Picks for 2014 part 1 – rotate into cyclicals

Chief Investment Officer and founder of Aitken Investment Management
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I have to admit I don’t like doing annual forecast notes, not because I am scared of making forecasts, but because I see investing as like a game of football where there is no full-time siren. The change of calendar year shouldn’t be a reason to change investment strategy: only a change in macroeconomic or stock specific fundamentals should trigger a change in investment strategy.

Let’s start at the very top. The most certain aspect of 2014 is I will make mistakes in forecasts and stock-picking. In my job the game is to get more right than wrong and hope that the calls you get wrong aren’t devastating to portfolios.

Time for a cleanout

If I can start with one piece of timeless advice – Cut your losers and let your winners run. All of us have a limited amount of investment capital. In my philosophy that investment capital should be working as hard as possible for me all of the time. I will tolerate some underperformance if I see clear and present value and a pathway to value release, but the lesson of the 20 plus years I have done this, is to swallow your pride and be a ruthless cutter of losing ideas.

Cutting losers is a good thing on multiple fronts. Firstly, it frees up capital to hopefully generate positive performance. Secondly, it frees up mind space to concentrate on making money. Thirdly, you may even generate a tax loss to offset some capital gains.

We all spend way too much time focused on the dud ideas. They take up a disproportionate amount of your investment process thinking and I can assure you that any time I have cut a loser it has been a positive experience in terms of moving forward and focusing my time on constructive ideas.

So that’s my first piece of advice for 2014. Look through your portfolios and if there is a stock or two burning a performance hole in your portfolio and demanding a disproportionate amount of time in your investment thinking – cut it. There probably are a couple I recommended in that list too – cut them and rotate the capital to stocks that you feel comfortable with and have delivered day in, day out total returns for the last few years.

If nothing else, this time of year is good for cleaning up portfolios. The last thing you want coming back from the summer holiday is investment baggage. Start with a fresh sheet and a fresh mind. Trust me, I will be doing this myself in the next few days in my own portfolios and when I do press the sell button on a couple of losers I may even add an expletive or two to send them off.

Once we’ve all done that we can focus on where to be positioned for the year ahead.

The year ahead

In terms of overall equity strategy, the only real change I would predict for 2014 is global and local equity market leadership switching from defensives to cyclicals.

The world is getting better in terms of economic growth. Yield curves have steepened to reflect the prospect of stronger economic growth from the USA, China, UK, Japan and Eurozone, alongside the clear prospect of the Federal Reserve winding down its QE bond buying program.

QE tapering and eventual QE exit are not events equity market investors should be scared of, as long as they are accompanied by unequivocally strong US economic data. The US economy is close to escape velocity and I forecast a QE-less world in the second half of 2014.

That means we need to continue to be cautious in asset classes that have been purely supported by QE. You have already seen long bonds, gold and the Australian Dollar correct sharply on the prospect of the Federal Reserve tapering QE purchases, but I think it’s prudent to position for a QE-less world.

That would mean further price falls from long bonds, gold and the Australian Dollar in 2014, but I also believe the bid will start to lesson in “bond-like” equities. What I would consider “bond-like” equities are unfranked REITS and infrastructure holding companies, whose equity prices have traded inverse to long bond yields.

I do not consider Australian Banks or Telstra to be “bond-like” equities because firstly they offer the massive advantage of franking credits, and second, their physical dividends are rising in line with their growing earnings. I remain bullish on Australian Banks and Telstra for 2014, feeling the total returns will be solid, albeit less than we experienced in 2013.

Rotate into cyclicals

Once we have lowered exposure to pure, unfranked “bond-like” equities we need to increase exposure to both global and domestic cyclicals. The simple point is if the Fed reduces QE, it’s because the economic growth data is strong. That should be good for cyclical companies.

I work in a cyclical price taking business: stock broking. I understand cyclicality and how it works. Most cyclical businesses, both global and local, are coming out of a five-year downturn. That is the longest downturn of the last 40 years.

What happens in extended downturns is business managers take out every fixed and variable cost they can just to scrape through. Industries reduce productive capacity. But as you come out the other side, and demand for your product picks up, you experience both product price and volume gains, while running recessionary costs.

That translates to free cash flow picking up sharply, which translates to dividends. That is why I believe global and domestic cyclicals will deliver earnings, free cash flow and dividend surprise in 2014.

The local cyclicals I like are wealth managers (which also have structural support from the compulsory superannuation system), property developers, building materials, steel, transport, infrastructure construction, and selected discretionary retailers.

The global cyclicals I like for 2014 are the big miners. The big miners underperformed in 2013 but in 2014 I can see top-down and company specific developments that drive total shareholder return outperformance. BHP and FMG remain my two key picks, as Chinese growth accelerates, and both companies deliver stronger volumes of production into firm Australian dollar commodity prices.

BHP vs FMG

But the real reason I like big miners for 2014 and beyond is the clear change in strategy to manage the business for free cash generation. We are all going to be pleasantly surprised by the fully-franked dividends the big end of mining pays us in 2014, and that is going to be the driver of a re-rating of the stocks that reward investors the most generously.

6,000 forecast relies on BHP

In all reality, my forecast of the ASX200 hitting 6,000 in the second half of 2014 can’t be right unless BHP starts leading the index. Without a BHP re-rating it’s pretty much mathematically impossible for that index forecast to be correct, because BHP represents almost 10% of the index itself.

That’s probably the biggest change in my thinking about what lies ahead. To get to 6,000, BHP is going to have to do some genuinely heavy index lifting, with assistance from the banks and Telstra. It’s the old “barbell strategy” as we used to call it.

Buy US

Outside of that I continue to encourage you to gain more exposure to US dollar earners, which can be done by big miners etc, or physically deploy more capital to offshore markets.

I have been bearish on the AUD/USD cross all of 2013 and I remain bearish for 2014. If I am right and the AUD/USD cross heads to 80usc in 2014 then we all need more exposure to US dollar earnings or direct US dollar assets.

What I have been telling my clients all year is to get some capital into US equities, but use a proven fund manager or hedge fund manager to oversee the investment. None of us are US experts and I am prepared to pay fees for experts to do that for me.

That strategy has worked well in 2013 with the US S&P500 up 43% in Australian Dollars. I expect that strategy to work well again in 2014, albeit with less spectacular gains.

What I write above is part 1 of a piece on what lies ahead for 2014. I will dive down to some more specific stock calls next week.

I hope 2013 has treated your portfolios well. It hasn’t ended quite as strongly as I would have hoped, but the good news is that makes it easier to make money in 2014 in Australian equities.

Now that you have read this, go and print off your portfolios and decide what to cut. We all have one or two that need to go.

Thanks for putting up with me.

Important: This content has been prepared without taking account of the objectives, financial situation or needs of any particular individual. It does not constitute formal advice. Consider the appropriateness of the information in regards to your circumstances.

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