Deal or no deal?

Deal or no deal?

We’re just putting the finishing touches on this year’s letters to our investors in both The Montgomery [Private] Fund and The Montgomery Fund. No, we aren’t about to publish the contents of those letters here. You’ll need to become an investor to see that. What we can say is that there is ample evidence to suggest the markets could keep going higher from here. It’s true that many signals suggest that long-term investors buying at today’s levels might be setting themselves up for low returns, but that doesn’t mean prices can’t go even higher (and consequently produce even lower returns for longer-term investors).

We’ve just been reading the latest quarterly essays by Jeremy Grantham and the team at GMO in the US. He offers another reason to expect more action in the stock market.

What’s worse for us value-driven bears, is a further bullish argument that’s struck me recently concerning the probabilities of a large increase in financial deals. Don’t tell me there are already a lot of deals. I am talking about a veritable explosion – to levels never before seen.

These are my reasons. First, when compared to other deal frenzies, the real cost of debt this cycle is lower. Second, profit margins are, despite the first quarter, still at very high levels and are widely expected to stay there. Not a bad combination for a deal maker, but it is the third reason that influences my thinking most is that the economy, despite it being in year six of an economic recovery, still looks in many ways like quite a young one.

There are massive reserves of labour in the official unemployment plus room for perhaps a 2 per cent increase in labour participation rates as discouraged workers potentially get drawn into the workforce by steady growth in the economy. There is also lots of room for a pick-up in capital spending that has been uniquely low in this recovery, and I use the word “uniquely” in its old-fashioned sense, for such a slow recovery in capital spending has never, ever occurred before. The very disappointment in the rate of recovery thus becomes a virtue for deal making.

Previous upswings in deals tended to occur at market peaks, like 2000 and 2007, which in complete contrast to today, were old economic cycles already showing their wrinkles. Worse than being in full swing, they were usually way over capacity. Thus, 2000 was helped along by the bubble in growth stocks to over 60 times earnings, allowing companies like Cisco, possibly correctly, to believe they were dealing with a near-zero cost of capital in making deal after deal for their massively overpriced stock.

In 2007, the housing bubble led to an extra one and a half to two million houses being built, with all the usual accoutrements of furniture sales and more jobs for realtors, bank officers, and Goldman Sachs designers of ingenious new ways to be of service to real estate speculators. Now that the smoke has cleared, the 2007 economy at its peak looks to have been 2 per cent or so above trend capacity (allowing, incidentally, for the overstating of the U.S. long-term growth capability, a misjudgment that is still hanging around).

If I were a potential dealmaker, I would be licking my lips at an economy that seems to have enough slack to keep going for a few years. Also, individuals and institutions did feel chastened by the crash of 2009 and many are just now picking up their courage. And as they look around they see dismayingly little in the way of attractive investments or yields. So, the returns promised from deal making are likely to appear, relatively at least, exceptional. I think it is likely (better than 50/50) that all previous deal records will be broken in the next year or two. This of course will help push the market up to true bubble levels, where it will once again become very dangerous indeed.

The full letter can be read here.

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Roger Montgomery is the Founder and Chairman of Montgomery Investment Management. Roger has over three decades of experience in funds management and related activities, including equities analysis, equity and derivatives strategy, trading and stockbroking. Prior to establishing Montgomery, Roger held positions at Ord Minnett Jardine Fleming, BT (Australia) Limited and Merrill Lynch.

This post was contributed by a representative of Montgomery Investment Management Pty Limited (AFSL No. 354564). The principal purpose of this post is to provide factual information and not provide financial product advice. Additionally, the information provided is not intended to provide any recommendation or opinion about any financial product. Any commentary and statements of opinion however may contain general advice only that is prepared without taking into account your personal objectives, financial circumstances or needs. Because of this, before acting on any of the information provided, you should always consider its appropriateness in light of your personal objectives, financial circumstances and needs and should consider seeking independent advice from a financial advisor if necessary before making any decisions. This post specifically excludes personal advice.