An article by Scot Billington, Covenant Capital Management
Unfortunately, most traditional hedges suck.
Buy and hold investing has been wildly successful since 1982; however, its adherents have had to endure two 50% drawdowns; a 25% down day; and a 14-year period of zero return. Long term wealth is significantly impacted by drawdowns of more than 25%, because the necessary recovery rally follows an exponential curve. Let’s take a look at what’s needed for recovery: A 30% decline requires a 43% rally to get back to even. A 40% decline requires 67%; down 50% requires +100; and down 60% requires a wealth devastating 150% return to get back to square.
As we sit on all-time highs, what can an investor do to minimize the damage of the inevitable yet unpredictable next downturn? As importantly, can they do so while participating in the upside as well?
What would this “perfect” hedge look like?
From simply keeping money in cash (which is not the worst idea) to complex bear funds, individuals use a number of strategies to hedge their market exposure. Regrettably, these strategies often fail the investor on a number of fronts. As an example, the investor takes $100k out of equities and invests in a hedge. Then, the S&P rallies 20% (investor loses $20k in profits), and the hedge loses 15%. Rinse and repeat for three years. Now, the $100k is worth $61k instead of $172k. Finally, a bear market arrives, and the market drops 35% over the next eight months. How did the hedge do? It made $6k. Hooray.
Most traditional hedges suck because of four critical aspects:
Investing is risky, and intuitively we understand that loss tolerance is required. Expecting to avoid all risk of losing money is unrealistic but it doesn’t stop a large contingent from trying. This makes the first 10% expensive to offset and the cost of doing so (losses on rallies) has a large impact on long term wealth generation. Currently, a one-year put option limiting losses to 10% costs about 5% of the portfolio. Therefore, every annual return is decreased by 5% to limit a single year’s loss to 15%. Much like the insurance industry, the sellers of protection are more likely to come out ahead of the buyers in the long run.
Which brings us to guessing. We often hear that timing the market does not work. In fact, even when investors guess right, they have been shown to underperform the market according to Dalbar’s annual report titled Quantitative Analysis of Investor Behavior (QAIB). As stated in the QAIB report, asset classes often move together during market correction which necessitates a downside protection strategy that goes beyond traditional diversification.
To that point, the aforementioned aspects as to why hedges suck explain why we began looking for better hedging in the first place. Fear and greed drive investor behavior and often yield sub-optimal decision making. But if we could provide a better solution, perhaps investors would not panic during a drop and could maintain their buy and hold strategy, which has proven to work over long periods; and they wouldn’t have to rely on perfect timing.
Please look out for our next article where we discuss our preferred solution and how we avoid guessing.
» View Covenant’s Hedged Equity Program