Professional Documents
Culture Documents
nonsense
in modern
corporate
finance
Example # 1:
The Notion of
Risk in
Academic
Corporate
Finance
William Sharpe,
Noble Laureate
Inference:
Treasury bonds are risk-free securities
because they have zero variability of return.
Treasury
bonds are
risk free
Hmmm
We define
risk, using
dictionary
terms, as the
possibility of
loss or
injury.
The real risk that an investor must assess is whether his aggregate aftertax receipts from an investment (including those he receives on sale) will
over his prospective holding period, give him at least as much purchasing
power as he had to begin with, plus a modest rate of interest on that initial
stake.
Investing is
often
described as
the process
of laying out
money now in
the
expectation of
receiving
more money in
the future.
receive dividends
which, after tax, buy
two hamburgers;
then you
have had
no real
income
from your
investment,
no matter
how much
it
appreciated
in dollars.
You may
feel
richer,
but you
wont
eat
richer.
Bonds promoted
as offering riskfree returns
are now priced
to deliver
return-free
risk.
From 2011 Letter
commenting on
the prevailing
almost zero
interest rates on
treasury bonds.
Example # 2:
The Relationship
between Risk
and Return in
Academic
Corporate
Finance
Academic Finances
Definition of Risk
Two components:
Systematic and
Unsystematic risk
Investors will not get paid to assume unsystematic risk because that
component of total risk can be diversified away.
Investors will
get paid only
for taking
systematic
risk, a proxy
of which is
beta.
High Risk
High Return
Low Risk
Low Return
Stocks with high beta are riskier than stocks with lower betas but are
expected to deliver higher returns.
Do
?
Do
Is
a proxy
for
Ans: No
Volatility is not the same as risk.
How does He
think of Risk?
A. The
certainty
with which
the long-term
economic
characteristic
s of the
business can
be evaluated
B. The
certainty with
which
management
can be
evaluated,
both as to its
ability to
realize the
full potential
of the business
and to wisely
employ its cash
flows
C. The
certainty with
which
management
can be
counted on to
channel the
rewards from
the business
to the
shareholders
rather than
to itself.
D. The
purchase
price of
the
business
E. The levels
of taxation and
inflation that
will be
experienced and
that will
determine the
degree by which
an investor's
purchasingpower return is
reduced from
his gross
return.
The Trouble
with his
definition of
risk?
You cannot
objectively
measure it!
Is that a problem?
False
precision is
totally
crazy... It
only
happens to
people with
high IQs.
Its better to
be
approximately
right than to
be precisely
wrong - John
Maynard
keynes
Not
everything
that counts
can be
counted, and
not everything
that can be
counted,
counts. Einstein
Buffett
on RISK
Buffett
on RISK
Buffett
on RISK
Buffett
on RISK
Munger &
Buffett on RISK
Munger: This great emphasis on volatility in corporate finance we regard as nonsense. Let me put it this way. As long as the odds are in our favor and
were not risking the whole company on one throw of the dice or anything close to it, we dont mind volatility in results. What we want are the favorable
odds. We figure the volatility over time will take care of itself at Berkshire.
Buffett: If we have a business about which were extremely confident as to the business results, wed prefer that its stock have high volatility. Well make
more money in a business where we know what the end game will be if it bounces around a lot.
For example, Sees may lose money in eight months in a typical year. However, it makes a fortune in November and December. If it were an independent,
publicly-traded company and people reacted to that and therefore made its stock very volatile, that would be terrific for us. We could buy it in July and sell
it in January because wed know it was nonsense.
Well, obviously, things dont behave quite that way. But when we bought The Washington Post, it had gone down 50% in a few months. Well, that was the
best thing that could have happened. It doesnt get any better than that. Its businesses were fundamentally very non-volatile a strong, dominant
newspaper and TV stations but it was a volatile stock. Thats a great combination in our view.
When we see a business about which were very certain whose fortunes the world thinks are going up and down and so its stock behaves with great
volatility we love it. Thats way better than having a lower beta. We actually prefer what other people call risk.
HOW DOES HE
THINK ABOUT
THE
RELATIONSHIP
BETWEEN
RISK AND
RETURN
I would
decline perhaps
stating
that $1
million is
not
enough.
This is one of those ideas that grab you immediately, or you struggle with it
all your life.
For me it grabbed me immediately when I encountered it in Buffetts essay,
The Superinvestors of Graham-and-Doddsville while studying in London.
Return
Risk
TO MAKE
MONEY
TAKE RISK
TO MAKE
MONEY
SHUN RISK
Tweedy Browne
All true value investors believe the inverse relationship between risk and return where risk is
defined the way Buffett defines it.
I have never
been able to
figure out
why its
riskier to
buy $400
million
worth of
properties
for $40
million than
$80 million.
The Washington Post Company in 1973 was selling for $80 million in the market. At the time, that day, you could have sold the
assets to any one of ten buyers for not less than $400 million, probably appreciably more. The company owned the Post,
Newsweek, plus several television stations in major markets. Those same properties are worth $2 billion now, so the person who
would have paid $400 million would not have been crazy. Now, if the stock had declined even further to a price that made the
valuation $40 million instead of $80 million, its beta would have been greater. And to people who think beta measures risk, the
cheaper price would have made it look riskier. This is truly Alice in Wonderland. I have never been able to figure out why its
riskier to buy $400 million worth of properties for $40 million than $80 million. And, as a matter of fact, if you buy a group of
such securities and you know anything at all about business valuation, there is essentially no risk in buying ten $40 million piles
for $8 million each.
In assessing risk, a beta purist will disdain examining what a company produces, what its competitors are doing, or how much
borrowed money the business employs. He may even prefer not to know the company's name. What he treasures is the price
history of its stock. In contrast, we'll happily forgo knowing the price history and instead will seek whatever information will
further our understanding of the company's business. After we buy a stock, consequently, we would not be disturbed if markets
closed for a year or two.
Example # 3:
The Capital
Asset Pricing
Model (CAPM)
Employing
databases and
statistical skills,
these academics
compute with
precision the
"beta" of a stock its relative
volatility in the
past - and then
build arcane
investment and
capital-allocation
theories around
this calculation.
In their
hunger for a
single
statistic to
measure risk,
however, they
forget a
fundamental
principle: It
is better to be
approximately
right than
precisely
wrong.
To understand that, we need to jump over a jurisdictional boundary of corporate finance into the realm of psychology.
envy
Envy is the only one of the seven deadly sins which gives us nothing. There is NO upside in envy.
Rejecting opportunities that would make you rich because others have better ones is envy.
You will never find the mention of envy in any corporate finance textbook. Does that mean you should ignore
its influence on human decisions simply because the idea belong to another discipline?
Reject
projects
where
IRR<WACC
Dont be
envious
Lets digress a bit here because I want to talk to you a bit more about
multidisciplinary thinking. We will return to discussion of envy in corporate
finance in a while.
Here is a story in corporate finance illustrating one of the best decisions
made by Warren Buffett in his career.
Physics
envy
Virtually none of todays top-ranked business schools would hire, let alone promote, a tenure-track professor whose primary
qualification is managing an assembly plant, no matter how distinguished his or her performance. Nor would they hire professors
who write articles only for practitioner reviews, like this one. Instead, the best B schools aspire to the same standards of academic
excellence that hard disciplines embracean approach sometimes waggishly referred to as physics envy.
Business school professors using the scientific approach often begin with data that they use to test a hypothesis by applying such
tools as regression analysis. Instead of entering the world of business, professors set up simulations (hypothetical portfolios of R&D
projects, for instance) to see how people might behave in what amounts to a laboratory experiment. In some instances those methods
are useful, necessary, and enlightening. But because they are at arms length from actual practice, they often fail to reflect the way
business works in real life.
When applied to businessessentially a human activity in which judgments are made with messy, incomplete, and incoherent data
statistical and methodological wizardry can blind rather than illuminate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Bennis
In physics it takes
three laws to
explain 99% of the
data; in finance it
takes more than 99
laws to explain
about 3%.- Andrew
Lo
Watch this video: Warning: Physics Envy May be Hazardous to Your Wealth
http://video.mit.edu/watch/warning-physics-envy-may-be-hazardous-toyour-wealth-9573/
Imagine how
much harder
physics
would be if
electrons
had
feelings!
Richard
Feynman
Why are economists trained so formally? It makes sense to axiomatize a discipline when the axioms are true (or almost so) and have strong
predictive power. Thats the case for euclidean geometry, for example, as well as Maxwells electromagnetic theory, where many valid, useful,
and accurate predictions follow from applying the laws of deduction to a few initial assumptions.
But economists seem to have embraced formality and physics envy without the corresponding benefits of accuracy or predictability. In physics,
Maxwells theory and quantum mechanics allow you to predict the way an electron spins about its own axis inside a hydrogen atom to an
accuracy of twelve decimal places. Something that accurate isnt just a modelits a law. In economics, by contrast, there are no laws at all,
only models, and youre immensely lucky if you can predict up from down...
Clearly, then, when someone shows you an economic or financial model that involves mathematics, you should understand that, despite the
confident appearance of the equations, what lies beneath is a substrate of great simplification andsometimes great and wonderful
imagination. Thats not a bad thingfinancial markets are all about imagination. But you should never forget that even the best financial model
can never be truly valid because, unlike the physical world, the mental world of securities and economics is much less amenable to the power
of mathematics.
h"p://www.emanuelderman.com/media/beware.hbr.pdf
in the stock
market the
more
elaborate and
abstruse the
mathematics
the more
uncertain and
speculative
are the
conclusionsBen Graham
There is a special paradox in the relationship between mathematics and investment
attitudes on common stocks, which is this: Mathematics is ordinarily considered as
producing precise and dependable results; but in the stock market the more elaborate
and abstruse the mathematics the more uncertain and speculative are the conclusions
we draw therefrom. In 44 years of Wall Street experience and study I have never seen
dependable calculations made about common-stock values, or related investment
policies, that went beyond simple arithmetic or the most elementary algebra. Whenever
calculus is brought in, or higher algebra, you could take it as a warning signal that the
operator was trying to substitute theory for experience, and usually also to give to
speculation the deceptive guise of investment.- Ben Graham
Buffett
on CAPM
Learn to focus on
avoidance of foolish
behavior
Lets return to the examples of how youve been mis-taught (in my view).
Example # 4:
Markets are
Efficient
There are no
undervalued
or overvalued
securities and
that market
prices are
always
correct.
Price= Value
EMT: Stock prices reflect everything about a companys prospects and the state of the
economy.
No point
doing any type
of analysis
Price already
reflects all
possible
analysis
Supporting
Argument:
Prices change
quickly in
response to
new
information.
But do price
change
correctly?
Supporting
Argument:
Most
investors
cant beat
the market
If superior
performance was
caused due to
luck, would not
that performance
revert to the mean
over time?
EMT proponents insist that its not worth looking at the track record of
Buffett, Munger, Walter Schloss, Tweedy Browne, and other super-investors
The proposition
that the market is
rational some of
the time is
different from the
proposition that
the market is
always rational.
The proposition that the market is rational some of the time is different
from the proposition that the market is always rational.
Even a
broken
clock
tells the
correct
time twice
a day
Negative Empericism. We dont have to prove that markets are efficient
We can prove that if they were efficient then some things should not
happen. For example the following should not exist:
1.Cash Bargains
2.Debt-Capacity bargains
3.Over and under reactions
4.Closed-end fund puzzle
Buffett
on EMT
Buffett
on EMT
Buffett
on EMT
Insanity out of
EMT:
Since price =
value there
are no wealth
effects in IPOs
and stock
buybacks
Example # 5:
The Human
Rationality
Assumption in
Economics
Choose between:
85% chance of winning $100 (the gamble)
or
sure gain of $85 (the sure thing)
Choose between:
85% chance of losing $100 (the gamble)
or
sure loss of $85 (the sure thing)
Rs 1,000 saved on a Rs 10 lac car is worth MORE than the Rs 1,000 saved
on a Rs 10,000 lamp. Really it is!
After all the Rs 1,000 saving when compared to Rs 10 lacs looks SO MUCH
SMALLER than the Rs 1,000 saving on a Rs 10,000 lamp.
Example # 6:
The Bell Curve
Assumption
In a world described by the bell curve, most values are clustered around the middle. The average value is
also the most common value. Outliers contribute very little statistically. If 100 random people gather in a
room and the world's tallest man walks in, the average height doesn't change much.
But if Bill Gates walks in, the average net worth rises dramatically.
Winner
Takes All
Height follows the bell curve in its distribution. Wealth does not. It follows a L-shaped distribution called
power law where most values are below average and a few far above. In the realm of the power law, rare
and extreme events dominate the action.
If you observe low-probability-high-impact events, then the bell curve is the wrong distribution to
capture that.
In a power law world, outliers matter a lot. In a bell curve world, they dont matter.
Nassim Taleb
Theres a place he calls Mediocristan (Bell Curve). This was where early humans lived. Most
events happened within a narrow range of probabilities within the bell-curve distribution
still taught to statistics students. But we dont live there any more. We live in Extremistan
(power law), where black swans proliferate, winners tend to take all and the rest get nothing.
What you
really want a
course on
investing is
how to value a
business.
Thats what
the game is
about...
And if you look at whats being taught, I think you see very little of how to
value a business.
And the rest of it is playing around with numbers or Greek symbols of something of
that sort... But that doesnt do you any good. In the end, what you have to decide is
whether youre going to value a business at $400 million, $600 million or $800 million
- and then compare that with the price. Thats what investing is. And I dont know any
other kind of investing to do. And that just isnt taught. And the reason why it isnt
taught is because there arent teachers around who know how to teach it... They dont
know themselves. And since they dont, they teach that nobody knows anything - which
is the efficient market theory. . .
Some of the worst business decisions Ive seen came with detailed analysis.
The higher math was false precision. They do that in business schools,
because theyve got to do something. - 2009 AGM
Buffett
on
Academic
Finance
Buffett
on
Academic
Finance
Example # 1:
The Notion of
Risk in
Academic
Corporate
Finance
Example # 2:
The Relationship
between Risk
and Return in
Academic
Corporate
Finance
Example # 3:
The Capital
Asset Pricing
Model (CAPM)
Example # 4:
Markets are
Efficient
Example # 5:
The Human
Rationality
Assumption in
Economics
Example # 6:
The Bell Curve
Assumption
Thank You