David's Weekly - October 21, 2022
David Crotin, MASc, CIM, QAFP
Working with business owners, executives and professionals to provide tax, investment and financial planning strategies to meet their needs and goals.
Plan – Don’t Predict
In this week’s letter
Webinar Announcement
On November 15, we’ll be continuing our webinar series on the New Approach to Wealth Management. (Note, the webinar date has been updated from November 16 to 15.)
Here’s the RSVP link.?When you arrive at the Webex page, please follow the Register link.
The webinar will cover ideas in financial planning, investment management, risk management, and will and estates and provide an up-to-date overview of the international markets and opportunities therein.
International News – The latest in Ukraine:
As we’ve discussed for months, the continuing conflict in Ukraine is one of the driving forces behind the current inflationary challenges faced internationally.?Just to review, the reduction in grain supply from Ukraine continues to impact prices at the grocery checkout with food inflation remaining sticky.?At the pump, sanctions applied to Russia and the Russian strategy of squeezing supplies to Europe to drive a wedge amongst the western allies, a strategy successfully employed in the past, is one of the key factors in the continuing energy inflation picture.?In a settlement of this conflict, we might expect some downward pressure on both energy and food.?However, a rates-triggered economic slowdown will likely affect the former more than the latter.
On the ground, Russia continues to punish civilians through attacks supported by Iranian weapons, while the Russian military effort, at least according to the sources we look at, appears to be floundering.?Keep in mind the bias that information operations and western media can both impact our opinions.?What can we expect next??If there’s any truth to our sources, we might see a significant further rollback of Russian forces from the crucial region of Kherson which is a key link in the larger Russian plans to take control of Ukraine by landlocking the country and destroying its economy.?We’ll see what happens in the next few days.
What can last year’s market performance tell us about next year’s market performance??Not much.
As a professional trader for 20 years, one thing you learn is that buying on dips works in bull markets. While in bear markets, selling on a rally is the way to make money.?The idea is that the market is only temporarily getting off track.?The challenge is to know which regime you’re in!?The bigger lesson is, the shorter the time frame, the harder it is to fade or chase markets.?And, when you’re looking at a time frame of less than one year (let alone less than one day, for you day traders out there), the evidence shows that the previous nine months' performance gives almost zero information about the next nine months.?We’ll leave the why of that discovery for another discussion and focus on the actual numbers.?
Each yellow dot in the blotchy chart below represents the return of the market for one 9-month trailing period vs the return of the market for the following 9-month period.?There’s a dot for every 9-month period for every year from 1950.?But, don’t strain your eyes here.?It turns out that the correlation is 0.006.?In other words, if the market is having a great run for 9 months, don’t expect the next 9 months to be great as well.?One interesting thing that’s easy enough to see is that there are plenty of dots clustered in the 0-20% range, confirming what we know.?And that is, the market tends to return about 10% or so from one year to the next.?The classic lesson is, the longer you invest, the better your chances of having positive returns.
Trailing Returns Do Not Predict Future Returns
How has the market performed during previous bear markets with high inflation??Pretty well.
Reversion to the mean is one of the key concepts of the market. That is, when prices move away from the longer-term trend they tend to get pulled back to that trend.?The stock market went up far more quickly in the last two years than the long-term trend and has now headed down very quickly.?This process happens over and over again, in every time frame – minutes, hours, days, weeks, and years.?It’s easy to know that the market has gone too far, but to speculate successfully on those moves, the real challenge is getting the timing right.?But picking tops and bottoms is impossible and that is why we encourage our clients to avoid market timing simply by making regular contributions.
However, sometimes it’s instructive to look at previous market reversions, particularly sell-offs, to see what historically happens next.?In this case, we’re looking at what happens during the worst market sell-offs during periods of high inflation – i.e. under circumstances like now.
Looking at the chart below, we can see the market returns after the bottom decile (worst 10%) performance during periods of high inflation. The chart reflects the years 1973 to 1982 during which time CPI stayed above 6%.?The chart shows that even during high inflation periods with market sell-offs, one can expect a bounce over the next 3, 6, 9, and 12 months.?This isn’t to predict or guarantee this will happen next, of course.?It does demonstrate that during periods of high inflation, the market can return enough to more than cover inflation and that staying in cash can leave one’s plans far behind.
Future returns after bottom decile performance during high inflation years
Wrap
With that, we’ll wind up this week’s letter, as always, with RBC Dominion Securities’ Global Insight Weekly.?Enjoy.
By Portfolio Advisory Group
In this week's issue...
Please take some time to review the Global Insight Weekly.
Feel free to contact me with any questions and/or to discuss investment ideas.
I appreciate the opportunity to serve you and look forward to continuing to help you accomplish your long-term financial goals.
Have a great weekend,
David