Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Singapore stocks are just cheaper but they are still not cheap. Here’s why..

We had a heated argument with The sexy Victoria Junior College student today because she hurt our ego.She said that after looking at our portfolio of stocks, she thinks it sucks. We, erhem, naturally felt insulted. We explained we bought most of it during the month of October. She countered with saying :” I don’t give a fiddler’s fart when you buy it. Everything has a value.” We, to prevent a further bruised ego, retorted by saying: “ Hey, you little lim kum put of a little girl, who has been monitoring the stock market while you are studying for your A levels. Just look how much prices have corrected! You little prick.” She shouted:” You are just like a cow and anchoring yourself to last years prices!” . With that, she left in a huff! Our egos now badly bruised. We thought we felt a tear on our cheek. And then we realized, we are cows. She is right.

In behaviourial finance, one of the fallacies of investors is to suffer from an anchoring effect. The concept of anchoring draws on the tendency to attach or "anchor" our thoughts to a reference point - even though it may have no logical relevance to the decision at hand. For example, some investors invest in the stocks of companies that have fallen considerably in a very short amount of time. In this case, the investor is anchoring on a recent "high" that the stock has achieved and consequently believes that the drop in price provides an opportunity to buy the stock at a discount. See below of an experiment. Taken from a University Research paper:

Quote
In a 1974 paper entitled "Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics And Biases", Kahneman and Tversky conducted a study in which a wheel containing the numbers 1 though 100 was spun. Then, subjects were asked whether the percentage of U.N. membership accounted for by African countries was higher or lower than the number on the wheel. Afterward, the subjects were asked to give an actual estimate. Tversky and Kahneman found that the seemingly random anchoring value of the number on which the wheel landed had a pronounced effect on the answer that the subjects gave. For example, when the wheel landed on 10, the average estimate given by the subjects was 25%, whereas when the wheel landed on 60, the average estimate was 45%. As you can see, the random number had an anchoring effect on the subjects' responses, pulling their estimates closer to the number they were just shown - even though the number had absolutely no correlation at all to the question. UnQuote

In order to best avoid the anchoring effect, one has to use a calculator and determine a value. We decided to use Benjamin Graham's formula to determine that value. This value will then serve as a benchmark from which we anchor our investing decisions. We apologised to The SEXY Victoria Junior College student and bought her a Macdonalds Happy Meal with a Madagascar Giraffe ( Moooov it). She also made us sing the Victorian Anthem and she said we have to put the Victorian badge on our site. ( Whats with her and Victoria???????!!!) She was so happy that she volunteered to help us crunch some numbers. This is shown below. So you see my friend, stocks are just cheaper. They are still not cheap! ( We are not saying the market has not seen the lowest yet. Don't mistake us cos we don't know. We are just saying cheapness based on Benjamin's valuation. See our post on How to Value Equities using Benjamin Graham's Simple Formula.)

(We want to add that above is not our portfolio. We have positions in some of them though. So pls pls use a calculator, go to reuters or bloomberg and deduce the value for yourself. A the VJC student said " Don't be a Cow". )

Important: The objective of the articles in this blog is to set you thinking about the company before you invest your hard-earned money. Do not invest solely based on this article. Unlike House or Instituitional Analysts who have to maintain relations with corporations due to investment banking relations, generating commissions,e.t.c, SGDividends say things as it is, factually. Unlike Analyst who have to be "uptight" and "cheem", we make it simplified and cheapskate. -The Vigilante Investor, SGDividends Team


Monday, November 24, 2008

How to Value Equities Using Benjamin Grahams Simple Formula! - Example SATS Singapore

We just finished reading "The Intelligent Investor" by Benjamin Graham and we will distill the important points for our dear readers. Actually, we didn't really agree on some of Benjamin's methodology because some of it was purely rule of thumb. BUT....given that he has "reproduced" some pretty fine students, see below table and compare their performance with our Dear Aberdeen Fund Managers and Dear Fidelity Fund Managers from Fundsupermart Singapore, we have becomed believers. Shameful.....still taking management fees somemore!
Read here on what Warren Buffet say about such people.

Benjamin Graham came up with a simple rule of thumb formula to find the intrinsic value of a stock. (Seriously, don't ask us how its derived...its baffling! )

Intrinsic Value per share= Current ( Normal) Earnings per share X (8.5 + twice the expected annual growth rate of earnings per share)

Take note that (Normal ) means one-off , extraordinary items that inflate or deflate the earning for that year are excluded. These extraordinary items refers to, for example, currency gains, sale of property ( non-property company), or anything that is earned/loss from activities not in the normal course of a company's business. The expected annual growth rate of earnings is the growth expected over the next 7 to 10 years.

Let's use it on Singapore Airport Terminal Services shall we!

We pulled the data out from Reuters ( let's assume reuters is correct) You can get the reuters data from http://www.reuters.com/. ( thats if you believe in their data!) Look at Diluted EPS Excluding ExtraOrd Items. Note that we use Diluted EPS instead of Basic EPS as the former is a more accurate reflection on the ownership of a company. Read here for a better explanation.
This data has already excluded extra-ordinary items therefore it is "normal".

Expected Annual Growth rate of SATS earnings per share = 0! ( based on the above. It might be negative too.. but let's be good shall we! This is up to your assumptions. Garbage in Garbage out!)

Current (Normal) Earnings per share = 0.179

Intrinsic Value per share = 0.179 X ( 8.5 + 0) = $1.512

Current value now as of 24 Nov 2008 = $1.37

Wow...let's go chiong and buy! Wait. Benjamin Graham also mentioned about the Margin of Safety! So is $1.512 - $1.37 = $0.142 a good discount and sufficient as a Margin of Safety?? Use your own judgement!.

As Graham once wrote: " You are neither right nor wrong because the crowd disagrees with you. You are right because your data and reasoning are right."

(Updated 25 Nov 2008, on a commenter's comments on using the weighted average of earnings per share for 3 years instead of just the most recent year's earnings per share, we thought about it, and we think it actually makes sense to use a weighted average, as some industries are highly cyclical. A weighted average will smooth earnings out through the years. Hmm maybe a simple average will suffice to keep it simple.... )

Important: The objective of the articles in this blog is to set you thinking about the company before you invest your hard-earned money. Do not invest solely based on this article. Unlike House or Instituitional Analysts who have to maintain relations with corporations due to investment banking relations, generating commissions,e.t.c, SGDividends say things as it is, factually. Unlike Analyst who have to be "uptight" and "cheem", we make it simplified and cheapskate. -The Vigilante Investor, SGDividends Team