Fisher Capital Management Report Part 2 - The UK Emergency Budget

Fisher Capital Management Report Part 2- The UK has had an emergency budget and it could have been much worse. The heavy lifting is being done by a rise in VAT bringing in £13 billion. On the spending side the cuts are achieved by freezing public sector pay, indexing state benefits to the CPI rather than the faster-rising RPI and freezing child benefits. State pensions will be indexed to the higher of wages or the CPI but the pension age will be raised to 66 fairly soon.

Interest rates are projected to remain low, with inflation absent; and it is possible that Quantitative Easing will need to be resumed but on present prospects this seems unlikely to be necessary. Another concern is with the regulative proposals. There is an antibank mentality developing in this coalition government, which is most unfortunate; much of it seems to emanate from Vince Cable and the Lib Dems. Yet a moment’s thought should be enough to convince one that we need bank credit expansion and a return to competition on the bank high street in order to foster recovery and enterprise. Ever tougher bank regulation is what was needed before, at the peak of expansion, not now in the slough of recession giving way to recovery.

Talk of breaking up banks fails to recognise the natural economics of banks, which favours scale and risk-spreading. Talk of capping mortgage lending at modest percentages of income is also unfortunate when the UK want to see a revival of it’s housing market, now once again back in the doldrums. A last area of concern is the state of the labour market. The UK do have near ‘full employment’ if one discounts the modest temporary effect of recession. But this only applies to those normally looking for work. : There is now a large group of people who are claiming benefits of various sorts in order to stay out of the labour market. Disability benefit is one route; nother is the having of children in order to get child benefits and related parenting allowances, with tragic consequences for some children.

Tightening up of this has been signalled in the budget but this has happened before, with no proper follow-through. Another UK labour market problem is the resurgence of union power as Labour loosened the union laws passed before 1997. One key loosening was the 12-week rule, which allows workers to breach their contracts with impunity when on strike until 12 weeks of strike have occurred. When strikes are designed for short periods for maximum disruption, this 12 week period can take a long time to trigger. During it the employing firm is unable to defend itself by recruiting a different labour force.

Under the pre-1997 legislation firms were able to dismiss workers in breach of contract, provided they did so in a non-discriminatory way. This led to a huge reduction in strikes and a large rise in UK productivity, to the great general benefit. As we have seen in recent years, certain unions are exploiting this 12-week rule to damage the economy — the classic case has been the BA dispute where UNITE has persisted in attempting to defend well-above market wages for cabin crew. In sum the budget was a decent start in restoring fiscal sanity. But only a start. The UK now needs urgent attention to the creation of a proper tax system with low marginal rates but generating a reliable revenue source — the two are perfectly compatible. It needs sense and restraint in regulation. Finally they need to reform their labour market yet again.     

U.S. Equities: Fisher Capital Management Reports

As mentioned previously, stocks finished a volatile month in October with a volatile final week of trading, as investors began to question whether the market¹s impressive rally had surpassed the economy¹s ability to generate growth in output and profits.

To be sure, throughout the market’s impressive rebound, the technical picture for stocks gathered steam, as excess liquidity helped drive the market higher.

Fisher Capital Management, US Equities Reports: As one technical achievement passed another, we began to postulate that the market’s technicals appeared significantly better than its fundamentals.

Some of these concerns may be coming to fruition over the near term, as a few technical strengths appear to have softened in recent weeks. Indeed, as the S&P 500 Index approached the 1,100 level during the middle of October, the market ran into strong resistance, falling by approximately 5% from that high by month-end.

Fisher Capital Management, US Equities Reports: This may prove to be an important development because at 1,100, the S&P 500 was within about 20 points of achieving a 50% retracement, whereby the market could have recouped 50% of the loss from the October 2007 high of 1565 to the March 2009 low of 666. Given all the cash parked in money markets and shortterm Treasury bills, another surge or two above 1,100 is certainly possible. Yet 1,121 is a number that should be on the radar for all investors, because if it is achieved, very little technical resistance exists on the path to 1200.

In addition to the strong resistance, stocks failed to hold a key support level on the last day of October. The market’s 50-day moving average (DMA) was 1,052 heading into Halloween weekend, but investors were spooked by poor readings on personal spending and consumer confidence, resulting in a close (1,036) below the important 50- DMA level. An important test will be in the first several trading days of November to see whether or not the market can sustain its rally above this key support level.

Fisher Capital Management, US Equities Reports: This weakness was exacerbated by a surge in the market’s “fear gauge” toward the end of October. The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index, or VIX, which measures the cost of using options as insurance against declines in the S&P 500 Index, surged in the final few days of trading last month.

While the VIX had been at a 14-month low in the middle of October, the 25% jump at the end of the month suggests investor skittishness about market direction over the next several weeks, particularly as the catalyst of earnings season draws to a close.

Fisher Capital Management, US Equities Reports: Fortunately, the fundamental picture has brightened. Better than expected economic data suggests the possibilities for an improvement in corporate performance. Interest rates and inflation remain low, providing a healthy backdrop for corporations that have been very aggressive cutting costs from their expense structures.

Indeed, recent earnings news has been somewhat positive, with 70% of the companies in the S&P 500 Index having reported an average decline in earnings per share (EPS) of 12% for the
third quarter, exceeding expectations.

Fisher Capital Management, US Equities Reports: Given our projections for a “less spectacular” economic recovery in 2010, though, we continue to believe that consensus estimates for corporate profit growth of up to 35% next year are too high. Consequently, our operating EPS projections remain more than 12% below consensus expectations ($75.00) for 2010.

Businesses can’t cut costs forever, and at some point we believe revenue growth is a necessity to help justify valuations for a market that is already trading at a price/earnings (P/E) ratio of 16 to 17 times our $65.00 estimate for next year. Until we begin to see an improvement in the longer-term trends for housing, employment, credit, sales, and profits, we suspect the market will be unwilling to pay anything more than historically average P/E multiples (16 to 17 times) for a dollar of earnings. Therefore, we continue to believe the market, as defined by the S&P 500 Index, will likely be fairly valued within the current range of 1,050 to 1,100 over the next six months.

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