Roger
Nusbaum
submits:
JNJ
Carrying out the thought a little further, fixed income yields
are at all time lows or close to it, while the S&P 500 is 27%
below its 2007 peak and 25% below its March 2000 peak. It would be
tough to argue that stocks aren't relatively cheaper than
bonds--I've been writing for ages that I think bonds are way
overpriced and so have been keeping maturities very short and
obviously bonds, or anything for that matter, can stay very
expensive for a long time and stocks can stay "cheap" for a long
time.
So the market is at a point where there are plenty of well run,
fundamentally sound companies with high dividend yields such that
an investor spending a decent amount of time looking for names
could construct a portfolio whose yield was higher than, or at
least competitive with a high quality bond portfolio.
- Maxim Integrated Products (
MXIM
) 5.0% yield
- Eli Lilly (
LLY
) 5.50% yield (clients own LLY debt)
- AT&T (
T
) 6.0% yield
- Eni (
E
) 4.5% yield
- BP Prudhoe Bay (
BPT
) 8.4% yield
- Komercni Banka (KMBNY.PK) 3.0% yield (Czech bank mentioned a
few weeks ago)
- Altria (
MO
) 6.3% yield (clients own this one)
The group covers a lot of ground and depending on how someone
might blend them together--note not all of the big SPX sectors are
included--the yield could be 5% overall without whoring out to a
bunch of companies with lousy stats, in my opinion, but you can
draw your own conclusions.
The above mix actually could be a pretty good start to building
an equity portfolio for someone but the key is
equity
portfolio. MXIM dropped about 60% from peak to trough but that was
right in line with the iShares Semiconductor ETF (
IGW
). LLY did a fair bit worse than the Health Care Sector SPDR (
XLV
) on the way down, dropping as much as 50%, and at the start the
market's snap back but has outperformed by a little in the last
year. T has done a little better than the iShares Telecom ETF (
IYZ
) fairly consistently but it did drop 40% at its trough. Eni
dropped almost 60% but that was much better than the iShares Italy
(
EWI
). BPT did much better than the Energy Sector SPDR (
XLE
) which may not be an apples to apples but from its peak about six
months after the SPX's peak BPT dropped 50%. Komercni Banka dropped
about 60% from its peak, which sounds bad but the Financial Sector
SPDR (
XLF
) dropped 80% at its worst. Finally MO did a little worse than the
Staples Sector SPDR (
XLP
) dropping slightly more than 30%.
The point of that last tedious paragraph is that there is
nothing bond-like about those results. Relative to equities, the
results above are not bad and you may agree with that or disagree
but again there is nothing bond-like about them. After two 50%
declines in ten years another one is unlikely (not impossible of
course) but even in a normal bear market, like maybe a 30% decline
with no reasonable fear of financial Armageddon, the above stocks
would still go down plenty even if it were to be less than the
market. Down 25% in a down 30% world is a fine equity market
result, or not, but again it is not bond-like. For a little bit of
context I am talking about individual bonds not bond funds some of
which malfunctioned during the crisis and obviously I am assuming,
perhaps unfairly, someone avoided financial sector bonds.
As you read more commentaries along these lines it is crucial to
understand there is a big difference between buying stocks that
probably won't go down as much as the market and buying bonds. A
portfolio that only owns stocks like the above should be expected
to go down a lot during a bear market even if they were to go down
less, a lack of recognition of this ahead of time would likely
cause a lot of anguish.
Disclosure:
None
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