In the midst of the so-called “Lost Decade,” pundits continue to talk about the death of “buy and hold” (B&H) investing. I guess it probably makes sense to define B&H first before discussing it, but like most amorphous financial concepts, there is no clear cut definition. According to some strict B&H interpreters, B&H means buy and hold forever (i.e., buy today and carry to your grave).
For other more forgiving Wall Street lexicon analysts, B&H could mean a multi-year timeframe. However, with the advent of high frequency trading (HFT) and supercomputers, the speed of trading has only accelerated further to milliseconds, microseconds, and even nanoseconds. Pretty soon B&H will be considered buying a stock and holding it for a day! Average mutual fund turnover (holding periods) has already declined from about 6 years in the 1950s to about 11 months in the 2000s according to John Bogle.
Technology and the lower costs associated with trading advancements are obviously a key driver to shortened investment horizons, but even after these developments, professional success in beating the market is less clear. Passive gurus Burton Malkiel and John Bogle have consistently asserted that 75% or more of professional money managers underperform benchmarks and passive investment vehicles (e.g., index funds and exchange traded funds).
This is not the first time that B&H has been held for dead. For example, BusinessWeek ran an article in August 1979 entitled The Death of Equities (see Magazine Cover article), which aimed to eradicate any stock market believers off the face of the planet. Sure enough, just a few years later, the market went on to advance on one of the greatest, if not the greatest, multi-decade bull market run in history. People repudiated themselves from B&H back then, and while B&H was in vogue during the 1980s and 1990s it is back to becoming the whipping boy today.
Excuse Me, But What About Bonds?
With all this talk about the demise of B&H and the rise of the HFT machines, I can’t help but wonder why B&H is dead in equities but alive and screaming in the bond market? Am I not mistaken, but has this not been the largest (or darn near largest) thirty-year bull market in bonds? The Federal Funds Rate has gone from 20% in 1981 to 0% thirty years later. Not a bad period to buy and hold, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say the Fed Funds won’t go from 0% to a negative -20% over the next thirty years.
Better Looking Corpse
There’s no denying the fact that equities have been a lousy place to be for the last ten years, and I have no clue what stocks will do for the next twelve months, but what I do know is that stocks offer a completely different value proposition today. At the beginning of the 2000s, the market P/E (Price Earnings) valued earnings at a 29x multiple with the 10-year Treasury Note trading with a yield of about 6%.
Today, the market trades at 13.5 x’s 2010 earnings estimates (12x’s 2011) and the 10-Year is trading at a level less than half the 2000 rate (2.75% today). Maybe stocks go nowhere for awhile, but it’s difficult to dispute now that equities are at least much more attractive (less ugly) than the prices ten years ago. If B&H is dead, at least the corpse is looking a little better now.
As is usually the case, most generalizations are too simplistic in making a point. So in fully reviewing B&H, perhaps it’s not a bad idea of clarifying the two core beliefs underpinning the diehard buy and holders:
1) Buying and holding stocks is only wise if you are buying and holding good stocks.
2) Buying and holding stocks is not wise if you are buying and holding bad stocks.
Even in the face of a disastrous market environment, here are a few stocks that have met B&H rule #1:
Maybe buy and hold is not dead after all? Certainly, there have been plenty of stinking losing stocks to offset these winners. Regardless of the environment, if proper homework is completed, there is plenty of room to profitably resurrect stocks that are left for a buy and hold death by the so-called pundits.
DISCLOSURE: At the time the article was originally written, Sidoxia Capital Management (SCM) and some of its clients owned certain exchange traded funds and AAPL, AMZN, ARMH, and NFLX, but at the time of publishing SCM had no direct position in GGP, APKT, KRO, AKAM, FFIV, OPEN, RVBD, BIDU, PCLN, CRM, FLS, GMCR, HANS, BYI, SWN (*2,901% is correct %), CTSH, CMI, ISRG, ESRX, or any other security referenced in this article. As of 2/19/17 – Sidoxia owned AAPL, AMZN, and was short NFLX. No information accessed through the Investing Caffeine (IC) website constitutes investment, financial, legal, tax or other advice nor is to be relied on in making an investment or other decision.