“Measure the performance of equity securities in the top 85% by market capitalization of equity securities listed on stock exchanges in the United States.”
I made it a sentence here but I clipped that phrase from a Blackrock iShares “minimum volatility” Smart Beta Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) prospectus and Googled it, and got back pages of references. Apparently many indexes and ETFs meant to diversify and differentiate investments are built on the “top 85% by market capitalization.”
That by the way is about 700 companies. There are now over 700 ETFs in the US stock market and about 3,700 total public companies when you strip out funds and multiple classes of stock. That’s a 1-to-5 ratio. If many ETFs track indexes comprised of just 20% of the stocks, would that not produce high correlation?
Answer: Yes.
I ran correlation for five ETFs from Blackrock, First Trust, Schwab, Vanguard and Invesco (USMV, FVD, SCHD, VIG, SPLV) over the past three months and it was about 90%. Now, all five seek similar objectives so correlation isn’t surprising. But in truth they’re brewing a mixture of the same stocks.
We had the chance to participate in a wine-blending last month in Napa. The group was tasting mixtures of a core set of grapes. What if we make it 94% Zinfandel, 3% Petit Syrah and 3% Malbec? How about 7% Malbec, 3% Petit Syrah, 90% Zinfandel?
The same thing is happening with ETFs. They’re blending the same grapes – stocks. What if we weight a little more than the index in WMT and a little less in AMZN?
It’s still the same stocks. And it’s earnings season. Think about the impact of high correlation when in nearly all cases save an outlier handful ETFs track underlying indexes with defined composition.
Say you report results and your stock plunges (we’ll come to why in a moment). Even minute weighting in a falling stock can skew the ETF away from the benchmark, so the authorized participants for the ETF sell and short your shares, raising cash to true up net asset values and ridding the ETF of the offending drag.
At some future point now that your shares are sharply discounted to the group and the market, arbitragers will find you and the authorized participants (brokers creating and redeeming ETF shares to ensure that it tracks its benchmark as money flows into and out of the investment vehicle) who shorted will cover, and suddenly you’re the star again.
Neither up nor down did the behavior of your stock reflect fundamental value or rational thought. It’s high correlation, which rather ironically fosters mounting volatility. We’re seeing a notable increase in instances of large moves with earnings. And your shares don’t drop 15% because active investors saw your numbers and decided, “Let’s destroy our portfolio returns by buying high and selling low.”
In the last week through Monday, Asset Allocators (indexes and ETFs) and Fast Traders (arbitragers speculating on intraday price-changes) were top price-setters. Both are quantitative, or machine-driven, behaviors. One is deploying money following a model and the other is betting with models on divergences that will develop during that process.
Both create mass volatility around surprises in earnings reports. Fast Traders are the athletes of the stock market racing to the front of the line to buy and sell. Asset Allocators are lumbering, oblivious to fundamental factors and instead following a recipe.
You report. Active investors stop their bits and pieces of buying or selling to assess your fundamentals. Sensing slight change, Fast Traders vanish from order books across the interconnected web comprising today’s stock market. Asset Allocators tracking benchmarks stop buying your shares because you’ve now diverged from the broad measure.
This combination creates a vacuum. Imagine selling your house and there was a bidding war for it and suddenly all the bidders disappeared. You’d have to cut your price. What changed? The number of potential buyers, not the value of the house.
This is the problem with how a combination of Fast Traders and Asset Allocators dominate the market now. Fast Traders set most of the prices but want to own nothing so the demand they create is unreliable and unstable. Asset Allocators are trying to track benchmarks – that depend on Fast Traders for prices. Throw a wrench into those delicate gears with, say, a surprise in your quarterly earnings, and something will go awry.
Speaking of which, our Sentiment Index just turned Negative for the first time since February and yet the market soared yesterday. From Feb 8-11, futures contracts behind some of the most actively traded ETFs in the market, concentrated in energy, rolled. The dollar had just weakened. Stocks roared.
The same futures contracts just rolled and the ETFs rebalanced (May 6-11). Counterparties covered. The dollar is rising. We may be at a tipping point again for stocks. Derivatives now price the underlying assets.
