Going Against the Crowd Paid Off in 2002
By Jon D. Markman
12/20/2002 10:57
As a third year of the great millennial equity bear market draws to a close amid a cheerless holiday season, it's time to reflect on investment strategies that worked and failed over the past 12 months.
At SuperModels, we enjoyed a bull market in skepticism as the best results came from our most cynical, go-against-the-crowd efforts. Whenever we went with the flow, we drowned.
S&P Follies
Capital contrariness here begins with our jaundiced view of the Standard & Poor's indices. These represent investment industry standards and consensus -- for what reasons, other than good marketing and accidental success during the '90s bubble, we're not sure. Once again in 2002, as in 2001 and 2000, the S&P team led by eccentric economist David Blitzer managed to expel winners and add losers to its mid-cap and small-cap indexes with stunning regularity.
S&P kicked 25 companies out of its SmallCap 600 Index in 2002 through Dec. 16, for reasons other than merger or promotion to another index.
Eighteen of those subsequently went up, while just seven went down.
The average return of all expellees was 43.6%, led by a 302% advance in Factory 2-U Stores FTUS from its closing price on its last day in the index (Oct. 11) to Dec. 16. Then there was a 255% advance in Aspen Technology AZPN from Oct. 11; a 212% return in Stratos Lightwave STLW from June 12; a 94% move in Brightpoint CELL from Feb. 7 to date; and a 98% move in Trenwick Group TWK since Nov. 14.
These results include four stocks that lost virtually all their value after getting the boot: Mutual Risk Management MLRMF , Organogenesis ORG , Mississippi Chemical GRO and Advanced Tissue Sciences ATISQ . But index makers shouldn't feel too smug about pushing these out, as they had all already fallen more than 80% in the 24 months prior to expulsion.
S&P added 42 stocks to its small-cap index to replace expellees, merger victims or stocks that moved up to its mid-cap index.
Of those, 27 subsequently went down in price while 15 went up.
The average move among the additions was negative 7%, which was better than the index overall, which lost 13% for the year through Dec. 16.
The worst additions were Children's Place Retail Stores PLCE , down 69%, and eFunds EFDS , down 50%. The best were Biosite BSTE , up 73%, and New Century Financial NCEN , up 36%.
At the index that tracks medium-sized companies, the S&P MidCap 400, the Blitzer committee was much less active, kicking out or demoting only seven stocks and adding 26. Of the expellees, four went down and three went up for an average return of plus 26%. Among the additions, 13 went down and 13 went up, for a net change of negative 6%.
The best-performing expellee was MIPS Technologies MIPS up 136% since getting kicked out Sept. 30. The top-performing addition was PetsMart PETM , up 34%. The worst-performing adds were Copart CPRT , down 49% since Jan. 31, and Intersil ISIL , off 47% since May 14.
At the S&P 500 , the Blitzers lost their ruinous 2000 and 2001 appetite for wheeling and dealing, kicking out just four stocks for reasons other than merger -- the lowest number in years. (Four more foreign-company stocks were kicked out when S&P decided to make the 500 an all-U.S. index.)
The humbled four went on to lose another 49% in value, led by an 85% decline in WorldCom and a 78% decline in US Airways , both now bankrupt. The committee did investors no big favors, though, as both stocks were down more than 85% for the 12 months prior to their expulsion.
The 21 stocks added during the year lost 7% of their value during a time when the index lost 14% overall. The biggest disappointments were Rational Software RATL , down 56% from its Jan. 31 addition; Plum Creek Timber PCL , down 22% from Jan. 16; and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco RJR , down 26% from Sept. 3. The best adds were Apollo Group APOL , up 11.5% from May 14, and eBay EBAY , up 16% from July 19.
10 S&P Plays
Even after its big run from the Oct. 10 lows, the S&P 500 index still has 22 stocks priced at less than $5. If you think that the market has the potential to rock again for a week or more following its early-December correction, consider going into the end of the year with the same successful posture that I recommended for speculators in mid-October: Buy an evenly weighted basket of 10 of the lowest-priced, cheapest, most heavily shorted S&P 500 stocks that had the worst performance year to date.
The 14 recommended on Oct. 17 went up an average of 85% over the subsequent two months, led by 100%-plus gains in Solectron SLR , Sprint PCS PCS , AES Corp. AES and Lucent Technologies LU .
If you want fewer, focus on the ones with dividends, as there seems to be a move afoot to cover shorts of dividend-paying stocks in anticipation of potential new tax treatment in the next session of Congress.
Here are the 10 this week. Please note that this is a speculation based on a big investors' habit of quickly "equitizing" their cash by buying exchange-traded funds representing the S&P 500 -- not a determination that these 10 merit a long-term hold.
10 S&P Stocks Under $5
Company 12/16 close 2002 YTD % Short interest ratio Price/sales ratio
Avaya (AV) $2.93 -75.6 17 0.22
Sprint PCS (PCS) 4.85 -79.5 13 0.82
Qwest Communications (Q) 4.42 -69.7 10 0.40
Gateway (GTW) 3.20 -60.3 10 0.24
Lucent Technologies (LU) 1.41 -77.8 8 0.41
Calpine (CPN) 3.44 -79.3 8 0.17
AES Corp. (AES) 3.40 -80.1 8 0.19
Corning (GLW) 3.90 -57.8 7 1.20
Solectron (SLR) 3.72 -67.5 6 0.25
Mirant (MIR) 1.75 -88.4 6 0.03
Source: MSN Money
More Moves Against the Crowd
Other examples of SuperModels' interest in fading the market in 2002:
In May, I suggested that expectations were too lofty for high-P/E stocks like Vivendi Universal V , AOL Time Warner AOL , QLogic QLGC and Circuit City CC . They went on to subsequently drop 50% to 70% before rebounding a bit in the fall.
Later that month, SuperModels warned against the future prospects of companies such as Argosy Gaming AGY , Crown Cork and Seal CCK and Raytheon RTN that carried high levels of goodwill on their books after overpaying for acquisitions. These all went on to sink by 50% to 65% before a fall rebound.
As the market was faltering in its late-summer rebound in July, SuperModels recommended purchasing stocks that would interest "vulture investors" who would take advantage of low equity values and take strong, cheap companies private. The four stocks highlighted -- Allied Waste Industries AW , Old Dominion Freight Line ODFL , Aaron Rents RNT and Quanta Services PWR -- rose an average of 54% from then through this week.
In early October, as the market was plunging, we offered a list of five stocks priced under $5 that could rebound in the event of a turnaround. They bounced 22% on average, led by an 85% advance in supercomputer maker Cray Inc. CRAY and a 47% move in Monterey Pasta PSTA .
In November, as the fall rally appeared to lose steam, we suggested getting on board with insiders at Amkor Technology AMKR and 10 other stocks -- and they went on to advance 42% as a group, led by a doubling in Amkor.
As for individual stocks, SuperModels waved the red flag of overvaluation or overly aggressive accounting on Toys R Us TOY , Emulex ELX and Electronic Data Systems EDS . All went on to collapse by 50% or more before recovering some (but not all) ground.
The moral of the story for each: The seeds of decline for all were hidden in plain sight in the companies' electronic filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission . There was no reason for shareholders to have been blind-sided.
To be sure, SuperModels suffered its share of mistakes:
On Jan. 9, 2002, we tried to get along with an early-year rally by forecasting that the year could turn out like 1991 -- a powerful up year for stocks. I suggested that the best way to take advantage was to buy the iShares S&P 400 Midcap Value IJJ . This instrument was down 9% in 2002 through Dec. 16, vs. the negative 14% performance of the S&P 500 and 28% decline of the Nasdaq.
Two of the worst ideas came in September. We suggested an already-declining Cablevision Systems CVC was a sell on Sept.26, due to its massive debt load. It did go down 30% from there, but then it tripled from its early October low around $6 after the company discovered its survival instinct and decided to liquefy its balance sheet by selling a key asset.
On Sept. 11, I revisited a longstanding call to own defense stocks -- only this time we got blasted as top names Northrop Grumman NOC , Lockheed Martin LMT and Raytheon were subsequently heavily sold off in a classic profit-taking/sector-rotation move.
So what's on the horizon? More turn and burn, as volatility makes a repeat visit in 2003, offering many more opportunities to take advantage of perceptions at variance with consensus that stems, as hedge-fund legend Michael Steinhardt told me in an interview last fall, from "an intellectually advantaged disparate view."
SuperModels will be on hiatus next week, but we'll have a 2003 forecast ready for you on Jan. 1. |
