[stock] management fees
Uptown, Nov 03 2008
While I don't know many people here, my perception is that people here are driven, smart and quite savvy. Most of you will eventually be in a position to seriously consider investing your hard earned money (be it through poker or other means) into stocks/bonds/real estate/etc.
I recall that the very reason I was compelled to spend more time here was tenbagger's excellent advice on basic investment principals here when I was bored and looking for stuff to read. Because it's something I think everyone should take a look at, I'll copy it here:
| | I've seen firsthand many people get burned so I'm gonna take some time to write a lengthy post about investing for the LP community. While I don't claim to a Warren Buffett, I have an inside perspective that I think will be valuable to anyone who wants to get started in investing.
I very strongly advise against active management for the average investor. Many of the so-called "expert" investors, much of their success can be attributed to luck. Also, if you are selecting a basket of a dozen or so stocks with your 20K, regardless of how well it is diversified, you are still taking on a significant amount of risk in trying to beat the market. The stock market has historically returned about 8% over the long term, buy a mix of spiders, QQQs and some foreign ETFs and be happy with the 8%.
There are many people who think they are financial gurus or have a gambling streak in them and try to pick select stocks to outperform the overall market. Many of them are disillusioned into thinking that it was their "skill" when their picks do well and poor luck when it goes poorly. It is similar to the psychology of fishes in poker. Just like in poker, there are people in investing with an edge that are +EV in their actions. Here is an overview of the players in the market and their poker equivalents in ( ).
- Big successful hedge funds - SAC, Medallion, Moore Capital, etc. These funds have billions of dollars under management and have produced great results for many years. They employ an army of math geeks like bigballs, physics PhDs, etc. to create models that I couldn't even begin to understand. They guard their strategies so well that no one really knows how they do it, but it is pretty obvious by their consistently amazing results that they have a significant edge. (Phil Ivey, new school phenoms)
- Prop trading desks @ major wall street firms - These guys have access to so much more info than the average investor. There is no question that a bunch of insider trading goes on everywhere, but these guys have access to information that isn't considered "inside info" but still is not available to the average investor. By being on the front lines they are the first to hear things and can act before the general public. (Doyle Brunson, old school powerhouse)
- Mutual funds, investement boutiques, etc. - While I think most of these "qualitiative" guys are BS and underperform the market, there are some that consistently produce great results to the point where one must acknowledge their edge. Typical things that they do to get an edge will be to have finance whizzes scour the financial statements, send secret shoppers to the businesses to evaluate them, meet with the CEO/board to discuss business plans, etc. These are things that the average individual investor cannot do because of constraints on time and resources. (Naz, Rek, profitable, but not near the level of the guys above)
- Hotshot individual investor - They read the journal and yahoo finance and think that they have some secret formula when in fact they are getting the same info that the rest of the world already knows and what the big boys already knew few days ago. All the information available to them is public information and in fact these guys often will rely on biased information put out by third parties. They know what P/E and beta is, but they don't realize that everyone else knows that basic stuff too. I hear stories of how well so and so did in the market. Well, the truth is most people did well in the 80s and 90s. That is because the market as a whole did extremely well. You could've bought basic blue chips in the 80s and made a killing. They mistakenly attribute their good fortune to invest in a bull market as a sign of their investing prowess. (Standard marginal winning player at low limits, will make some money but will generally overestimate their skill. Knows the basics and that is enough to eek out a small amount of +EV, but only because of the mass presence of fishes...I admit that I am at this level in poker, although the difference is that I know that I am very mediocre in poker.)
- Average guy who knows nothing about investing - He'll let a broker handle his money where the broker will do everything in his power to maximize his commissions. Or he'll put money into the hot mutual fund that did well last year that will suck this year and pay a fat sales charge and hefty annual fees. After some bad investments and a ton of churning, they will curse investing forever and stick their fortune in savings accounts/CDs and possibly some treasuries. (Fish, donkey)
Let me add that there are some people out there that know nothing about investing that hook up with very good financial advisors/brokers/investment advisors and end up as a winner. These people are usually rich and/or very lucky. There are also people out there that did fairly well but still underperformed the overall market during the bull market years because they paid too much in fees/commissions.
If you get a referral from someone you trust about a financial advisor/broker/investment advisor, then go for it. Just keep in mind that most of them are glorified salesman and will look out for their own interests over yours. The only way for you to really know if they are looking out for you is to be knowledgeable yourself. If you are not an expert, and you don't want to gamble, and you don't have an advisor that you trust, then do not pick out stocks on your own. It is -EV and although you may get lucky, that is exactly what it is. Odds are against you outperforming the market and you are taking on a lot of unnecessary risk. Keep in mind that you are playing the stock market game against the likes of the investing equivalent of phil ivey. You may make 7% when the market makes 8%, that is still a loss of 1% compared to the overall market. People will often focus in on the absolute returns rather than relative to the overall market. They will be happy about their 7% gain when in fact they could've taken the safer route of an ETF or index fund and made more while taking less risk. Most people are not experts, do not want to gamble with their savings and do not have an advisor that they really trust. If you fall into that category buy ETFs or index funds with no loads and low fees. That way, you guarantee that your investing performance will track the overall performance of the market. You will never make a killing, but you won't be a fish either. To make my final poker analogy, it is someone like me who isn't that great at poker eeking out 4ptbb/100 at NL50/100 rather than trying to take on NL 2000. My bankroll will never be in jeopardy and I will consistently make a small profit. Know your limitations and play only when it is +EV. |
What I want to inform you is that when you DO get to a position where putting money into a money manager, to actually negotiate your fee %age down. If they're not budging, take your money elsewhere! It is very possible to negotiate rates lower than 1% if the sum of money you are putting in with them is large enough.
And even if you don't have that kind of cash right now, many if not most of you will have it in say ~10 years time. Now it might be tricky because you shouldn't be putting all of the funds going into managers into one dude, but just remember that their fees are negotiable!
edit: If you want to see how significant a change from say 1.5% to 0.7% management fee is HUGE! Just a simple excel sheet will show you that assuming 6% growth, in 20 years will be a difference of 200k! (but you guys probably knew that already <3)
edit2: I actually made the graph I refer to above but imageshack doesn't like me  . Oh, just found out there's more tenbagger gems I should be copying here from that thread (seriously guys, just read the thread, it's definitely enlightening for the vast majority of us)
| | On December 11 2006 12:22 TenBagger wrote:
Google is a great company and their profits are growing exponentially. They have a bright future because they dominate the online advertising market which is also growing exponentially. But everyone already knows this. And as a result, the stock of google has already been pushed up very high.
Just to put things in perspective, let's take a look at, P/E, also known as price to earnings ratio. If I own a store that makes 100K in profit a year and I sell it to you for 500K, then the P/E would be 5. It would take you 5 years to make back your investment and that is assuming that profits stay level. The historical average P/E for US equities is somewhere around 15. Google has a P/E ratio of over 60. To put things VERY simply, that means that people are fairly certain that Google will increase their profits x4 and this expectation is already built in to the price of Google's stock. So over the long run, even if google doubles their earnings, that would most likely lead to a drop in the stock price because it will fall short of expectations that are already built in to the current price.
The average person will say invest in google, not because they fully understand the valuations and because they think the stock will outperform, but rather because they think it is a good company. I'll compare this to someone starting out in poker, looking down at AJo in the BB and choosing to go allin, even though there has been a raise, a reraise and a rereraise push allin before him. This is an extreme example but it illustrates the point that while AJ is a very good hand, the circumstances may render that hand worthless. The person with an edge in poker will be able to determine what these circumstances are while the fish will evaluate the strength of AQ in a vacuum. Likewise, google is a GREAT company, but for anyone to invest in it and have it be +EV, they will need to evaluate the many other variables. If you are not evaluating all these other variables and circumstances, well then you are basically the investing equivalent of a fish that will push AJo in the situation I highlighted above.
5.5 million shares of Google are traded on an average day. Thousands if not tens of thousands of "players" are making their bets on google and deciding to buy or sell based upon their reasoning and analysis. As I mentioned in my previous old post, many of these "players" are very sophisticated investors making their decisions based on a lot more information and better information than what is available to any one of us. If you are buying google purely based on the fact that "it's the hot stock" and "I think internet search will grow exponentially", you are operating with less information and are at a disadvantage.
This is not to say that I think google is a bad investment. It may be a great investment, but I just don't know. The fact is that I am certain that I have less information at my disposal to make this determination than the majority of the players that are trading the 5.5 million shares per day. I think if I put time and effort into it, I may work myself into a position where it is a slightly +EV proposition,neutral or slighly -EV. I'll be ahead of the investing donks, but I'll be way behind the hedge funds and prop desks. However, if I make this investment without any additional research or information, this is definitely a losing play over the long run. And just like in poker, don't be results oriented.
The collective wisdom of many people who have traded 5.5 million shares have determined that $485 is currently the fair price for a single share of google. Ask yourself if you have any reason to believe that your assessment has an edge against the collective wisdom of all these people. Do these people not know my secret that google is awesome?
|
| | On December 11 2006 13:29 TenBagger wrote:
Show nested quote +
On December 11 2006 10:47 meatcity wrote:
Ok so say I have money sitting in mutual funds. The fee to get the money in them was pretty substantial. I know very little about investing. Should I get out of the mutual funds and look to invest in hedge funds. Also, isn't the minimum amount required to invest in a hedge fund like half a million or something rediculous or am I completely off? |
"The fee to get the money in them was pretty substantial."
That was your first and biggest mistake. Let me briefly go over the pricing structure of mutual funds.
There is something called a load also known as a sales charge. This is money that goes straight into the broker's pocket. Typical sales charge would be 5%. That means if you invest 10K, then really you are investing only 9500 and your broker will take 500. It may have been unaviodable in the past, when the industry was less efficient and there was less competition. But there is absolutely no reason why anyone should pay a load/sales charge to purchase a mutual fund. No fund or broker is worth this fee, especially when there are many other funds that are equal that do not charge a load.
Second thing to consider is the annual operating expense. This includes the management fee, 12b1 fees, and other miscellaneous fees. For example if the fund's annual operating expense was 1% and you had 10K in the fund, they will deduct 100 from you balance every year. This expense is the main reason why I advocate passive management (ETFs and index funds).
ETFs and index funds have extremely low operating expenses, usually less than .5%. This is because there is very little work involved in running the fund. They don't need to hire a bunch of suits to pick stocks, because the fund will automatically buy the stocks in a certain index. For example, if u buy a QQQ, you buy the stocks in the Nasdaq 100. When the Nasdaq added google to the Nasdaq 100, the QQQ automatically bought shares in google. There was no manager that needed to make that decision, it just followed whatever the Nasdaq decided for their Nasdaq 100 index.
Actively traded funds on the other hand have people that try to outperform the indexes. For example, if you buy a regular technology mutual fund, it will most likely be benchmarked to the Nasdaq 100. A manager is selectively picking stocks and putting together a portfolio that he or she feels will outperform the Nasdaq 100. It is no easy task to beat the index, but it becomes that much harder when you account for the operating expense fees.
The expense ratio of the QQQ is .20%. Compare that to the AllianceBernstein Global tech Fund. It has an expense ratio of 1.66%. That means that they need to outperform the Nasdaq 100 by 1.46% every year just to break even. It is my opinion that the most managers of mutual funds do not have enough of an edge against the market as a whole to justify their fees.
Finally, regarding hedge funds. Hedge funds are limited by law to accredited investors. Basically, an accredited investor is a corporate entity such as a bank or investment company or a wealthy individual. Also, most hedge funds have very steep minimum investment requirements, often over 500K. You can get around this by investing in a fund of funds or a similar vehicle which basically resells smaller chunks of hedge fund investments to smaller investors. However, consider that you will now pay two layers of fees, one by the original hedge fund and a second fee by the fund of funds. Also, hedge funds have astronomical fees, 2 and 20 is the standard rate. That means 2% annual fee and 20% of any investment gain. Very successful hedge funds like SAC charge something really ridiculous like 5 and 50. I wouldn't mind paying those kinda fees to have someone like steven cohen or james simons managing my money because those guys have proven that they are worth it year after year. But then again, those guys wouldn't even take our money, even if we had millions. I would not pay anything close to that to someone unproven and I certainly wouldn't pay another layer of fees to someone that is just repackaging it for me.
Basically, forget about hedge funds unless you have millions to invest. Then you can start to consider them. These hedge fund investment vehicles for small investors are a huge ripoff.
|
Finding the low point
Uptown, Nov 03 2008
It's no secret that the US economy is tanking, and the stock market's been in a free fall. Question is, when is it going to turn up.
As most pple predicted, the market went up for a bit in response to the Fed cutting rates down to 1.0% from 1.5%, but honestly that's really about the only good news that's going to come in the next two months (there was one more thing but it's escaped my mind for now).
But the big whammy is the 4th quarter earning reports, which will obviously be much much lower than forecasted, exacerbated by the fact that it'll include the holiday season. So we can expect it to take a nose dive again (I guess risk takers could try to get options on the S&P and sell short with a small portion of their portfolio).
Most experts believe the market will turn up within the next 12-24 months. And the thing with the stock market is, iirc, it begins to rise roughly 6 months before we're officially out of the 'recession' (recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of downswing iirc)...
But can we assume that the market will return to normal eventually (like by the time 3 years passes) and just buy now? Well the thing is... hedge funds are selling like mad right now, clearly shown by the Yen that was staying incredibly strong to the dollar (90 yen to 1 dollar) despite every other currency tanking (1.3 euro to 1 dollar, 1.5 pounds to 1 dollar, etc).
-Backstory: Hedge funds had borred from Japan b/c the interest rate there was 1.0% but now that the US interest rates have gone down so much, they're returning the Yen to Japan and borrowing dollars - hence the Yen is strong as hell.
The martket has taken a 35-40% loss over the last few months. The problem is, how much are they selling, how far were they leveraged, and how much were they invested in the market? if they had 200billion in the market, and they've sold 100billion of it, then they're at a 40 billion loss. The main issue here is, who funded the leveraging? The "investors" to the hedge fund will obviously take a massive hit, but they can't cover the entire 40 billion in losses.
If it was financial/stock firms like Merill, G.Sachs, etc, then when the hedge funds tell them they can't pay back the leveraged money, their books are going to catch on fire, it'll be a catastrophe and the market will tank even further. It's a low probability event, sure, but with the way hedge funds operate - that is, we have NO idea what the hell they do b/c they have a blackbox system - we have no way of telling what's going on and figuring out the dangers of taking certain actions now.
You can count on there being legislation passed to disallow hedge funds from working with blackbox schemes ever again, because No One has any idea how much they were working with and how huge their losses are, or who had funded them.
So we may be approaching the low point after the 4th quarter reports come out... OR we could be in for a big surprise...
=======
This is just a rant of sorts, take everything with a grain of salt.
Previous Page |
Contact Users: 689 Active, 1 Logged in - Time: 03:52
,
,
,
,