3 Reasons Why Investors Will Panic Again

3 Reasons Why Investors Will Panic Again
By Dan Caplinger
March 11, 2009 Comments (1)


Few things beat the thrill of owning stocks on a day like Tuesday. Yet just as experienced long-term investors have kept the losses of the past year in perspective, so too should you not draw any major conclusions from yesterday's gains.
Sure, the major market benchmarks gained 5% or more on Tuesday. Those are healthy rises -- but if you look back, you'll see that the last time the S&P 500 closed this high was on Feb. 27, less than two weeks ago.

Unfortunately, there are plenty of reasons why we may not be out of the woods yet. Here are just a few.

1. Even in a rebound, for every two steps forward, there's a step back
Just as few bull markets feature stocks moving straight up without any hiccups along the way, bear markets don't always involve uninterrupted crashes. Most often, you'll see plenty of moves in both directions, with the overall trend only becoming clear after longer periods of time.
For instance, since the last bull market ended in October of 2007, we've had a number of significant bounces in the S&P:
From March to May 2008, the S&P rose from its March lows of slightly less than 1,275 to about 1,425.
After October 2008's lows around 850, the index bounced back to over 1,000 in just over a week.
Then later in November, the index plummeted to 750 before recovering to 935.
To put in that perspective, Tuesday's gains could easily be just the beginning of a more substantial up move -- and yet still constitute only a bounce in the ongoing bear market.

2. More bad news on the earnings front
Most analysts expect another round of terrible earnings reports from the first quarter of this year, which will get announced predominantly in April and May. For instance, look at these projections for some major U.S. companies:

Stock
Estimated 1st-Quarter EPS Growth,Year-Over-Year
Reduction in Estimate,Last 90 Days

Intel (Nasdaq: INTC)
(92%)
88%
Target (NYSE: TGT)
(36%)
20%
Mosaic (NYSE: MOS)
(70%)
78%
ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP)
(72%)
53%
Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC)
(58%)
47%
Deere (NYSE: DE)
(36%)
30%
J.C. Penney (NYSE: JCP)
(144%)
271%
Source: Yahoo! Finance. As of March 10.

Even if the economy has started to turn back from recession to recovery, it won't do so overnight. As massive as the amount of economic activity in the U.S. is, turning on a dime isn't a reasonable expectation.

3. Investors have to change their attitude
And expectations are what matters most right now. What the economy will actually do isn't all that important -- because everyone has a pretty good sense that the economy will be lousy for the foreseeable future. However, the sea change in the markets will come when investors start reacting differently to all the bad news.
Recently, uncertainty has dominated the markets. With government intervention becoming a nearly everyday occurrence, investors haven't had any idea what to expect. The specter of nationalization put fear into shareholders of financial companies -- and since they are at the epicenter of the current crisis, they carry huge symbolic value even beyond the critical role they play in our economic system.
However, if investors start looking for news that supports a glass-half-full theory rather than sticking with the gloom and doom that has dominated over the past six months, the markets have plenty of room to run on the upside -- even before a real recovery takes hold.

How to prepare
So what's the right strategy for your investments now? What you should do hasn't changed since yesterday, or last month, or last year. Many of those who've carried on with their normal investing strategies have taken big losses, but they see those losses as temporary. Meanwhile, with money they've added to the market after its crash, they're picking up shares of the companies they want to own at prices they could never have imagined seeing before all this happened.
So, just as the market's drop didn't mean that the world was going to end, yesterday's rally certainly doesn't mean that we've hit bottom and the bear market is officially over. When it comes to the important investing decisions you need to make, however, none of that really matters -- so enjoy your gains, but don't think of them as anything but a bump in the road.

For more on investing in any market, read about:
Stocks for the next Great Depression.
Why Warren Buffett is buying stocks now.
You should buy the cheapest stocks around.

Fool contributor Dan Caplinger isn't panicking. He doesn't own shares of the companies mentioned in this article. Intel is a Motley Fool Inside Value recommendation. The Fool owns shares and covered calls of Intel.

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2009/03/11/3-reasons-why-investors-will-panic-again.aspx

HSBC Stock Plunge Prompts Regulator Probe of Trade

HSBC Stock Plunge Prompts Regulator Probe of Trade (Update2)
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By Hanny Wan and Kelvin Wong
March 10 (Bloomberg) -- HSBC Holdings Plc’s 24 percent plunge in Hong Kong yesterday prompted a government probe and the stock exchange to consider bringing forward changes to end- of-day trading processes. The shares rallied 14 percent today.
The Securities and Futures Commission is investigating trades put through at yesterday’s close, Financial Secretary John Tsang told reporters today in comments broadcast by local television. Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing Ltd. may accelerate the implementation of a 2 percent cap on stock fluctuations during so-called closing auction sessions, a spokesman said.
“Yesterday’s closing auction exposes the flaw in our stock trading system that allows these kinds of trades,” said Chim Pui-chung, a Hong Kong legislator who represents the financial services industry. “The SFC needs to take responsibility for this and to investigate immediately, and release their findings to let investors know what happened.”
The closing auction process, used by the exchange since May last year, has attracted criticism from lawmakers and investors who claim it distorts stock pricing. The session extends trading by 10 minutes from the original 4 p.m. local time close, during which buy and sell orders are matched by an auction trading mechanism.
Four days after the closing auction was introduced, eight stocks moved by more than 10 percent from the last traded price at 4 p.m., which Hong Kong Exchanges said was due to a rebalancing of MSCI Barra indexes.
‘Annoys The Market’
“It annoys the market and especially retail investors,” said Andrew Sullivan, a sales trader at Mainfirst Securities Hong Kong Ltd., referring to the stock fluctuations during the auctions.
The sessions are an international practice aimed at providing a “fair and market-driven method” to determine closing stock prices, the exchange said in October 2007 when it announced the new system.
Hong Kong Exchanges said March 5 that it planned to implement a 2 percent limit on the changes of stock prices within the auctions on June 22.
“Our plan hasn’t changed, but we can’t rule out the possibility of pushing the plan forward,” spokesman Henry Law said in an interview today. “It depends on how soon the market can upgrade its trading systems.”
All brokerages need to finish testing the parameters they set for the closing auction session before the exchange can go ahead with the new volatility cap, he said.
HSBC Shares Rally
The bourse said in November 2008 that the Tokyo Stock Exchange, Korea Exchange, Taiwan Stock Exchange, and Shenzhen Stock Exchange had price controls in their closing auction sessions, whereas the New York Stock Exchange, London Stock Exchange, and Australian Securities Exchange do not.
HSBC’s 24 percent tumble yesterday wasn’t the result of “panic selling, it was technical trades,” Sandy Flockhart, chief executive officer of the bank’s Asian business told reporters in Hong Kong today.
The stock, the second-largest constituent on the benchmark Hang Seng Index, fell more than 10 percent during the closing auction session, dragging the shares to the lowest since May 1995. The shares rallied 14 percent today to HK$37.60.
“HSBC is a very unique stock and it has an intricate relationship with Hong Kong people’s lives,” said legislator Chim. “When it fluctuates like yesterday it has a huge impact on people’s sentiment and wealth.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Hanny Wan in Hong Kong at hwan3@bloomberg.net; Kelvin Wong in Hong Kong at kwong40@bloomberg.net. Last Updated: March 10, 2009 05:28 EDT

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601089&refer=china&sid=aQ_lndHEmwUg

http://www.breakingviews.com/2009/03/10/HSBC.aspx?sg=nytimes

Australia Retail Sales Growth to Slump on Job Cuts, Access Says

Australia Retail Sales Growth to Slump on Job Cuts, Access Says
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By Jacob Greber

March 11 (Bloomberg) -- Australian retail sales growth will slump from the middle of this year as rising unemployment offsets the positive impact from government cash handouts to workers, research company Access Economics said.
Retail sales growth, adjusted to remove the effect of inflation, will slow to 0.2 percent in the 12 months through June 2010 from 0.8 percent in fiscal 2009, Access Director David Rumbens said in a report released in Canberra today.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s government will this month begin distributing A$11 billion ($7 billion) in cash to families and workers to stoke household spending that accounts for more than half the economy. Gross domestic product unexpectedly shrank in the fourth quarter for the first time in eight years as consumers spent less at retailers including David Jones Ltd.
“Retailers face a tough road ahead,” Rumbens said. “The economic backdrop continues to get uglier, so these measures are only likely to result in real retail spending treading water in the first half of 2009.”
Access estimates the cash handouts will increase total consumer spending by A$500 million in the current quarter, and A$1.6 billion in the three months through June.
“The boost to consumer spending which will result, however, will be against a backdrop of a significant loss of labor income and further asset price falls in 2009,” the report said. “The real pain on profits and on jobs is just around the corner.”
Jobs advertised in newspapers and on the Internet tumbled by a record 10.4 percent in February and 39.8 percent from a year earlier, according to an Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. report released in Melbourne yesterday.

Jobless Rate
Employers probably cut 20,000 jobs last month and the unemployment rate rose to 5 percent from 4.8 percent in January, according to a Bloomberg survey of economists. Jobs figures will be released on March 12.
Access predicts the jobless rate will peak at around 7.5 percent in mid 2010.
“A retail recovery may have to wait until fiscal 2011,” Rumbens said. “And watch out for housing prices,” which fell 3.3 percent last year. “If they were to take a major tumble, then the outlook for retailers would be notably worse.”
Companies including BHP Billiton Ltd., the world’s biggest miner, and manufacturer Pacific Brands Ltd., are firing workers after the economy shrank 0.5 percent in the fourth quarter from the previous three months as exports slumped.
To boost sales at retailers such as David Jones, Australia’s second-biggest department store chain, the government distributed A$8.7 billion in cash grants to families and pensioners in December. Of that, about 25 percent was spent, Access said.

Retail Sales
Retail sales jumped 3.8 percent in December, the most in eight years, and advanced 0.2 percent in January, according Bureau of Statistics figures.
Without the government’s December cash boost, retail sales that month would probably have stalled, Rumbens said in today’s report. Households will probably spend around 25 percent of the next round of handouts and use the rest to pay off debt or increase savings, he said.
“The outlook for retail in 2009 will be directly affected by the amount of deleveraging that households decide is prudent, as they attempt to build a buffer against uncertainty,” Rumbens said.
“This means that consumer caution -- paying down debt and saving more -- will compound the effects of lost labor income as the unemployment rate rises.”
Retailers will respond to weakening sales growth by firing workers, renegotiating property rents, cutting stock and working to maintain cash flow, today’s report said.
To contact the reporter for this story: Jacob Greber in Sydney at jgreber@bloomberg.net Last Updated: March 10, 2009 09:01 EDT

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601081&sid=agFpM3i3E92c&refer=australia

Australia Dollar Gains to 1-Week High After U.S. Stocks Rally

Australia Dollar Gains to 1-Week High After U.S. Stocks Rally
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By Candice Zachariahs

March 11 (Bloomberg) -- The Australian dollar gained to the highest in a week as U.S. stocks posted their biggest rally this year, raising speculation investors will buy riskier assets. New Zealand’s dollar also advanced.
The currencies traded near the strongest in three days against the yen after Citigroup Inc. said it is having its best quarter since 2007. Gains in the currencies may be limited before a meeting tomorrow where New Zealand’s central bank is forecast to lower interest rates to a record low to boost an economy that’s entered its fifth quarter in recession.
“Lowered risk aversion concerns, driven by equity gains, delivered steady buying demand,” for the South Pacific nations’ currencies, wrote David Croy, a strategist at ANZ Investment Bank in Wellington. New Zealand’s currency was “dragged reluctantly higher off the back of a stronger Australian dollar.”
Australia’s currency rose 0.9 percent to 64.64 U.S. cents as of 8:56 a.m. in Sydney from 64.06 cents late in Asia yesterday. It earlier touched 64.88 cents, the most since March 5. The currency advanced 1.2 percent to 63.82 yen.
New Zealand’s dollar gained 1.2 percent to 50.44 U.S. cents from 49.83 cents in Asia yesterday. It bought 49.80 yen from 49.06 yen.

Stocks Rally
The currencies climbed as the Standard and Poor’s 500 Index jumped 6.4 percent, the most since Nov. 24. Citigroup Chief Executive officer Vikram Pandit said the bank had been profitable through the first two months of 2009.
Technical analysts at Citigroup recommended raising the exit point on their trading recommendation to buy the Australian dollar at 63.50 U.S. cents with an initial target of 68.50 U.S. cents and then 72.70 cents. Investors should place a stop at 63.30 cents to “limit downside exposure,” wrote New York-based Tom Fitzpatrick and London-based Shyam Devani, technical analysts at Citigroup, in a research note yesterday.
Recent “gains for the Australian dollar-U.S. dollar have been rather quick and are likely to be tested by short-term pullbacks in risk sentiment,” they wrote.
Gains in the Australian and New Zealand dollars may also be limited as New Zealand’s central bank will cut the official cash rate to at least 3 percent from 3.5 percent, according to 13 economists surveyed by Bloomberg. Seven analysts estimate Governor Alan Bollard will lower the rate by 50 basis points, three expect a reduction of 75 basis points and three predict a 100 basis-point cut. A basis point is 0.01 percentage point.
The number of people employed in Australia probably fell by 20,000 and the unemployment rate likely climbed to 5 percent in February, the highest since April 2006, according to separate surveys. The government will report the jobless figures tomorrow.
Benchmark interest rates are 3.25 percent in Australia and 3.5 percent in New Zealand, compared with 0.1 percent in Japan and as low as zero in the U.S., attracting investors to the South Pacific nations’ higher-yielding assets. The risk in such trades is that currency market moves will erase profits.
To contact the reporter on this story: Candice Zachariahs in Sydney at czachariahs2@bloomberg.net Last Updated: March 10, 2009 18:13 EDT

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601081&sid=a3au2m9amEak&refer=australia

U.K., French Industrial Production Falls, Worsening Recession

U.K., French Industrial Production Falls, Worsening Recession
By Simon Kennedy and Brian Swint

March 10 (Bloomberg) -- Industrial production plunged in the U.K. and France in January, threatening to push Europe into a deeper recession.
U.K. factory output fell 2.9 percent from December and 6.4 percent in the three months through January, the most in at least four decades. French industrial production sank 3.1 percent on the month, five times the pace predicted by economists, and 13.8 percent from a year earlier.
Companies from IMI Plc to Valeo SA are being ravaged by the global economic crisis as demand slumps and credit remains tight. With the worst recession since World War II driving up unemployment, the European Central Bank and Bank of England are under mounting pressure to keep easing monetary policy.
“Manufacturing is being very hard hit and there’s little prospect of a turnaround,” said Collin Ellis, European economist at Daiwa Securities SMBC Europe Ltd. in London. “The data raises fresh questions about the severity of the European downturn.”
British manufacturing has now dropped for 11 months, the worst streak of contraction since 1980, when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister. Factory production accounts for about 15 percent of the economy, compared with about 75 percent for services and 6 percent for construction.
“This is unbelievably grim,” Alan Clarke, a London-based economist at BNP Paribas SA, said in an interview. “There’s no sign of the slowdown abating. The Bank of England will probably need to do more.”
Out of 13 categories of manufacturing, nine fell and four rose on the month, the statistics office said. Transport equipment, electrical, optical goods, and machinery and equipment led the declines. Production of motor vehicles and auto parts drove the slump in the transport category, the data showed.

Car Sales
European car production will probably fall 25 percent and sales are likely to drop 20 percent this year, the European Automobile Manufacturers Association said on March 5.
Separate reports today showed the French trade deficit swelled in January as the value of exports fell to the lowest in almost four years, while German shipments slid for the fourth straight month by declining 4.4 percent on the month.
“The pace of contraction remains extremely strong” in France, said Frederique Cerisier, an economist at BNP Paribas in Paris. The figures may prompt him to further downgrade his forecast that the economy will contract 2.3 percent this year.
To combat the slump, President Nicolas Sarkozy’s government is injecting funds into banks and helping them raise cash to lend to companies and households. In December, he introduced a 26 billion-euro ($33 billion) economic-stimulus package to spur construction.

U.K. Aid Package
U.K. Trade Minister Ian Pearson will set out how a 2.3 billion-pound ($3.2 billion) aid package for automakers will work and which companies will be eligible when he meets executives tomorrow. The government is considering separate help for General Motors Corp.’s Vauxhall unit.
The European Central Bank last week cut its benchmark to a record low of 1.5 percent, while its U.K. counterpart lowered its to a record 0.5 percent and took the unprecedented step of printing money to buy assets and replenish bank balance sheets.
IMI Plc, the world’s biggest maker of pneumatic controls, said last week it reduced its global workforce by 10 percent and plans further reductions in the coming weeks. Valeo SA, France’s second-largest auto-parts maker, has temporarily shuttered plants.
To contact the reporter on this story: Brian Swint in London at bswint@bloomberg.net. To contact the reporter on this story: Simon Kennedy in Paris at Skennedy4@bloomberg.net. Last Updated: March 10, 2009 08:32 EDT

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601102&refer=uk&sid=aUvgE0D.somI

Pound Falls Against Euro as Housing Sales Slide to Record Low

Pound Falls Against Euro as Housing Sales Slide to Record Low
By Matthew Brown

March 10 (Bloomberg) -- The pound fell to its weakest in more than five weeks against the euro after Britain’s housing sales slipped to the lowest level since at least 1978 and manufacturing shrank the most in four decades.
The U.K. currency dropped for a third day versus the 16- nation currency as the Bank of England prepared to print money to buy assets as part of a quantitative easing policy. The average number of transactions in a survey of real-estate agents and surveyors fell to 9.5 per respondent in the quarter through February, the least since the data began three decades ago, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said today.
“Investors are saying we don’t like the banking situation in the U.K., the housing data was bad, and we’re nervous about the economy,” said Jeremy Stretch, a senior currency strategist in London at Rabobank International. “Quantitative easing is about to begin, and all these factors tell us to stand aside and wait until it gets cheaper.”
The pound weakened to 92.33 pence per euro by 5:20 p.m. in London, from 91.53 yesterday. It slipped to 92.48 pence earlier, the lowest level since Jan. 29. Against the dollar, the currency was little changed at $1.3784.
Factory production dropped 2.9 percent in January from December, the Office for National Statistics in London said. Economists in a Bloomberg survey predicted a 1.4 percent decline. Manufacturing shrank 6.4 percent in the three months through January, the most since records began in 1968.

Quantitative Easing
The Bank of England will seek to buy 2 billion pounds of gilts in an operation for its asset-purchase facility on March 11, it said last week. Policy makers said March 5 they will acquire as much as 150 billion pounds of government and corporate assets, the first central bank to adopt quantitative easing since the Bank of Japan in the 1990s.
“With the Bank of England taking far more aggressive steps than any other central bank, bar possibly the Federal Reserve, the pound remains vulnerable to the downside,” Derek Halpenny, the London-based European head of global currency research at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd., wrote in a note today.
Policy makers cut the nation’s benchmark interest rate 4.5 percentage points to an all-time low of 0.5 percent since October as the economy headed for its worst recession since World War II. Gross domestic product contracted 1.5 percent in the fourth quarter, the most since 1980, a report on Feb. 25 showed.
The pound may still strengthen to 89 pence per euro in the next three months as the recession in the euro region economy deepens, Stretch said. For Merrill Lynch & Co., the euro’s gain against the pound may have gone to far.

Gilts Rise
“We will probably look to fade the move higher in the euro- pound if and when the short-term interest-rate spread-compression trend resumes,” wrote Steven Pearson, a London-based strategist at Merrill Lynch. “It is worth noting that with the Bank of England bank rate having likely reached its terminal level, pound-euro may now start to trade well during risk aversion.”
U.K. government bonds rose, with the yield on the 10-year gilt falling one basis point to 3.11 percent. The 4.5 percent security due March 2019 advanced 0.09, or 90 pence per 1,000- pound face amount, to 111.82. Two-year gilt yields slipped one basis point to 1.32 percent. Bond yields move inversely to prices.
The U.K. Treasury today sold 3 billion pounds of 4.5 percent bonds maturing in 2019. The sale received bids 2.06 times the amount offered, the Debt Management Office said, compared with an average 1.9 times at the last three auctions of the securities.

‘Carried Away’
“Investors are getting carried away with the euphoria surrounding quantitative easing,” said Ian Williams, chief executive officer of Charteris Portfolio Managers in London. “The Bank of England is a buyer of gilts, but the U.K. government is still a net seller of gilts. The compression in yields when the penny drops is going to be difficult to maintain, and the implications of quantitative easing are inflationary.”
The yield on the 10-year gilt may rise to 3.25 percent by the end of April, said Williams, whose U.K. government-bond fund beat all its competitors in January, according to data from Lipper and given to Bloomberg by Charteris.
Ten-year gilts may keep gaining, according to technical strategists at Barclays Plc.
“Bigger picture, the secular bull trend remains intact, particularly following the recent failure to overcome 3.82 percent-area support,” Barclays Capital analysts including Jordan Kotick in New York wrote in a report. The yield may move toward 2.70 percent “medium term,” they said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Matthew Brown in London at mbrown42@bloomberg.net Last Updated: March 10, 2009 13:43 EDT

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601102&refer=uk&sid=adCmriDF1wc8

Dollar defies recipe for currency collapse

Dollar defies recipe for currency collapse
The US Federal Reserve is printing money. The US government is also spending wildly today so there won’t be a depression tomorrow. It sounds like a recipe for currency collapse. Yet the dollar keeps picking up. And the trend seems unlikely to change soon. What’s going on? Well, consider the competition.

By Ian Campbell, breakingviews.com
Last Updated: 4:08PM GMT 10 Mar 2009

Start with the dollar’s predecessor as reserve currency – the pound. At $1.38, it is close to setting what would be 20-year lows against the dollar, less than a year after it set quarter-century highs.

Let us count the woes. The banks have big foreign liabilities, the deficit-ridden UK government has taken on most of the risk in the banking sector, and the Bank of England is going to add £75bn in fresh notes to the pool of sterling assets. Who wants them? Not foreign investors.

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The euro, Icarus-like last summer, also looks to be heading fast for the soil. Eurozone growth is bad. Its banks are in trouble. How to avoid an unfortunate roast of Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain is the question. But now add Belgium, Italy and Austria, whose banks are among the worst affected by eastern Europe’s implosion.

In Frankfurt, Jean-Claude Trichet, head of the European Central Bank is not in favour of easing. In Berlin, Chancellor Angela Merkel is not keen on bailing. The zone is sinking.

Just like Japanese exports – down by an annual 46pc in January. The yen’s rise last year was in part technical. Hedge funds advocated shorting Japan. Then it became time to drop those risky yen shorts and run for cover. But Japan’s fundamentals are now exposed and none too pretty. Recession is intense.

US fundamentals are dreadful, too. But policy-making could hardly be more activist. It is in essence a huge gamble on recovery. For now, the world would rather take that gamble and buy the multitude of treasuries the US government is issuing than contemplate anything else. The reserve currency will forge ahead. Unless the world starts to think the big US wager is going to be a losing one.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/breakingviewscom/4968519/Dollar-defies-recipe-for-currency-collapse.html

Interest rate cut: what do I do with my money now?

Interest rate cut: what do I do with my money now?

With interest rates close to zero, savers could be forgiven for giving up, and putting their cash under the mattress.

By Harry Wallop, Consumer Affairs Editor
Last Updated: 9:23PM GMT 05 Mar 2009

Corporate bonds are becoming increasingly popular. These are a form of IOU issued by large companies. The important thing is not to store it under the bed

What's the point of letting £100,000 languish in an account for it to earn all of £290 in interest in a year. And that's before tax.

But savers really should not despair at the average savings rates cited by the Bank of England. Canny investors need to shop around, hunt for better than average, and think about alternative places for their cash than a standard deposit account.

For starters, there are some cash Individual Savings Accounts, that are offering well over 3 per cent, such as Marks & Spencer's 3.1 per cent, which savers can withdraw their money from at any time. The advantage with ISAs is that they are more or less tax free, though savers can only invest up £3,600 each year.

For those with more cash, and the discipline to deposit money regularly, they can enjoy an astonishingly good rate of 5.84 per cent from Barclays – more than tenfold the new Bank Rate. The down side is that you have to put in at least £20 every month but no more than £250.

Further afield from traditional banks, there are endless possibilities.

Corporate bonds are becoming increasingly popular. These are a form of IOU issued by large companies. (Take a look at Barclays corporate bond.)

They are not risk-free and tend to pay higher returns than deposits to compensate investors for a lower degree of security; for example, British American Tobacco bonds due to be redeemed in 2019 currently yield – or pay out the equivalent of an annual return – about 6.4 per cent, while Tesco bonds pay 5.5 per cent. And Tesco is still likely to still be around in 2019 to pay investors back.

Or you can always turn to the last refuge of the desperate: gold, which is proving a volatile, but impressive, performer during the financial crisis.

You can buy the stuff via gold exchange traded funds, which trade on the stock market like shares, or pop down to a bullion dealer and buy a bar or coin of the hard stuff.

The important thing is not to store your savings under the bed.

The only winner will be the local neighbourhood thief. And as the police have warned, they are on the increase – unlike interest rates.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/savings/4944354/Interest-rate-cut-what-do-I-do-with-my-money-now.html

Dividends: Which are safe and which may fall?

Dividends: Which are safe and which may fall?

The income from shares offers some protection against a bear market – unless it is cut. We asked the experts which companies looked safest.

By Richard Evans
Last Updated: 10:35AM GMT 07 Mar 2009

Share prices have been falling for months now but for many investors there has been one crumb of comfort: dividends.

After all, share prices can recover if you don’t sell – and hanging on can be relatively painless if the income from your investment is maintained or even increased.

But there have been some worrying developments for dividends recently. HSBC, the bank that seemed relatively unscathed by the financial crisis, was forced to cut its payout; now there are rumours that BP may have to freeze its dividend for the first time in years because of the falling oil price.

So we asked the experts which dividends they thought should be safe despite the turmoil – and which ones could be at risk.

Ian Lance, manager of the Schroder Income fund, said: "Despite all the concerns about the sustainability of dividend payments in the face of falling profits, we believe those invested in UK equities are still being well rewarded, particularly as yield is becoming increasingly difficult to find in many other areas of investment.

"The dividend yield on the highest yielding UK equities has risen to its highest point in around 20 years – even if you exclude financials. The dividend yield on non-financial stocks now exceeds the yield on 10-year government bonds."

As for concerns about how resilient these yields will be, Mr Lance said dividend levels were likely to fall across the UK market as a whole over the next couple of years, but he remained confident that a number of companies had sufficient dividend "cover" – the degree to which the dividend is exceeded by earnings – to support their current payouts even if earnings fell.

Schroders believes that the most resilient and attractive dividend streams will be among the long-established, well-diversified "mega caps" and companies that declare dividends in US dollars, given that sterling’s weakness pushes up their value. "These include names such as GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca, Royal Dutch Shell and Vodafone, which we bought some time ago when they were out of favour with other investors and consequently undervalued, and which we continue to hold today," said Mr Lance.

Jonathan Jackson, an equity analyst at Killik & Co, the stockbroker, is not convinced that BP's dividend is under threat; he expects it to be safe for at least this year and next. "My reading is that BP will let gearing [borrowing relative to equity] increase," he said. "Holding the dollar-denominated dividend means 23pc growth for British shareholders, resulting in a yield of 10pc."

He also backs Vodafone, which is yielding 6.5pc, pointing to its strong balance sheet and "fairly defensive" qualities. "Tobacco stocks such as BAT and Imperial Tobacco have stable cash flows throughout the cycle," he added.

Hugh Duff, an investment manager at Scottish Investment Trust, said that among his holdings were two companies likely to maintain, or possibly grow, their dividends: Serco and De La Rue.

"Serco is a leading international services company operating in a broad range of sectors, servicing both private and public markets. The long-term nature of Serco’s contracts and the significant order book give us confidence in the company’s defensive and highly visible earnings growth," he said.

"De La Rue is the world’s largest commercial security printer and literally has a licence to print money. The company's main operation is the production of 150 currencies on behalf of central banks. The demand for currency printing is expected to continue to show stable growth, with a key driver being the increasing use of cash machines which require notes to be in mint condition. De La Rue has a very good track record of returning the profits from this business to shareholders through special dividends and dividends."

Turning to companies seen as candidates for cutting their dividends, Mr Jackson singled out BT Group. "There are trading difficulties in the global services division and a pension fund gap," he said. A recent ruling from the pensions regulator that pensions should take priority over dividends made a cut more likely, he added.

"The consensus in the City is that the dividend could be halved but we don’t know the size of the pensions deficit. BT used to put £280m into the fund annually to reduce the gap, now it could need to put in twice that figure. The cost of the dividend is £1.2bn."

Mark Hall, a fund manager at Rensburg Sheppards, voiced concern about life insurers. He said: "The sector I am most concerned about now regarding dividend payments is the life assurers such as Legal & General and Aviva. They have big bond portfolios and are vulnerable to any further dislocation in the financial system putting even greater pressure on their solvency ratios.

"This contrasts with the general insurance companies and Lloyd's specialists such as Royal Sun Alliance and Amlin, where we think the dividend prospects are really quite good."


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/investing/4941355/Dividends-Which-are-safe-and-which-may-fall.html

10 ways to get a better return on your money

10 ways to get a better return on your money
Getting a decent return on your money can seem a daunting task. A year ago building society savers were earning 7pc on their money. Today, with the Bank Rate standing at a record low of 0.5pc, most accounts pay less than 1pc.

Last Updated: 10:17AM GMT 07 Mar 2009

10 ways to get a return on your money
Investors have also seen returns plummet, thanks to turbulent stock markets. Last week alone the FTSE100 index reached a six-year low, and most experts are predicting that share prices will remain volatile for the foreseeable future. In such markets investors could be forgiven for thinking they have more chance of making money on the 3.15 at Cheltenham or with a spin of the roulette wheel.

There is no doubt that savers and investors have to face up to a new reality: either accept lower returns on money (which may mean living on less income from savings or putting those early retirement plans on ice) or accept that you will have to take more risk.

As the following points show, whatever your risk profile there are steps all savers and investors can take to boost returns and make more money from your money.

1 Get the best cash deal you can
The best rates are reserved for those who can afford to lock their money up for a year, so invest what you can in a fixed-rate account. Current best deals include a two-year bond from Abbey paying 4.01pc (the minimum deposit is £30,000). Banks also tend to pay higher rates to those with online accounts. Make the most of "bonus" rates, but ensure you switch to a more competitive deal once the introductory rate expires.

2 Make sure all savings are tax-efficient
OK, so cash Isa rates are poor, but for the first time many banks are allowing savers to transfer existing Isas. So if your Isa rate has dropped to a dismal 0.5pc, look at switching providers. The best accounts to accept transfers are from Halifax at 3.3pc and NatWest – its e-Isa pays 3.25pc. For more savings rates click here.

3 Become a lender
Another option is Zopa, which dubs itself the "eBay of the banking world". Those with cash to spare lend to strangers and earn between 9pc and 10pc on their money, depending on the credit rating of borrowers. Rather than lend to one borrower, money is given to a number to reduce the risk of losing your capital. Zopa says default rates are low, but they could rise as the recession bites.

4 Switch to an offset mortgage
Savers might be getting next to nothing on their savings, but an offset mortgage can offer the equivalent of 5pc interest, as home owners are saving on mortgage interest charges. Most mortgages allow borrowers to overpay their mortgage, up to certain limits, so it makes sense to use surplus cash this way. Offset mortgage deals, however, are far more flexible – allowing money in savings and current accounts to offset the mortgage debt, reducing interest charges.

5 Invest in a corporate bond fund
Corporate debt is looking attractive, according to Jason Walker of AWD Chase de Vere, particularly compared with the returns available on government-issued gilts. But in a recession the risk of defaults increases, so tread carefully and avoid "junk" bonds. Most advisers recommend investors to stick with "investment grade" bonds, where income is lower but there is far less chance of the company going under, taking your money with it. Gavin Haynes of Whitechurch Securities said: "Capital appreciation can occur as interest rates fall; however, the reverse is also true: if rates rise then capital losses may well be sustained."

Funds recommended by advisers include M&G Corporate Bond, Invesco Perpetual Corporate Bond and Invesco Perpetual Sterling Bond.

6 Bet on equity markets without putting your capital at risk
Guaranteed Equity Bonds (Gebs) are fixed-term investments that pay a proportion of any stock market gains over the period. Typically they are linked to one or more stock market indices (for example, the FTSE100). If the index falls over the term you get your original investment back in full. The catch? Your money is locked up for this period and in most cases Gebs pay only a proportion of any stock market gain (and do not include dividend returns). There is also a risk that if the bank backing the guarantee goes under you could lose your money.

Nationwide has a six-year bond linked to the FTSE100, DJ EuroSTOXX 50 and S&P500. It will pay up to 70pc of the growth of the indices, subject to a maximum return of 40pc of the original investment.

7 Equity funds
Advisers say investors are looking again at equity income funds to boost returns. These funds aim to deliver a growing income stream and are primarily invested in blue-chip shares that have a record of paying dividends. At the moment it is possible to achieve a net yield of about 5pc to 5.5pc and favoured funds include Invesco Perpetual High Income, Newton Higher Income and Artemis Income. Other equity-based funds that have proven track records include Blackrock UK Absolute Alpha and Cazenove UK Growth & Income.

8 Buy recession-proof shares
Not all companies suffer in a downturn, so pick up those that are likely to profit in the gloom. Rosemary Banyard, who manages Schroders' UK Smaller Companies fund, says businesses such as pawnbroker Albemarle & Bond and Park Group, the Christmas savings scheme operator, are well placed to benefit from economic contraction. Health care companies such as Advanced Medical and Health care Locums are also well placed, as is Dignity, the funeral company.

For investors wanting dividend income, Schroders believes you should consider long-established, well-diversified "mega caps" and companies that declare dividends in US dollars, given sterling's weakness. It likes GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca, Royal Dutch Shell and Vodafone.

9 Boost your pension
Transfer existing investments into a Sipp and the value of these holdings will be boosted by a further 40pc for higher-rate taxpayers. Or get a return of 12pc – here's how. A 75-year-old male who pays £2,880 into an immediate vesting pension will see £720 added by the Government, making a total pension pot of £3,600. The pension is then drawn immediately, at which point he gets £900 back as tax-free cash. An annuity is bought with the remaining £2,700, paying £218.30 a year – of which the first instalment is paid straight away. Based on a net outlay of £1,761.70 he'll get annual income of £218.30 for life, a return of 12pc.

10 Take a punt on markets falling further
If you don't see the stock market recovering in the short term, make money from falling share prices via an exchange traded fund (ETF).

This route is only for those willing to take on substantially more risk. One popular EFT has been the Bank Short ETF. This aims to deliver the exact inverse of the Dow Jones Bank index, which tracks the performance of the leading banking companies in western Europe.

As bank stocks have declined, this ETF has seen positive returns. (If banks' shares rise, the reverse will happen.) According to Deutsche Bank, which launched the ETF, the fund has risen by 184pc over the past year.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/savings/4949583/10-ways-to-get-a-better-return-on-your-money.html

Stock market: opportunity of a lifetime or priced for a depression?

Stock market: opportunity of a lifetime or priced for a depression?
These are the two messages investors are hearing simultaneously these days: the first is: "Watch out! The recession is getting to look more like a depression. Safety first. Avoid shares and anything with the slightest risk."

By James Bartholomew
Last Updated: 1:27PM GMT 09 Mar 2009

The second is: "Shares are ridiculously cheap. This is the opportunity of a lifetime. Do you want to look back at this time and reflect that you funked it? Buy now!"

So investors are pulled one way and then the other. Let us not pretend it is easy. If possible, one wants to have one's cake and eat it – to finesse the problem by having exposure to shares but, at the same time, owning ones that might hold up even if things worsen.

The trouble is, lots of people are trying to do the same, so anything that looks pretty safe gets a much higher rating than companies that could get into trouble.

The safest ones are often in sectors where it will take a lot to destroy demand. People are always going to want to eat, and will probably want to drink, too. We are going for "the bare necessities of life".

Fortunately, the stock market is so low that, even among such safer companies, shares are clearly good value for the long term. It would be easy to make a little portfolio of relatively reliable companies with modest, but perhaps sustainable, dividend yields. It could include Associated British Foods at 622p on a prospective yield of 3.3pc, British Sky Broadcasting at 452p on a yield of 3.9pc and, say, Tesco at 310p on a yield of 3.7pc.

I prefer to go for smaller companies where I believe share prices are cheaper and potential gains bigger. I have been buying back into REA Holdings, which has a palm oil plantation. Palm oil is used, among other things, as a basic foodstuff.

I have also held onto my stake in Staffline, which provides "blue-collar" labour for a variety of industries, but especially food processing. Staffline produced its annual results this week and they were a perfect illustration of how results announcements have changed.

Press releases of results often start with "Highlights". Twelve months ago, companies shone light on their growth and expansion. "Highlights" were full of bold ambition. Now, the greatest boast a company can make is that it is safe and won't be closed. On Tuesday, Staffline announced its "gearing" – borrowing as a proportion of the shareholders' net assets – had fallen from 28pc to 24pc.

In the old days, companies were criticised if they borrowed so little. They were accused of "failing to make full use of their capital base". Now, low borrowing is absolutely the fashion (except for the Government).

Staffline went on to trill about how the cost of its interest payments had tumbled by a quarter and that these payments were covered a wonderful 10 times by profits. The message was "we have been prudent, we are safe and our bankers are happy". The shares rose 15pc.

Many people feel big companies are safer than such small ones and I don't blame anyone wanting to feel safe. But small companies, as a generality, are much cheaper than large ones at the moment. They also have greater scope for growth. And, after Royal Bank of Scotland, surely no one is confident that size guarantees safety.

I don't hold any particular torch for Staffline, but it is a good example of what I see among plenty of small companies. Its share price, as I write, is 27p, a mere 2.5 times the earnings per share last year. That is seriously cheap. Over the long term, a rating of at least four times that would be normal.

A broker forecasts that its profits will fall this year but only by a little. The historic dividend yield is terrific at just over 10pc. Yes, the dividend could be reduced next year but probably not by much.

It does seem like the opportunity of a lifetime and one might be tempted to fill one's boots with the shares of companies like this.

The only thing that holds me back is the echo of the other message: that the economy is sliding down so fast and unpredictably that one should keep at least some cash in reserve.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/investing/shares/4961165/Stock-market-opportunity-of-a-lifetime-or-priced-for-a-depression.html

Why should printing money succeed here when it failed in Japan?

Why should printing money succeed here when it failed in Japan?
Posted By: Edmund Conway at Mar 5, 2009 at 20:13:00 [General]

Posted in: Business
Tags:
Bank of England, Interest rates, Japan, quantitative easing

Why on earth will Britain succeed where Japan failed?

It is the big question which no-one in the Bank of England - or for that matter the Federal Reserve, or other central banks around the world that have pledged to embark on policies of overt money creation - is particularly comfortable answering.

There is nothing new about what the Bank has announced it will do. Japan tried very similar tactics around a decade ago after most of its other deflation-aversion tactics failed. As we all know, it failed to pull Japan out of the rut it still lies in (though the hyperinflationists among you may be reassured that neither did it spark a Weimar Germany style rise in prices).

So what have we got on our side that Japan hasn't?

Here are the big differences.
1. Time. Japanese policymakers took a good few years to get round to Quantitative Easing (let's call it QE from hereon). The old adage in monetary policy is that the sooner you act the more effect it will have, and the Bank definitely has this on its side, having reduced interest rates all the way down from 5pc to 0.5pc in barely more than a year, and now getting on with QE pretty much instantly. On the other hand, the size and immediacy of the economic slowdown we're facing is far greater.
2. Size. The Japanese (and for that matter the Americans) spent around 5pc of their GDP on QE, printing money to buy up assets. The Bank of England, on the other hand, has committed to spending just over 10pc of GDP. This is a hell of a lot of money. A terrifying amount. To put it into context, the total size of the 5 year to 25 year government bond market in the UK is around £250bn; the amount the Bank is proposing to spend on these government bonds through magicked-up money is around £100bn (the remaining £50bn will go on corporate bonds, the market for which is even smaller). Anyway, with QE, the bigger, so they say, is better.
3. Savings culture. Quantitative easing is designed to encourage people to save less and spend more. The Japanese, however, had a 15pc or more (I forget) savings ratio at the start of their recession. As a result they had a massive bed of savings to eat into (rather than borrowing) over the years. We have little or no savings ratio and a culture of high borrowing and spending. In the long run that needs to change, but it may mean the switch to frugality may be slightly less fast and aggressive than it was there.
4. Application. This is important but mildly technical. The Japanese may have pumped this newly-created money into the wrong bit of the financial system. They did a very similar thing to what the Bank is planning, printing money (electronically) and using it to buy up government debt. This will certainly mechanically increase the amount of cash floating around the system. It will also push down the yields on government debt, which should in turn reduce the cost of borrowing throughout the economy. However, this is only one half of the objective for QE. The other is to try to encourage companies and investors to get out there and spend more.

The Japanese tended to buy most of these assets off banks. Unfortunately, the banks then hoarded the cash, because their balance sheets had been so damaged by the financial crisis. The Bank, on the other hand, intends to buy most of the gilts off institutional investors - pension funds, insurers and the like. The theory - or hope - is that they will be less keen to hoard the cash and will spend it elsewhere.

This will, so the theory goes, set off a snowball effect whereby they buy extra stuff, which in turn encourages other sellers to go out and buy, and which eventually causes the economy to start growing again. So the £150bn that is poured into the economy eventually generates two or three or four times that in economic output and in money growth. We hope.

***
The problem, as you'll have guessed, is that although all of these arguments seem very rational, we have no idea whether they will work in practice. Sure, the Japanese made mistakes, but there could easily by another mistake we'll make. Likewise, even if we fulfil all the preconditions necessary, will this actually have the desired effect of bringing economic growth back up to trend? And if it does, how will we ensure we don't then generate a tidal wave of inflation which creates another dangerous bubble five years hence?

No-one knows, of course. All of which is why this new topsy-turvy world is so terrifying. However, the one counterfactual I am pretty sure about is this: for all that it is disturbing for savers now to see interest rates down at absolute zero, the economy would be in a far, far worse state if interest rates had been any higher over the past year. Then we truly would have been staring economic armageddon in the face.

In the meantime, we must try to get to grips with the remoulded economic and monetary landscape thrown up by quantitative easing. Many thanks for all your comments and questions in my last blog. Please keep them coming (either at the bottom here or by twitter) and I'll try to address them tomorrow and thereafter. I'm going home now to watch trashy television and briefly expunge words like quantitative easing from my brain.
[ 33 comments ]

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/edmund_conway/blog/2009/03/05/why_should_printing_money_succeed_here_when_it_failed_in_japan

Is This the Market Bottom?

Is This the Market Bottom?
By Ilan Moscovitz March 6, 2009 Comments (19)

The news isn't pretty: Earlier this week, the S&P 500 closed below 700 -- its lowest level since October 1996. Many former stalwarts are faring even worse: General Electric (NYSE: GE) hit an 18-year low yesterday. Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) hasn't traded at these levels in 25 years. Citigroup (NYSE: C) hit an all-time low of $0.97 at one point Thursday.

This hurts, there’s no doubt. And as we watch stocks fall to new lows day after day, it seems as if the market's slide will never end.

But while these sorts of apocalyptic figures make for exciting minute-by-minute updates on CNBC, they're not much use to you. They don't say anything about how stocks will behave in the future, which is what actually matters when you're deciding how to invest today. That's one reason investors always ask, "Is this the market bottom?"

Well, is it? Opinions vary. Nouriel Roubini, one of the few economists who predicted this crisis, wrote a January piece masterfully titled "The Latest Bear Market Sucker's Rally Is Losing Its Steam as an Onslaught of Awful Macro and Earnings News Takes Its Toll," in which he predicted the S&P could fall as low as 500 -- more than 25% below where it stands right now.

But last fall, in a New York Times op-ed piece, superinvestor Warren Buffett compared today's overwhelming pessimism to 1932, 1942, and the 1980s -- all fantastic times to buy stocks. Lately he's been adding shares of Burlington Northern (NYSE: BNI) and Ingersoll-Rand (NYSE: IR). Although Buffett doesn't try to time market bottoms, his urge to "be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful" has helped him to make eerily prescient moves in the past.

When he says it's time to buy, it pays to listen.

One approach to answering the question My colleague Morgan Housel wrote an excellent piece examining historical market valuations. The one-sentence summary is as follows: When things get scary, investors frantically sell stocks down to incredibly low multiples.

Using historical data from Standard & Poor's, my research shows that the average of the lowest quarter-end price-to-earnings ratio (P/E) during all recessions since 1937 is 11.7. With the S&P trading at 11.9 times 2009 earnings, we've about hit that point.

However, looking at some of the lowest recession P/Es since 1937 also shows that if corporate earnings stay depressed, stocks could fall even further:

Recession
Lowest End-of-Quarter P/E

Today
11.9*
January 1980 - July 1980
6.7
November 1973 - March 1975
7.0
November 1948 - October 1949
5.9
Sources: National Bureau of Economic Research, Standard & Poor's, and Birinyi Associates. *Based on 2009 earnings estimates.

Applying these multiples to the S&P today means that the bottom could be anywhere between here and another 50% decline.

But what if the economy gets really bad?

Another Great Depression? With comparisons between the Great Depression and the Great Wipeout of 2008 growing ever louder, a simple worst-case approach is to look at how Depression investors fared.

According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, we're 14 months into this recession, and thus far, the S&P 500 index has lost 52%. Fourteen months into the Great Depression (January 1931), investors were down only 46%.

But while the stock market was hit harder in 2008, economic conditions were far uglier in 1930. Back then GDP had fallen 8.6%, unemployment reached 8.9%, and deflation was running 6%. Our 6.2% GDP decline, 8.1% unemployment rate, and likely deflation almost appear mild compared to 1930.

So relative to 1931, if stocks today have been hit harder on less-dire economic news, does that mean we've already seen the bottom?

Not necessarily.

Even though stocks had already fallen dramatically since the October 1929 market crash, investors who bought in January 1931 were down another 71% by May 1932. This goes to show how difficult it is to time market bottoms, and it demonstrates that even though stocks have fallen considerably, they could still fall even more.

That's actually not so bad … The good news is that it doesn't much matter whether you accurately time the bottom.

See, conventional wisdom holds that the Depression was a bad time to be an investor. Excitable market commentators like to cite the statistic that it took until 1954 -- 25 years! -- for the market to return to its 1929 levels.

That figure is true, but misleading. It assumes that investors put all of their money into stocks just before the market crash, stopped purchasing stocks thereafter, and never collected dividends.

Remember, we're now 14 months into this recession -- not at its starting point. So for the sake of symmetry, let's ask how long it actually took new money invested 14 months into the Depression (January 1931) to break even. According to number-crunching I've done using rare Ibbotson Associates data, the answer is less than five years. And an investor who continued to purchase stocks on a monthly basis would have broken even in little more than two years.

Take a look at how investors who bought stocks in 1931 fared after completely missing the bottom during the worst economic period of the 20th century:

Returns
T-Bill Investment
Stock Investment

1-Year
2%
(43%)
3-Year
4%
(23%)
5-Year
5%
12%
Through Depression (June 1938)
6%
10%
Through October 1954
18%
678%
Sources: Ibbotson Associates, National Bureau of Economic Research, and author's calculations.
According to NBER, the second 1930s recession ended in June 1938. Assumes reinvested dividends.

The Foolish bottom line So, then, how can we use this data? There are three applications for investing today:
1. It's very difficult to time the market bottom. Just because stocks have fallen and valuations are low, does not mean they can't fall further. So if you're going to need the money in the next five years, there are safer places for it than stocks.
2. Market timing isn't necessary to achieve great returns. The Depression was a terrible time to be a speculator. But long-term investors who continued buying stocks did just fine.
3. Stick to a proven stock-buying strategy. As I mentioned before, Warren Buffett built his more than $50 billion fortune in large part by purchasing stable businesses in strong competitive positions -- at discount prices. That's what led him to American Express (NYSE: AXP) in the 1960s, Washington Post in the early 1970s, and Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO) soon after the Black Monday 1987 crash. He didn't try to time markets; he just bought stocks when they were cheap.
And he says they're cheap again today.

If Buffett's investing approach makes sense to you, now's a great time to begin bargain-hunting.

Ilan Moscovitz is greedy with chocolate cake and fearful of heights. He doesn't own shares of any companies mentioned in this article. The Motley Fool owns shares of American Express. Coca-Cola and American Express are Inside Value recommendations. The Fool's disclosure policy is overly aphoristic.
Read/Post Comments (19)

http://www.fool.com/investing/value/2009/03/06/is-this-the-market-bottom.aspx

Why It's Taking So Long To Fix the Economy

Why It's Taking So Long To Fix the Economy
February 27, 2009 02:49 PM ET Rick Newman Permanent Link Print

Nobody wants to listen to Ben Bernanke - even though the Federal Reserve Chairman has been a pretty effective soothsayer.
Last fall, he famously predicted catastrophe if the government didn’t step in to help stabilize panicky financial markets. That was on the mark: Even with more than $2 trillion worth of government intervention since then, the economy is in tatters.
Bernanke has said we’re in a “severe” recession, which has now been borne out by the biggest decline in GDP since the punishing 1982 downturn. And now, he says that a recovery depends on whether a series of unproven government moves works or not. If we're lucky, things might start to get better by 2010.
[See how to tell when the economy’s getting better.]
We don’t want to believe it. That’s too long. We don’t want to wait till next year. We want things to get better NOW.
Stock market investors are the worst offenders. They’re continually looking for signs that a quick fix is right around the corner. Then they grow despondent when it doesn’t materialize, madly selling and sending the markets into yet another nosedive.
Homeowners are guilty, too. Sellers in many neighborhoods are still clinging to unrealistically high prices, sure that a housing rebound is coming soon. Workers who still have jobs refuse to prepare for a rainy day, hoping they won’t be among the 1 or 2 million Americans still likely to lose their jobs this year. Most of us, in one way or another, want to believe it can’t really get much worse.
[See 5 pieces missing from Obama’s stimulus plan.]
Sorry to say, it can. Here’s why it’s taking so long to resolve the biggest problems our economy faces:
The housing bust. We know now that we’ve been living through a classic bubble in the housing market, where frenzied buyers sensing a rush bid prices far higher than they should have gone. So the market crashed. And now everybody wants to know when home prices will stop falling.
There have been half a dozen government programs to stem foreclosures and help stabilize the housing market. But too much help would falsely subsidize prices once again, and prolong the problem. For the most part, bubbles need to work themselves out.
After the tech bubble burst in 1999, technology stocks took a beating similar to today’s housing market. The tech-heavy Nasdaq stock index sank for about two-and-a-half years, bottoming out in 2002. But it didn’t come roaring back to where it had been. Instead, it began a steady climb out of the basement, aided by Alan Greenspan’s interest rate cuts. By 2007, many of the tech shares that survived had regained ground lost during the bust. But it took nearly a decade.
[See why the feds rescue banks but not homeowners.]
Home prices peaked in 2006, so we’re more than two years into the bust. It’s plausible that the slide in prices will end later this year or in 2010. But keep in mind that tech stocks recovered during a booming economy – which obviously we don’t have right now. In some areas it could easily take another five years for housing markets to return to normal.
Broken banks. The markets rise and fall on every whisper out of Washington about the direction of President Obama’s bank-bailout plan. But whatever the plan, it will take years before the balance sheets of teetering titans like Citigroup and Bank of America are healthy again. An effective plan might generate confidence that the feds are on the case, but there is no conceiveable plan that will repair the most troubled banks anytime soon.
[See why bank nationalization is so scary.]
Part of their problem is a mountain of losses stemming from mortgage foreclosures, which helped make the last quarter of 2008 one of the worst ever for the nation’s banks. But bigger losses are coming, as the recession deepens, more workers lose their jobs, and default rates on other kinds of consumer loans spike. Then there are those trillions of dollars worth of mortgage-baked securities and other assets that nobody has wanted to buy for almost a year. They’re worth something, but nobody knows what, and until that starts to become clearer, buyers will sit and wait.
The government has bailed out and wound down many banks before – and it’s usually a muddle-through affair that lasts a long time. That’s because failing banks are usually saddled with assets that have plunged in value and are hard to sell. After the Resolution Trust Corporation took over several thousand S&Ls in the 1980s, it took more than five years to sell much of the real estate and other assets that brought these banks down. It could take just as long to unwind the huge portfolios of troubled securities at Citigroup and other banks.
[See what Citigroup and AIG will look like in a year.]
If there’s any good news, it’s that the working parts of these banks will continue to function while the broken parts get dismantled. That’s what the federal interventions are supposed to do. In other words, they might resume something that looks like normal lending before all the problems are solved.
Other failing companies. If not for federal relief, other staggering companies like AIG, General Motors, and Chrysler, would be well into bankruptcy proceedings, and possibly headed toward liquidation. Federal aid has prevented that – but even so, the transformation of those companies is starting to look similar to a Chapter 11 reorganization.
AIG, for instance, is selling off many of its assets and lines of business, to raise cash it can use to pay back government loans. GM is killing off divisions, slashing its workforce, and making draconian deals with unions. To get some idea of how long this might go on, consider the bankruptcy of United Airlines, which lasted more than three years. And that was under court-ordered deadlines. GM has predicted that even if it gets all the money it’s asking for from the government, it won’t break even until 2011 or have significant free cash flow until 2014. AIG may have to wait nearly five years just for its vast portfolio of credit-default swaps, one key source of its problems, to expire. So this sorry show will be airing for a long time. If you want to switch it off for awhile, that might be a good idea.
[See 9 bailout surprises from GM and Chrysler.]
Layoffs. As consumers spend less and the economy contracts, companies cut jobs. And they won’t add them back until they’re damn sure the economy is improving. The Fed and many others expect unemployment to rise to nearly 9 percent this year, from 7.6 percent now. That may start to come down in 2010 – but like everything else, slowly.
[See why the media is hyperventilating over unemployment.]
Plunging confidence. Americans are worth a lot less then they were a couple years ago. The Federal Reserve said recently that since the recession started in December 2007, the aggregate net worth of Americans has fallen by 23 percent, thanks largely to declines in home values and investment portfolios. And that was only through last October. Just about everything has gotten worse since then. So Americans’ feel poorer, and they’re a lot more worried about their jobs, too. No surprise consumers have sharply cut back spending – which makes companies cut even more jobs.
Americans will start to feel a little better when the biggest problems stop getting worse, layoffs subside, and there's less worry about getting or keeping a job. And when will that be? Not soon enough for most of us. But if you take a longer view, the recovery might not seem so far off.

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/flowchart/2009/2/27/why-its-taking-so-long-to-fix-the-economy.html