participants are now dropping out. The leading economic indicator (ECRI) has abruptly turned lower, signaling the economy is slowing rapidly without the $1T per month stimulus addiction, which has kept the extend and pretend economy on life support.
The gulf oil spill that was initially stated as 1000 barrels per day has been revised upwards faster than the oil can reach the surface. It now appears to be north of 100,000 barrels per day. A 100 percent miss is about in line with the miss on how many jobs the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) was going to create. Also, it appears the administration can’t even get its hands around the basics of administration management during any crisis event. Teleprompter politics…
Manic Markets Continue: ETF Daily Outlook
by ilene - July 22nd, 2010 8:06 pm
Manic Markets Continue: ETF Daily Outlook
Courtesy of John Nyaradi
Click here for a Special Report from Wall Street Sector Selector
Instratrader Indicators:
Red Flag: We Expect Lower Prices Ahead
Daily Technical Sentiment Indicators: Neutral
Short Term Market Condition: Overbought (short term bearish)
Short Term Trend: Up
Medium Term Trend: Down
Long Term Trend: Down
% of Stocks Above 200 Day Moving Average/Daily Change: 51%/ +23%
% of Stocks Above 50 Day Moving Average/Daily Change: 60% /+51%
Market Update:
| Market | closing price | % change |
| DIA | 10,322 | +1.99% |
| SPY | 1093 | +2.3% |
| GLD | $1194 | +0.8% |
| Oil | $79.10 | +3.3% |
| Vix | $24.63 | -3.9% |
| Shanghai Comp | 2562 | +1.1% |
Commentary
Back to back manic days as the markets continue to struggle with poor macro economic news and mostly positive earnings.
Today it was “risk on” as Microsoft, Caterpillar and UPS earnings were cheered while Amazon missed, housing reports and unemployment all were negative. Chairman Bernanke continued his commentary on Capitol Hill but today, unlike yesterday, the markets rallied. Jobless benefits were extended by Congress. Tomorrow brings earnings reports from Ford and McDonalds and the long awaited “stress tests” designed to show the health of the European banks.
For the weekend, we have a tropical storm heading for the BP well in the Gulf of Mexico and apparently the well be unattended and operations will stop. There are all kinds of varying forecasts about what will happen that range from nothing to a methane rain over the Gulf Coast.
1100 on the S&P remains formidable resistance as does the 200 Day Moving Average at 1113 just above today’s close. Point and Figure charts remain on “sell” signals but close to changing. This is a titanic struggle that will resolve one way or other over the coming days.
We remain in the “red flag” mode, expecting lower prices ahead.
Disclosure: psq, rwm, sh, skf, spy put
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the Favorites backup site
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