Mailbag: Ken Fisher Talks Short-Term Market Swings, Natural Disasters, US Debt and More

Transcript

Ken Fisher:

Any expression of negativity is a statement that we aren't in euphoria. And as John Templeton famously said, "Bull markets are born on pessimism, grow on skepticism, mature on optimism, and die of euphoria." Every month I get people sending me questions, and I try to answer them briefly in what I call the mailbag. And my problem is that I always take too long answering them. But we'll give it a go here again. So, are short-term swings always driven by sentiment? I don't like the word always, but I'd say pretty close there. Reality is, that when you think of almost all capital markets, as opposed to illiquid markets, for the most part, short-term swings are driven by sentiment because sentiment is really a reflection of demand to own something. Price is being set by the interplay of supply and demand, and supply changes almost always happen slowly. Demand changes, which are about emotion, like your emotion, can actually swing very quickly. So I wouldn't go as far as always. Sometimes you get sudden governmental intervention in some unexpected way or something else, but almost always it's nothing but cinema. With the increase in natural disasters, isn't that going to impact financials and be a boom for builders? Hey, I hate to tell you, I hate to tell you, but there's—the main financial that's impacted by natural disasters is insurers. Now, the fact is they're really good at their business. And if you actually—and this is a version of a casualty, casualty insurance. And if you look at this topic, it is just all over the board. If you think of America and this is similarly true in other places differently, but similarly. First, some natural disasters are covered by homeowner's policies. Sometime the same natural disaster may not be in a different state in our country. All of this stuff is done differently by state, because insurance laws based on state law, for the most part. And a lot of the natural disasters aren't covered by insurance at all. Now, mind you, they say, "But that might be even worse! Oh my gosh, the person that's hurt gets no benefit out of it." Are natural disasters really more and worse than they used to be? How do you measure that? I don't believe there's actually any accuracy in the notion that there's an increase in natural disasters. Is it the frequency? Is it the magnitude? Do we have them? Yes. Or he just forgotten about the ones that we had five, ten and 15 years ago. And my guess is it's the latter, because I don't actually know that there's a lot more natural disasters. Let me say natural disasters, again, come in a lot of different forms in the long term. I mean, I remember very clearly when Mount Saint Helens, outside of Portland, Oregon, close to where I used to live in Camas, Washington, exploded in volcanic eruption, causing all kinds of damage. How how many eruptions have you seen lately? Then there's tidal waves. When's the last tidal wave you noticed? Then there's hurricanes and tornadoes. I live in North Texas outside Dallas, and when we get tornadoes all the time. But most of them don't cause that much damage. And there's not really a difference in frequency. I think it's hard to put an aggregate number on this. And I just say there's no evidence that you can measure that natural disasters are particularly increasing truly, or that they're impacting financials or the market as a whole, or that it's a boom for builders because builders aren't doing all that well. How does US debt compare to other governments around the world? So, it kind of depends how you want to view it here. If you think about developed nations, America's a little on the high side of other developed nations as a percent of GDP, let's say, which isn't really an important metric. It's a little higher still, compared to others, on interest payments as a—interest payments on the debt, as a percentage of GDP. That's a more important one. But these countries do not have terribly burdensome interest payments as a percentage of GDP. And the reality is that it—this whole question kind of comes from one that, you know, I've been asked throughout my 50 plus year career, which basically stems down to don't we have too much debt. Isn't debt bad? Isn't more of it going to make us have a big problem? And the answer to that is so far, and I've written about this a lot in a lot of different places, and for a long time, we've never yet in America, and we are not now or in other developed nations, in a place where the levels of debt are a serious problem. And let me tell you how you would know real simply. Not for sure that the debt was problematic, but that it might be, as opposed to it will not be, in any short to intermediate time period. How do you know that? Because if debt was a real burden compared to other nations, we'd see our long-term interest rates very high compared to the other countries. And for the most part, they've all been stable for a long time. As a follow up to your recent column about demographics, can you speak to challenges the younger generation faces today with home affordability and student debt? Isn't this a headwind to markets and the economy? Surprise! Actually, this number, which grew for a long time in recent years, has been on decline. And seems like that nobody notices. That is, default numbers are down. Total student debt numbers are down as a percent of income, as a percent of GDP, as a percent of pretty much anything you want to look at except for maybe your nephew's debt. I don't know about that. but the answer is that this is at this point. I'm not suggesting that younger generations don't have issues. Home affordability is different than student debt thing. There's no question that home affordability is less. The price of homes has gone up. Let me point out on the student debt point also that while the total dollars of debt are up. That's not the right way to measure it, because the right way to measure it is on an inflation adjusted basis. And because of the vast amount of inflation that we had in the aftermath of 2021, as governments created way too much money in the hopes that that would help get through the Covid period. Once you adjust for that inflation, the student debt is pretty good. But what that did do is drive up, initially, home prices. And while home prices aren't going up at such a high rate now, they are less affordable for young people. And what I tell young people is, it has always been true that youth is a great time for difficulty. It always has been. Difficulties change. And what you do is you build your human capital. You make your craft, your job, your profession, your entrepreneurialism, whatever it is, worth more by building your human capital. And you wait some years and it tends to even out. That's what I'd say. I'm surprised you were bullish. All I see in the media is talking heads and newsletters that are doom and gloom. How is that possible? Well, I guess the question is not how is it possible that they have the doom and gloom, but how is it possible that I'm bullish? Now, to make this really clear, any reflection of negativity in capital markets is bullish. It's a real simple. The expression of, and I don't know how much actual true doom and gloom there is right now, but any expression of negativity is a statement that we aren't in euphoria. And as John Templeton famously said, "Bull markets are born on pessimism, grow on skepticism, mature on optimism, and die of euphoria." In just the amount that you can read about how people tell you it's euphoric, tells you it isn't. Because the statement that it's euphoric and stocks can't do well, is a statement about fear. It's not a statement about euphoria. So the answer of how I'm bullish is yes, I can read, I can listen, I can see. And the same things you talk about that make you be concerned because all people are saying this stuff, not all people, but a lot, a lot, a lot of people, says to me, that's fear in the marketplace. And fear in the marketplace is always bullish. Thank you for this. Tune back in next month and I'll answer more questions. Hi, this is Ken Fisher. Subscribe to the Fisher Investment YouTube channel. If you like what you've seen. Click the bell to be notified as soon as we publish new videos.