House Oversight — Estate records
HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_030808
Microsoft Word - 07-11-11 - EOTM - Twilight of the Gods
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July 11, 2011 Topics: Portfolios, US corporate profits and the Twilight of the Gods (in the US, Europe, China and the IEA) Here’s what our U.S. Balanced portfolio looks like right now 1 . This week’s note reviews some of the factors that affect these allocations: healthy private sector profits, problems left over from the recession, and interventions by the world’s legislatures, treasuries, central banks and multilateral agencies. This latter group reminds me of the ancient Greek Gods: they are very powerful, but sometimes flawed, as their interventions in the world did not always work as planned. We are getting closer to the Twilight of the Gods, a time when they are either running out of ammunition, or the ability to use it without causing even more problems. If so, the private sector will have to recover on its own. The consequence of these cross-currents: we invest in equities, but hold 10%-15% less than what we normally would at this point of the business cycle, and are positioning for a single-digit year on equities. High Yield, Leveraged Loans, Structured Credit, 10% Emerging Market FX, 5% Core Bonds, 8% Inflation, 2% Cash, 3% Public equity, 36% JPM US Balanced Model Portfolio Diversified Hedge Funds, Private equity, 6% 5% Real Estate, Single Strategy 3% Hard Assets, Hedge Funds, 4% 18% Source: J.P. Morgan Private Bank, as of July 2011. These portfolios may not be suitable for all investors & are shown for illustrative purposes only PROFITS The primary (and perhaps sole) justification for carrying the levels of risk shown above relates to corporate profits. As shown below, profit margins have reached levels not seen in decades. The challenge, which we have discussed many times before: what is driving these margins 2 ? One useful way to deconstruct profits is to measure them from peak to peak, and analyze what changed. As shown in the first chart, S&P 500 profit margins increased by ~1.3% from 2000 to 2007. There are a lot of moving parts in the margin equati […]