When stock prices are falling, the question on most investors' minds is "when will it stop?" In the midst of a roaring bull market, investors are eventually forced to wonder how long it can last. Since trading began in lower Manhattan and in other major financial centers around the world, individuals have wondered about and attempted to analyze the factors that drive the stock market. What causes markets to move? While there is no one answer, there are factors that are known to have a positive or negative impact on the equity markets, both on a daily basis and over time.
Supply and Demand
Daily stock market movements are largely based on the laws of supply and demand. This means that stock prices will tend to appreciate in value as demand perks up and the supply of stocks for sale decreases. Conversely, if demand for a particular issue is low and the supply or volume of stocks for sale in the marketplace is high, prices will tend to decline.
Consider the following analogy:
During the summer months, when drivers are on the road traveling in large quantities, gasoline inventories are quickly used up and therefore the price at the pump usually increases. On the other hand, when it's colder, drivers tend to stay home, and the demand for fuel goes down. In turn this usually leads to lower prices at the pump. This is very similar to how the stock works as a whole: when a lot of people are buying, prices go up. (For more, see Economic Basics: Demand And Supply.)
The Overall Health of the Economy/Interest Rates
During flush economic times, investors of all stripes (retail and institutional) generally have lots of money to invest. As they put their money to work by investing in individual issues or mutual funds, which often hold positions in dozens and sometimes even hundreds of issues, equity prices tend to rise. On the flip side, during a recession or a period of slow economic growth, investors will be more reluctant or even unable to commit investment dollars. This can lead to a decrease in demand for equities and, by extension, a decrease in stock prices.
An example of what can happen to equities when the economy slows can be found in an analysis of the period after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. In fact, within a few months after the attacks many firms, particularly in the financial sector, fired swaths of employees and, as a result, the economy began to slow. This translated into less investing; the stock market responded by trending lower for the first three quarters of 2002. (For related reading, see Terrorism's Effects On Wall Street.)
Interest rates and their direction can also have a dramatic impact on the economy and the stock market. Lower interest rates stimulate borrowing by investors, individuals and companies. This in turn can lead to economic expansion, an environment in which saving and investing is common. Also, because consumers may have more cash, they will tend to spend more at retail locations, which drives up corporate profits and, by extension, stock prices.
Conversely, as interest rates rise, individuals and companies tend to borrow and expand their businesses less. This can translate into less saving and investing. It may also put a damper on consumer spending and force corporate profits to decline or level off. When this happens, stocks tend to decline.
Institutional Investors
Just like retail mom-and-pop type investors by or sell stocks, so do large institutions, such as brokerage firms and mutual funds. Only they don't purchase or sell securities in small quantities - they move large blocks. The large volumes that these institutions trade can often have an effect on daily, weekly and even monthly trading activity and price action.
In other words, if a large firm, such as Fidelity (NYSE:FNF) were to purchase 500,000 shares of XYZ stock over a period of two trading days, the price of the shares could increase rapidly as the supply of stock available for sale is soaked up. Conversely, if Fidelity is looking to unload a similarly-sized position within the same period of time, this would put a tremendous number of shares into the market all at once. If there are not enough buyers, the stock's price will fall.
Program Trading
Large institutions will sometimes use computers and computer programs to help manage portfolio risk and execute orders. The good news is that they can be used successfully. The bad news, however, is that these programs can be used to fire off mass orders to buy or sell an individual security or group of securities in a short period of time; this can have a huge impact on trading.
In fact, some say that the crash of 1987 and the many large point drops that the U.S. stock market experienced throughout the 1990s and early 2000s have been caused, or at least exacerbated, by program trading.
Psychological Issues
If individuals and institutions are upbeat about the future prospects for the economy and the markets, they will often purchase stock and drive prices up. On the flip side, if individuals and institutions are bearish about the future, they may sell some of their stock holdings. This can create a self fulfilling prophecy - in the markets, wide-scale pessimism can drive down stock prices.
In fact, psychological issues can have a tremendous effect on the markets. They can lead to both irrational exuberance and stock market bubbles, or sell-offs and short-term corrections in equity prices.
Effects of Commodity Prices
Commodity prices can have a positive or negative impact on the equity markets as well. When the price of oil goes up, the price of gasoline goes up, which means that fewer potential consumers will be on the road or shopping. Also, companies that ship their goods via truck or freighter will have to pay more for deliveries, which in turn may have an adverse impact on their margins.
For example, cotton is a large component in many of the things that we buy from clothes to furniture. If the price of cotton increases markedly, consumers will usually buy fewer of those items, which could drive profits (and stock prices) down for manufacturers who use cotton in their product.
Investors should keep commodity prices in mind because this is another factor that can impact stock prices.
Bottom Line
There are a number of factors that can impact equities trading, including supply and demand, interest rates, institutional investors and programs, market sentiment and psychology and commodity prices. Investors should be aware of these factors before getting into the market, and certainly monitor them after they've made an investment.
by Glenn Curtis, (Contact Author | Biography)
Glenn Curtis started his career as an equity analyst at Cantone Research, a New Jersey-based regional brokerage firm. He has since worked as an equity analyst and a financial writer at a number of print/web publications and brokerage firms including Registered Representative Magazine, Advanced Trading Magazine, Worldlyinvestor.com, RealMoney.com, TheStreet.com and Prudential Securities. Curtis has also held Series 6,7,24 and 63 securities licenses
Saturday, February 21, 2009
BUY WHEN THERE'S BLOOD IN THE STREETS
Baron Rothschild, an 18th century British nobleman and member of the Rothschild banking family, is credited with saying that "The time to buy is when there's blood in the streets."
He should know. Rothschild made a fortune buying in the panic that followed the Battle of Waterloo against Napoleon. But that's not the whole story. The original quote is believed to be "Buy when there's blood in the streets, even if the blood is your own."
This is contrarian investing at its heart - the strongly-held belief that the worse things seem in the market, the better the opportunities are for profit.
Most people only want winners in their portfolios, but as Warren Buffett warned, "You pay a very high price in the stock market for a cheery consensus." In other words, if everyone agrees with your investment decision, then it's probably not a good one.
Going Against the Crowd
Contrarians, as the name implies, try to do the opposite of the crowd. They get excited when an otherwise good company has a sharp, but undeserved drop in share price. They swim against the current, and assume the market is usually wrong at both its extreme lows and highs. The more prices swing, the more misguided they believe the rest of the market to be. (For more on this, read Finding Profit In Troubled Stocks.)
Bad Times Make for Good Buys
Contrarian investors have historically made their best investments during times of market turmoil. In the crash of 1987, the Dow dropped 22% in one day in the U.S. In the 1973-74 bear market, the market lost 45% in about 22 months. The September 11, 2001, attacks also resulted in a market drop. The list goes on and on, but those are times when contrarians found their best investments.
The 1973-74 bear market gave Warren Buffett the opportunity to purchase a stake in the Washington Post Company (NYSE:WPO) - an investment that has subsequently increased by more than 100-times the purchase price - that's before dividends are included. At the time, Buffett said he was buying shares in the company at a deep discount, as evidenced by the fact that the company could have "… sold the (Post's) assets to any one of 10 buyers for not less than $400 million, probably appreciably more." Meanwhile, the Washington Post Company had only an $80 million market cap at the time. (For more on Buffett's strategy, read Think Like Warren Buffett and What Is Warren Buffett's Investing Style?)
After the September 11 terrorist attacks, the world stopped flying for awhile. Suppose that at this time, you had made an investment in Boeing (NYSE:BA), one of the world's largest builders of commercial aircraft. Boeing's stock didn't bottom until about a year after September 11, but from there, it rose more than four-times in value over the next five years. Clearly, although September 11th soured market sentiment about the airline industry for quite some time, those who did their research and were willing to bet that Boeing would survive were well rewarded.
Also during that time, Marty Whitman, manager of the Third Avenue Value Fund, purchased bonds of K-Mart both before and after it filed for bankruptcy protection in 2002. He only paid about 20 cents on the dollar for the bonds. Even though for awhile it looked like the company would shut its doors for good, Whitman was vindicated when the company emerged from bankruptcy and his bonds were exchanged for stock in the new K-Mart. The shares jumped much higher in the years following the reorganization before being taken over by Sears (Nasdaq:SHLD), with a nice profit for Whitman. Thanks to moves like this, the Third Avenue Value Fund has earned a market-beating 14.3% return since Whitman founded the fund in 1990.
Sir John Templeton ran the Templeton Growth Fund from 1954 to 1992, when he sold it. Each $10,000 invested in the fund's Class A shares in 1954 would have grown to $2 million by 1992, with dividends reinvested, or an annualized return of about 14.5%. Templeton pioneered international investing. He was also a serious contrarian investor, buying into countries and companies when, according to his principle, they hit the "point of maximum pessimism." As an example of this strategy, Templeton bought shares of every public European company at the outset of World War II in 1939, including many that were in bankruptcy. He did this with borrowed money to boot. After four years, he sold the shares for a very large profit. (To learn more about Templeton and other great investors, see the Greatest Investors Tutorial.)
Putting It On the Line
But there are risks to contrarian investing. While the most famous contrarian investors put big money on the line, swam against the current of common opinion and came out on top, they also did some serious research to ensure that the crowd was indeed wrong. So, when a stock takes a nosedive, this doesn't prompt a contrarian investor to put in an immediate buy order, but to find out what has driven the stock down, and whether the drop in price is justified.
Conclusion
While each of these successful contrarian investors has his own strategy for valuing potential investments, they all have the one strategy in common - they let the market bring the deals to them, rather than chasing after them.
- investopedia
He should know. Rothschild made a fortune buying in the panic that followed the Battle of Waterloo against Napoleon. But that's not the whole story. The original quote is believed to be "Buy when there's blood in the streets, even if the blood is your own."
This is contrarian investing at its heart - the strongly-held belief that the worse things seem in the market, the better the opportunities are for profit.
Most people only want winners in their portfolios, but as Warren Buffett warned, "You pay a very high price in the stock market for a cheery consensus." In other words, if everyone agrees with your investment decision, then it's probably not a good one.
Going Against the Crowd
Contrarians, as the name implies, try to do the opposite of the crowd. They get excited when an otherwise good company has a sharp, but undeserved drop in share price. They swim against the current, and assume the market is usually wrong at both its extreme lows and highs. The more prices swing, the more misguided they believe the rest of the market to be. (For more on this, read Finding Profit In Troubled Stocks.)
Bad Times Make for Good Buys
Contrarian investors have historically made their best investments during times of market turmoil. In the crash of 1987, the Dow dropped 22% in one day in the U.S. In the 1973-74 bear market, the market lost 45% in about 22 months. The September 11, 2001, attacks also resulted in a market drop. The list goes on and on, but those are times when contrarians found their best investments.
The 1973-74 bear market gave Warren Buffett the opportunity to purchase a stake in the Washington Post Company (NYSE:WPO) - an investment that has subsequently increased by more than 100-times the purchase price - that's before dividends are included. At the time, Buffett said he was buying shares in the company at a deep discount, as evidenced by the fact that the company could have "… sold the (Post's) assets to any one of 10 buyers for not less than $400 million, probably appreciably more." Meanwhile, the Washington Post Company had only an $80 million market cap at the time. (For more on Buffett's strategy, read Think Like Warren Buffett and What Is Warren Buffett's Investing Style?)
After the September 11 terrorist attacks, the world stopped flying for awhile. Suppose that at this time, you had made an investment in Boeing (NYSE:BA), one of the world's largest builders of commercial aircraft. Boeing's stock didn't bottom until about a year after September 11, but from there, it rose more than four-times in value over the next five years. Clearly, although September 11th soured market sentiment about the airline industry for quite some time, those who did their research and were willing to bet that Boeing would survive were well rewarded.
Also during that time, Marty Whitman, manager of the Third Avenue Value Fund, purchased bonds of K-Mart both before and after it filed for bankruptcy protection in 2002. He only paid about 20 cents on the dollar for the bonds. Even though for awhile it looked like the company would shut its doors for good, Whitman was vindicated when the company emerged from bankruptcy and his bonds were exchanged for stock in the new K-Mart. The shares jumped much higher in the years following the reorganization before being taken over by Sears (Nasdaq:SHLD), with a nice profit for Whitman. Thanks to moves like this, the Third Avenue Value Fund has earned a market-beating 14.3% return since Whitman founded the fund in 1990.
Sir John Templeton ran the Templeton Growth Fund from 1954 to 1992, when he sold it. Each $10,000 invested in the fund's Class A shares in 1954 would have grown to $2 million by 1992, with dividends reinvested, or an annualized return of about 14.5%. Templeton pioneered international investing. He was also a serious contrarian investor, buying into countries and companies when, according to his principle, they hit the "point of maximum pessimism." As an example of this strategy, Templeton bought shares of every public European company at the outset of World War II in 1939, including many that were in bankruptcy. He did this with borrowed money to boot. After four years, he sold the shares for a very large profit. (To learn more about Templeton and other great investors, see the Greatest Investors Tutorial.)
Putting It On the Line
But there are risks to contrarian investing. While the most famous contrarian investors put big money on the line, swam against the current of common opinion and came out on top, they also did some serious research to ensure that the crowd was indeed wrong. So, when a stock takes a nosedive, this doesn't prompt a contrarian investor to put in an immediate buy order, but to find out what has driven the stock down, and whether the drop in price is justified.
Conclusion
While each of these successful contrarian investors has his own strategy for valuing potential investments, they all have the one strategy in common - they let the market bring the deals to them, rather than chasing after them.
- investopedia
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