How to avoid being too analytical?
for those who are at HFs who focus on intricacies of a business - cash flow, leases, third party data trends, valuation, how do you adapt and focus more on the story that drives stock prices these days?
market doesnt really care about any of this stuff anymore (besides maybe data trends trends) so are you just fighting an obsolete fight?
feels kind of stupid to look at p/e or fcf multiples when the best stocks this year are pre-revenue, or thematic bets such as PLTR, MSTR, RKLB, INOQ - things tied to BIG trends/big imaginations instead of spreadsheet math
genuinely not sure if this is the new normal and we need to adapt, or this is just an anomaly of rates/trump euphoria. flows are driving 90% of stock prices in the near term (near-term meaning 1 week to 5 year, genuinely think real investment cycles are 10 years or longer) which is all that matters for 99.9% of institutions anyway
Stocks still follow revisions, more-so in shorter duration sectors, more so on a relative basis, more so ex-style factors. If you’re doing that kind of work, be aware of the non-fundamental drivers of incremental buyer/seller… but you should have the duration and vol tolerance to capitalize on it. If you’re like most single managers & don’t REALLY have much vol tolerance or duration and you MUST be reactive to daily noise in prices, at least break down the factor and understand what bets you’re making. If you can’t tolerate vol and you can’t hedge out unwanted factor noise then you’re really in a harder spot
People ask these questions every time the market rips and things get frothy (see 2021). One element that maybe changes the way one could frame an answer is what is the mandate and/or time horizon? Things obvs very different in a market neutral set up, but for the sake of argument, lets ignore all of that stuff and assume the end goal is make good absolute and/or risk adjusted returns more generally.
Just because a stock "looks" cheap on a multiple of whatever metric you look at on a single period basis, doesn't mean you'll make money. Likewise that DCF (its the same as the multiple anyways) telling you its cheap or the risk/reward is attractive, doesn't mean you'll make money.
There is something to be said about "invest like a business owner" and taking a longer term perspective, but the reality is lots of shit happens in 2yrs ( A LOT), and even 1yr. Buying a business with a strong ROIC and good competitive moats at a somewhat ok valuation... well I still think that works in spirit, but they often don't exist anymore, and if they do, you usually get these stocks because something is wrong / there is a key debate or pivot point emerging. And so if you don't have accelerating KPIs / revisions to support this, you can be buying a business that is melting.
When you move from the principles of just pitching things that sound good on paper and fit with all the disciplined value investing stuff, to then actually deploying money and trying to extract some profits from those bets, I feel like it forces you to really isolate the stock vs. business aspect of it all. It did for me at least.
All of these fundamentals make up the context / backdrop of the game - they are certainly very important, but marginal buyers / sellers are quite diverse today, and make decisions on a shorter term basis that aren't as strictly defined by "is this free cash flow yield closer to mid-cycle or normalized levels" (just thinking between passive, quants, MMHFs w/leverage, prop shops, retail, and then the LOs). It all fits into the same backdrop, and valuation does matter, but its also why stocks can rip higher than what a textbook or level headed model with a normal discount rate says is fair value for a business growing xyz%.
As anchor said, revisions are important... but so is narrative. Narrative can be rooted in both fundamentals and perception and the immediately visible key drivers moving higher/above expectations.
I don't think you'll find an astute PLTR pitch from a graham and doddsville article speaking to why it could trade at 140x NTM EPS - honestly can't think of any fund manager writing it up. But there is something there pushing the narrative of the stock. Whether that was something that any intelligent and prudent investor would be able to lay out with conviction ahead of time in a coherent pitch, idk I'd love to see it.
The answer is not abandon all hope and chase momentum / meme / themes / retail narratives... but it does mean removing any self-imposed limits on what you believe valuation or fundamentals say the world has to be. All of the noise aside, stocks that do well will have the magical alignment of numbers moving in the right direction + narrative moving in the right direction (and ideally, people have yet to properly price the stock as such). People will always be more excited, in the right environment, for the right story combined with the right revision path / KPIs.
If my job is to make money deploying capital, I have to have a process that allows me to find this across every market environment I can.
Idk maybe this was all garbage... its been a long earnings season and it gets dark too early these days.
mind if i pm you / do you have time for a call? currently in the process of (trying to) switch from private to public, would appreciate any advice on prepping + hearing more about your process to finding good pitches in every market env
Agree with both of the above...
When I made the switch to L/S from IBD+PE I'd obsess over "cleaning the numbers" - then I realised the market doesn't give a shit about my quality of earnings adjustments... As long as it's not portraying the wrong picture, and it's consistent, it won't really matter. It annoyed me that "Return on invested time" on being forensic just wasn't there. But oh well, we grow up...
When I'm losing money, I flash-back to my old PE boss making a dart-throwing gesture when I told him I was leaving for public markets - like "it's all random"... But when I'm winning I'm suddenly convinced market neutral / high idio / low vol is the holy grail and the code has been cracked for the chosen ones. Classic confirmation bias.
For better or for worse, most of us are in the YTD sprint game. We're not buying "cash flow streams" at decent NPVs - does it matter if your model IRR is 15% vs 9%? Does that make it a go/no go? Rarely...
I'd speculate that this leads two "informal" behaviours:
1/ We're trading rate of change on rate of change. In essence our view vs. the markets view of incremental ROIC shifts (key valuation driver) and how we (over/under) extrapolate those shifts. We're always squeezing out a little bit more relative alpha as we self-correct over time and keeping the market close to efficient (but not entirely efficient).
2/ How we invest in January vs November (when PnL is largely locked in) is totally different. If L/S PNLs are solid, do we perhaps see more profit taking? If flat/down = swing for the fences? In that sense, Q3s get especially wild - it's the last high idio catalyst before books close for the year.
Whilst I can't prove this, I suspect that closer to year end we're less likely to be thinking "is the math mathing?" and investor psychology becomes more focused on how is the math being interpreted by others. Per Keynes' beauty contest analogy - "we're not picking the prettiest face, we're picking what the average judge will think is the prettiest face".
Something that stuck with me (don't remember where I read this) but it went somewhere along the lines of:
There are 4 types of investors....
a/ Extrapolators - "The trend is your friend!" Takes today's growth and projects it forward. Some do this simply (straight line goes up!), others get fancy with acceleration rates and unit economics. But the core idea? Today's path = tomorrow's reality -> Q1 + Q2 + Q3 + Q4 = FYn(1+g)....
b/ The thematic lense - "Forget the numbers, here's how the world works." Strong views about where things are headed and fits companies into that framework. Theme -> find tickers. Current trends? It's "whatever" in the grand scheme of things. Focus on industry dynamics, consumer behavior shifts, and structural advantages will matter 5+ years out -> FY5/[(1+i)^t]
c/ Trend followers - "What will other investors think?" Stocks are just paper you eventually sell to someone else. Focuses on understanding and predicting market psychology. Basic version: "Is it popular?" Advanced version: "Where are opinions heading?" -> "RSI looks frothy"
d/ Synthesizers - "Let's connect all the dots." Combine the other three approaches. Links current trends to future scenarios, maps those to the worldview, and factors in how investor psychology will evolve. Lets build a complete picture of where both the business and its perception are headed.
....In the real world, each category comprises many variations. No investor lands entirely in one bucket. But if there are 4 core options, there’s only one worth striving for.
this is excellent. exactly what I was looking for but articulately much better than I ever could. thank you
Where can I go to work on a fund that just does this? I know I sound silly to your perspective, but I can't find a non-pod fund that isn't trying to rip apart filings and hire model monkeys.
The number of pods that trade mostly on the rumor mill factories is astonishing to most people not familiar with the strategy. It’s an access thing. Go to a pod if that’s what you want to do, seriously
Maybe figure out the main drivers and focus on that.
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