美股下跌原因没那么简单
There's More to Market's Slide Than Oil and the Buck
THERE'S A CUTE AND TIDY STORY going around that the downturn in the dollar last week combined with the OPEC-engineered bounce in oil prices to knock the stock market for substantial losses.
Could be. But if so it's a little curious that the sector hit hardest was technology -- the very group that benefits most from a weaker dollar and is perhaps the least energy-intensive industry in the market.
The dollar's tumble and oil's uptick were, more likely, "MacGuffins," as Alfred Hitchcock called his convenient, simplistic plot devices. They propelled a drama playing out mostly in the psyches of professional investors. This is hardly trivial, given that investor psychology has been the propellant of the intense rally that had evaded serious pullbacks for months.
The tempting conclusion suggested by last week's losses is that portfolio managers' performance anxiety is now manifesting itself in different types of behavior. While the zeal to grab a fair share of the market's upside has for months spurred the pros to chase the highly valued market leaders, last week there were hints that money managers were eager to preserve their gains, sell some winners and pare risk levels.
The selling hit the tech-driven Nasdaq hard, driving it down 113 points, or 6%, to 1792, extinguishing a month's worth of gains. The S&P 500 gave up 39 points, or 3.8%, to settle below 1000, at 996. The Dow Jones Industrials lost 331 points, or 3.4%, to reach 9313.
There are other possible fundamental items on which to pin the sudden selling impulse. Earnings warnings from Viacom and a few others rattled investors a bit, though the overall preannouncement season isn't shaping up to be a particularly poor one.
There were also a couple of economic releases that undershot forecasts and spread concern that the economy's momentum might be flagging. One of the market's weaker days, Thursday, was explained in part by a decline in durable-goods orders during August. But that number had been out for a good seven hours by the time stocks began registering the bulk of their losses in a late-day flop.
Merrill Lynch economist David Rosenberg notes that 80% of this month's economic data releases have failed to beat expectations, a reversal from the ratio in August. That couldn't have helped the bulls' cause, but the fact is that investors had for weeks been able to absorb or ignore most negative news as they punched in the buy orders, and last week that changed.
Scott Jacobson, a trader and strategist at Jefferies, says, "Getting close to the end of the year, if you're an average portfolio manager and you're at or near your benchmark, you'll start to 'closet index' and hug the benchmark."
That would imply selling many of the kinds of stocks that have worked especially well for the past six months. High-expectation, low-profitability, fringe-dwelling tech stocks, for example. If this activity continues, it would also suggest that the massive outperformance of small-cap shares could be about to curdle. The valuation gap that once favored smaller, more aggressive, more deeply cyclical stocks is no longer quite so compelling.
Vadim Zlotnikov, strategist at Sanford C. Bernstein, told clients last week: "To make a significant bet on small-cap names now, you need to believe in a very strong recovery" in the economy.
Jacobson adds that Treasury bonds, which have rallied to knock 10-year yields to 4.02% from 4.60% right after Labor Day, "are telling stocks something again." Namely, bonds might be whispering that the hopes for a galloping economic pickup might've been premature.
If indeed investor psychology is beginning to take on a more defensive cast, then larger, more stable stocks might be expected to grab the lead, at least temporarily, from the long-shot, highly leveraged bets that have been rewarded for some time now.
Zlotnikov notes that his firm's model for selecting stocks with high-quality earnings and attractive valuations has underperformed the market since its March low. In examining past periods back to 1966 when this quality screen has trailed the market this badly, he found that its laggard behavior tends to last five or six months before rebounding strongly. It's been just over six months this time. He's now favoring health-care-services stocks, as well as energy names.
Even stock-market bulls, of course, have been talking about the likelihood of a retreat, albeit a shallow one, in the indexes. Some have professed to be hoping for just that, so they might do a little buying at lower asking prices. And certainly, there's enough liquidity out there to allow for that to play out on a broad scale.
Yet a couple of index levels deemed significant by technicians were breached in the latest downdraft. Heretofore invincible momentum champions such as Yahoo were taken down a peg. Short sellers have stopped kicking the dirt and are looking for fat pitches to hit again. And, naturally, the same dynamic that pulled fresh buyers in as stocks surged could begin operating in reverse. It's happened before.
THE ACTION IN VIACOM SHARES had been evidencing deep investor concern for several days before the company finally validated the market's fears on Wednesday, by tempering its revenue and profit outlook for the rest of the year.
The media outfit blamed continued softness in local advertising demand for a reduction in its revenue and operating-income projection to "mid-to-high single digit" percentage growth from a prior forecast of double-digit income growth atop single-digit revenue gains.
In each of the three trading days before Viacom's announcement, its shares had sold off steadily on roughly twice their normal volume. Hints of a slower-than-hoped rebound in local advertising had emerged from the New York Times and Gannett, and some observers had begun to worry that Viacom's CBS television stations might have a tough time matching last fall's ad performance that was helped disproportionately by political ads. Paramount's weak summer box office showing was another drag.
In fact, from Sept. 5 -- the day after Congress voted to preserve many restrictions on media-outlet concentration -- Viacom's heavily traded B shares are down some 17%. This radical underperformance is something new for Viacom, which was a nearly bulletproof stock throughout much of the bear market, consistently afforded a valuation premium by an investor base in the thrall of Chairman Sumner Redstone's grand vision and President Mel Karmazin's vaunted operational acumen.
Last week several loyal analysts came to the company's defense, calling the stumble an aberration and, predictably, a buying opportunity. The bullish case always begins with a tribute to the quality of its assets: CBS, Showtime, MTV, Nickelodeon, Paramount, Simon & Schuster, the list goes on. True enough. But AOL Time Warner and Walt Disneyand Fox Entertainment each has its own set of enviable media assets, too.
What Viacom has that the others don't is significant exposure to radio, through its ownership of the Infinity Broadcasting stations. Radio accounts for only 9% of Viacom's revenues. But because it's such a high-margin business it produces some 19% of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization -- the coin of the realm in media. This accounts for much of Viacom's exposure to local ads, which has badly trailed the recovery in national advertising.
Spencer Wang of J.P. Morgan published a cautious note a week ago Friday on Infinity's ratings, which have fallen even more than the overall declining listenership rates of the industry among the important 25-to-54 age group. The growth drought in radio has led some investors to question whether there are more worrisome trends to be inferred.
Drew Marcus of Deutsche Bank believes it simply means that radio has stopped gaining market share from other media. Meanwhile, he thinks, "The weak pacing of local advertising calls into question the strength of the economic recovery."
Others, though, wonder whether there's something more significant happening in radio, whether consumers are being increasingly turned off by the homogenization of radio formats and the aggressive increases in commercials aired per hour. The long-term expected growth rates of radio companies -- no surprise -- hint at none of these concerns, as analysts pencil in three-to-five-year earnings increases of 15%-25% per annum.
There has been management shuffling at Infinity in an effort to revive the group, and it seems Viacom is committed to spending money to get ratings higher. One skeptical observer notes that the real story in Viacom's announcement last week was that management effectively said margin expansion wouldn't happen this year. It brought profit-growth guidance in line with revenue growth. So much for those hopes of gaining leverage to an advertising recovery.
He also points out that Viacom has effectively had to cut back its guidance three years in a row. Until now, the market has overlooked these hiccups and tuned right back in to the Mel and Sumner show. Yet even with its recent decline, Viacom's stock doesn't appear to be a particular bargain compared with other companies with exposure to the same businesses, such as Time Warner, Fox and Tribune.
THERE WAS A LINE OF THINKING among certain investors, cited here recently, that a drastic dividend cut by Eastman Kodak could lead to a higher stock valuation. The idea was that the company would thereby signal a plan to marshal resources to maximize cash returns from a declining film market while selectively making acquisitions in higher-growth businesses.
Well, Kodak's announcement last week that its lavish, $1.80-a-share annual dividend would be hacked down to 50 cents wasn't received quite so well, as the company's shares were knocked down by 6.40 to 21.40.
The hostile reaction can be traced to a couple of things. Clearly, yield-fixated investors see no reason to stick around. But the nature of Kodak's announced plan -- to pursue some $3 billion in acquisitions and enter the savagely competitive ink-jet- printer business -- spooked even those who thought a dividend cut could be spun positively.
The company posited that its plan would lead to $3 a share in earnings in 2006. No one has enough faith in a strategically challenged company's fortune-telling abilities to buy into that, especially given Kodak's mixed record on acquisitions and only tentative success turning a profit from digital photography.
Bond analyst Carol Levenson of Gimme Credit calculates that Kodak could achieve even better earnings growth by 2006 by using the same $3 billion to simply buy back stock, with little operational risk.
One intriguing element of Kodak's plan is its vow to start making private-label film. This suggests Kodak is indeed looking to pull as much cash out of every available segment of the film business, rather than retain premium pricing and sniff at the mucky business of competing for market share.
Once the yield investors and the understandably skeptical former bulls finish selling, Kodak shares should find more stable ground. The best-case scenario might be if Kodak were to pull a McDonald's and answers a disillusioned Wall Street by forgoing delusions of fast growth in favor of retrenchment, cash-maximization and humility. But with such a dramatic makeover in the works, today's Kodak stock buyers won't be able to gauge its prospects for success for quite some time.
AFTER THREE CALENDAR YEARS of eroding stock prices, virtually every powerful constituency in the Washington-New York politico-financial world has an acute interest in stocks riding higher.
Brokerage houses and mutual-fund firms have their bottom lines at stake, of course. The Fed wants to forestall asset deflation and to see the market ratify its attempts at goosing economic growth. The Bush administration needs Wall Street to augment re-election prospects. The Treasury and Congress desperately covet capital-gains taxes to help offset some of a soaring deficit.
Just about the only people that have a stake in seeing the market decline are a couple thousand hedge-fund managers habitually attached to the short side.
The liquidity thrust from tax cuts, higher government outlays and teensy interest rates are widely discussed as contributors to the market's rebound this year. But there's also been a market-friendly effort by Congress to legislate away the bad or inconvenient items that can plague companies' books.
One goodie offered to corporate interests by the tax-cut law was the chance to accelerate the depreciation of newly acquired capital goods. This effectively lowered the after-tax cost of these investments and provided a great, temporary incentive for companies to load up on new technology products. Those incremental sales, mostly booked over the summer, have been dutifully incorporated into analysts' run rate of tech demand.
Another idea clattering around the halls of Congress would have farther-reaching effects. This is a proposal to allow companies to use a higher discount rate when calculating the present value of their future pension liabilities.
If Congress does make such a change, no doubt Wall Street will be happy to bless the cosmetically enhanced earnings numbers. Investors have already been blithely dismissive of the potential earnings-corroding implications of pension shortfalls, and such a legal shift would make the problem that much easier to ignore.
The tomorrow-be-damned attitude among investors is perhaps most pronounced in their treatment of airline stocks. As a group, airline shares have more than doubled since the market low in early March. The traditional major airline shares -- AMR, Continental, Delta and Northwest -- have soared from levels implying they were bankruptcy risks.
Yet the market might not be taking a full account of the sorry state of the industry's pension situation, according to an extensive new study by Bear Stearns analyst David Strine. Those four carriers have a combined $13.9 billion pension shortfall, against total pension plan assets of $17.8 billion. Strine forecasts that their likely required cash contributions to pension funds will jump from $594 million this year to nearly $1.8 billion in 2004.
As a proportion of forecast operating cash flow, the companies' expected 2004 pension contributions amount to 31% for Continental, 37% for AMR, 42% for Delta and 62% for Northwest. For each, operating cash flow is expected to fall short of the airlines' combined net capital expenditures, debt payments and cash pension contributions. Congress may ease the airlines' crushing pension burdens with a little "new math," but as Strine shows, stockholders have little hope of staking a claim to these cash flows any time soon.
美股下跌原因没那么简单
人们以为，上周美元的下挫和欧佩克减产造成的油价反弹导致股市大幅下跌。
也许是吧。但如果确实如此，上周受压最沉重的类股是科技股，这显得有些不可思议。因为科技股从美元走软中受益最大，而且可能是市场中最不易受能源影响的类股。
美元下跌及油价上扬更像是希区科克(Alfred Hitchcock)对其简单化的情节设置的称谓“MacGuffins”，这两个因素促使多数专业投资者的身心疲惫。这可非同小可，因为投资者的人气一直是股市摆脱数月来的疲势连连上涨的推动力。
上周的股市下跌表明，基金经理的业绩焦虑情绪在各种方面得到体现。虽然数月来，借助上涨行情获取可观收益的热望驱使他们追逐高价的市场领头羊，但上周有迹象显示，基金经理们更急于保存收益，抛售部分上涨股，降低风险。
这种抛盘使那斯达克市场遭受重挫，下跌113点，至1792点，跌幅6%，抹去了一个月的涨幅。标准普尔500指数跌破千点，下跌39点至996点，跌幅3.8%。道琼斯工业股票平均价格指数跌331点，至9313点，跌幅3.4%。
还有其他基本面因素可能促使抛盘骤然爆发。维亚康姆(Viacom)及其他一些公司的收益预警引发投资者的不安情绪，不过总体而言，美国公司的预期不算太糟糕。
最新公布的一些经济数据低于预期，导致市场担心经济增长势头可能停滞。上周四市场疲弱的部分原因可能就在于8月份耐用品订单下降的消息。
美林(Merrill Lynch)经济学家大卫?罗森伯格(David Rosenberg)发现，本月公布的80%的经济数据未能超出预期，和8月份大相径庭。这也许无法成为市场看涨的理由，但事实是，过去几周来投资者在发出买单时能够消化或忽略多数负面数据，而上周这一切发生了变化。
Jefferies的交易员兼策略师杰克森(Scott Jacobson)称，随著年终将至，普通的基金经理如果达到或接近业绩基准，将开始采取谨慎持有策略。
这将暗示，许多在过去6个月中表现极佳的股票将遭遇抛压，例如那些高预期、低盈利率的科技股。如果这种情形持续下去，小型股的上佳表现可能暂告段落。曾经有利于规模较小、比较激进、周期性明显的股票的价值差不再具有诱惑力。
Sanford C. Bernstein的策略师赀洛特尼科夫(Vadim Zlotnikov)上周表示，如果投资者开始采取更为保守的策略，那么预计更稳定的大型股可能将独领风骚，至少暂时如此。
赀洛特尼科夫称，他所在公司的选股模式是看重那些高收益和估值具有吸引力的股票，这使其投资组合自3月低点以来弱于大盘。回顾1966年以后的历史时期，这种滞后表现往往会持续5或6个月的时间，然后强劲反弹。这次正好过了6个月。他目前青睐于医疗保健类股和能源类股。
当然，即使看涨人士也在谈论股指小幅回落的可能性。一些人坦言希望如此，这样可以进行逢低吸纳。毫无疑问，目前市场上有充裕的资金可以用于全面买盘。
但是，一些技术分析师视为相当重要的指数水平在最近的下行过程中被突破，雅虎(Yahoo)等领先股已经开始下滑。卖空者停止了对该股的交易，转而寻找其他目标。诚然，股市飙升吸引新买家进场的动力也可能开始逆转。这种情况以前也发生过。
维亚康姆上周三终于证实了市场的担忧，削减了年内剩余时间的收入和利润预期。而此前几天，投资者的沉重忧虑已经影响了该股走势。
维亚康姆称，由于地方广告需求持续疲软，下调收入和运营利润增长率至4%-9%。它先前预计，收入增长1%-9%，利润呈两位数增长。
在维亚康姆发布预警的前三个交易日，其股价已经开始稳步下挫，日交易量约为正常日成交量的两倍。《纽约时报》(New York Times)和Gannett此前都曾暗示，当地广告需求的反弹迟于预期。一些观察人士开始担心，维亚康姆旗下的哥伦比亚电视台(CBS)的广告业务可能难以再现去年秋季的佳绩，当时业绩的放大得益于选举广告的投放。而派拉蒙(Paramount)疲软的夏季票房表现是拖累该公司业绩的另一因素。
实际上，从9月5日（国会投票决定保留对媒体所有权诸多限制的次日）起，维亚康姆成交活跃的B股股票已经下跌约17%。这对维亚康姆可谓非同寻常，因为该股在熊市的大部分时间里一直逆市而行。
上周，一些忠诚的分析师开始为该股申辩，称其跌势是异常波动，建议乘机买入。看涨的理由总是要归功于维亚康姆CBS、Showtime、MTV、Nickelodeon、派拉蒙和西蒙与舒斯特国际出版公司(Simon & Schuster)等资产的良好品质。的确如此。但是，美国在线时代华纳(AOL Time Warner)、沃尔特-迪斯尼(Walt Disney)和Fox Entertainment也分别拥有令人艳□的媒体资产。
维亚康姆所拥有的其他公司没有的资产是其通过Infinity Broadcasting广播电台获得的广播业务。广播收入仅占公司总收入的9%，但这部分业务的利润率高昂，所贡献的利息、税项、折旧和摊销前利润占到公司利润总额的19%。因此，地方广告需求的风险对维亚康姆影响很大。
Infinity电台在25－54岁人群收听率的下滑幅度甚至超过了整个行业收听率的降幅。广播电台业务的衰竭使得一些投资者怀疑，公司是否还将受到更多不利趋势影响。
德意志银行(Deutsche Bank)的马科斯(Drew Marcus)认为，收听率的下降仅仅意味著维亚康姆的广播业务不再从其他媒体公司手中抢占占有率。同时，他认为，地方广告需求的疲弱使经济反弹力度前景难料。
为了重振业务，Infinity进行了管理层重组，维亚康姆也似乎意欲加大投入提高收听率。一位观察人士称，在维亚康姆上周的预警消息中，真正值得注意的是管理层表示今年利润率不会有所提高。公司将利润增长预期下调至与收入增长一致。因此，公司的增长在很大程度上寄希望于广告市场的复苏。
他还指出，维亚康姆已经连续三年下调业绩预期，市场对此已经置若罔闻。即使在最近的下跌之后，维亚康姆的股价和美国在线时代华纳、Fox和Tribune等其他媒体公司相比也不低廉。
部分投资者表示，伊士曼柯达(Eastman Kodak)大幅削减股息可能导致估值上升。人们认为，公司将因此有意集中资源以期从不断下滑的胶片市场中获得最大的现金回报，同时有选择性地收购高增长业务。
伊士曼柯达宣布将每股1.80美元的年度派息额削减至50美分，受此影响，公司股价下跌6.40美元，至21.40美元。
公司称，收购计划将使2006年每股收益达到3美元。但没有人对其预期有充分的把握，因而不愿贸然买进，特别是在公司以往收购业务表现不一、数码照相业务只是暂告成功的情况下。
在经历了三个日历年度的股市下跌之后，实际上华盛顿－纽约政治金融世界的所有权势各方都急切地盼望股市上涨。
经纪商和共同基金公司急于改善收益，Fed希望防止资产缩水、市场调整方向刺激经济增长。布什(Bush)政府需要华尔街的强势来加大连任的希望。财政部和国会企盼资本所得税的增长来弥补激增的财政赤字。
唯一希望股市下跌的人群恐怕是数千名习惯作空的对冲基金经理。
人们普遍认为，减税、政府支出的增加和低利率带来的充裕资金推动了股市今年的反弹。同时，国会清除对公司业绩不利因素的友善举动也起到了积极作用。
减税法案给公司带来的一大益处是公司可以加速新近收购资本品的折旧。这实际上降低了这些投资的税后成本，为公司开发新的技术产品提供了巨大的暂时的推动力。
另外，国会拟定的新方案将带来深远影响，该方案允许公司在计算未来养老金债务现值时使用更高的折现率。
如果国会真的做此调整，毫无疑问美国股市将受益于企业收益数据的改善。投资者已经对养老金缺口可能对收益的不利影响视而不见，该法规的调整将使这一问题更容易被忽略。
投资者只顾眼前的心态在对待航空类股问题上可能表现得最为明显。航空类股自3月初市场低点上涨了一倍以上，AMR、大陆航空(Continental)、达美航空(Delta)和西北航空(Northwest)等传统的大型航空公司股票较面临破产风险时的股价水平大幅上涨。
但是，根据贝尔斯登(Bear Stearns)分析师斯特恩(David Strine)最新的广泛研究，市场可能没有充分考虑该行业养老金帐户的窘境。这四大航空公司养老金帐户缺口总计139亿美元，而养老金计划总资产为178亿美元。Strine预计，它们需要缴纳的养老金数额将由今年的5.94亿美元上升至2004年的18亿美元。
