Bank capital ratios and standing on tippy-toes

Warren Buffett describes certain types of business competition as a bit like standing on tippy-toes at a concert-in-the-park.  His particular story was in the textile industry of Berkshire Hathaway’s origin - management would come in and sell him on a (very expensive) new set of machinery which would improve productivity by say 30 percent - and hence have a very high incremental return.

He would - after much arguing - agree to put in the machinery.  The same decision was made by every other textile mill in the country.  The marginal cost of producing textiles thus falls - and competition ensures that the price falls.  The machines thus raise productivity but do not raise profits - indeed shareholder returns [cash flows after compulsory (re)investment] fall.  Consumers benefit (which is the joy of competition) but from the textile mill owner’s point of view it would have been better had they just collectively sat on their collective backsides.  He likens this to standing at the concert in the park - individually rational perchance - but it is still better if everyone just uses their gluteal muscles.  

I feel the same about bank capital ratios.  In the UK banks were allowed to lever themselves to a silly extent (similar over-leverage occurs in their life insurance companies).  Overleverage as a policy was the defining character of Northern Rock.  

Individually it makes sense for banks to lever up.  However competition was intense - and collectively it was insane.  Northern Rock was levered 60 times or so - but to mortgages that were really thin margin.  Their spreads were about 40bps.  (I wrote my impression of Northern Rock down here...)

What I suspect is happening is all the banks are standing on tippy-toes.  It is individually rational - collectively insane because competition kills the benefit of all that extra leverage.  Margins in the UK - the most over-levered market on the planet - fell further than anywhere else.  

Of course competition was good for borrowers - at least for a while.  Lower spreads meant cheaper finance - but not dramatically cheaper.  Spreads of 150bps on mortgages levered 15 times is about as profitable as spreads of 40bps levered 60 times.  Competition might drive spreads down by 110bps - at the risk to the whole banking system.

Its bad for the shareholders in the end because the banks get their excessive ROE on a smaller amount of capital at much greater risk than in the safely - and excessively capitalized - regulated environment.

I mention this because of my perverse view that re-regulation - opposed by most bankers - might be surprisingly good for banks over the long run.  

The real winners and losers of deregulation

Competition - I argue - removed any real benefit of deregulation for bank shareholders.  (The benefits for bank management created by the sudden need to cope with this brave-new-world however were obvious.  They saw the opportunity and need to grow to maintain ROEs - and they lent with gay-abandon - taking all sorts of fees, commissions and bonuses along the way...)

The benefit for borrowers of competition however were dissipated in higher home prices and hence larger mortgages.  The real winners were people selling homes - not people buying them.  Even quite modest houses became valuable - and the elderly (the classic group moving to less expensive homes) did quite well.  I haven't heard the expression "old and poor" quite as much as I used to.  More generally you can see the relatively affluence of the elderly in the sell-the-home and go cruising set.  Carnival Cruises was - for a very long time - a better stock than you might ever have imagined.

The other supposed beneficiary was suffering an illusion.  Plenty of people - especially in their children’s teenage years - had an-in-the-end-illusory wealth effect - where they thought their home was worth much more than it was - and felt confidence in spending some of that money - or in saving less for their retirement - because after all they could downsize and they might inherit part of Grandma’s (housing) fortune.  

Net-net the losers out of excessive bank leverage were (a) the shareholders because they got lower spreads and took more risk, (b) taxpayers because they partly bore the risk and (c) younger home buyers because they got royally-rogered by the elderly people they bought from.

I am waiting for some bank management - particularly a stronger incumbent - to see it that way and advocate sweeping bank re-regulation which will (a) reduce taxpayer risk (b) increase spreads and (c) reduce leverage.  This will allow the strong incumbent to earn a good ROE at little risk on a lot more capital and will make the bank's shares a surprisingly good investment.  

I doubt I am going to see it.  These are the sort of @&$?! who stand up on their tippy-toes in front of you at Opera in the Park.

 

 

 

 

John

 

 

PS. Thanks for the many comments on the gold post.  My inbox is also filled so if I do not answer all of your emails it is because they are so numerous.  (I read them all though!)

Gold price and bond price - a comment on the efficient market hypothesis

We live in a strange world - the 10 year US Treasury is trading with a 2.63 percent yield.  The market is presuming that there will not be much inflation in those ten years.  However if there is deflation (as per Japan) then the 10 year will wind up being a very good investment (see my blog post on Japanese bond yields from the perspective of a Japanese household).  

At the same time gold is appreciating very sharply - from $950 per oz to $1250 in the past year - and from $800 two years ago or $450 five years ago.  On the face of it the gold price is predicting inflation.

Try as I may - I can't see any reason why both those prices are correct.  I have long held the view that prices are mostly sort-of-rational - and that finding patent contradictions in pricing should be rare - because - if you can find them - there is usually a way to make money from them.  But this looks wrong.  

So either there is a theoretical way in which both these prices can be correct or even my weak version of the efficient market hypothesis is spectacularly wrong.  But finding the way in which both these prices are correct is taxing my ingenuity.  

My first question thus is can anyone tell me why these prices could possibly be consistent?  Is there a rational reason why the bond market is pricing low inflation and the gold market seemingly pricing high inflation?  Does anybody have the ingenious world view in which both these prices are correct?

The second question is more mercenary.  If this really is as irrational as it looks what is the trade?  What is the set of transactions I can place in financial markets which should make me money?  My gut reaction - being a short-seller - is to short both the long bond and gold - but there are some awful tail-risks with that trade.  For instance suppose money becomes suddenly near worthless - a Zimbabwe outcome.  Then the gold price goes to the moon - and I have to return it - so I lose badly.  And the bonds were a wonderful short in that I just made a lot of dollars - but the dollars are suddenly alas also worthless - they don't solve my problem of being short gold.

So - dear readers - thoughts?

 

John 

A deregulation conundrum

I have just read Daniel Amman’s excellent biography of Marc Rich - the oil trader notoriously pardoned by Bill Clinton.  I don’t want to get into the politics and ethics of the pardon other than to note that few things in it are black-and-white when you finished reading the book.

But the way Marc Rich made his money is fascinating and says a lot about the current re-regulation debate.

Marc Rich exploited price fixing/import/export controls to make simply unbelievable profits trading oil.  Marc Rich & Co (the Swiss vehicle) was started with just over $1 million in capital and a couple of years later was making in excess of $200 million in profit.  This level of profitability exceeds - by far - any other trading operation I have ever seen - and was probably the most profitable trading operation in history.  Marc Rich & Co (since renamed Glencore) is possibly the most valuable business in Switzerland within the lifetime of its founder.

A typical Marc Rich & Co trade involved Iran (under the Shah), Israel, Communist Albania and Fascist Spain.  The Shah needed a path to export oil probably produced in excess of OPEC quotas and one which was unaudited and hence could be skimmed to support the Shah’s personal fortune.  Israel - a pariah state in the Middle East - wanted oil.  Spain had rising oil demand and limited foreign currency but was happy to buy oil (slightly) on the cheap.  Spain however did not recognise Israel and hence would not buy oil from Israel - so it needed to be washed through a third country.  Albania openly traded with both Israel and Spain.  Oh, and there is an old oil pipeline which goes from Iran through Israel to the sea.  

So what is the deal?  The Shah sells his non-quota oil down the pipeline through Israel and skims his take of the proceeds.  Israel skim their take of the oil.  Someone doing lading and unlading in Albania gets their take and hence make it - from the Spanish perspective - Albanian, not Israeli oil.  The Spanish ask few questions.  The margins are mouth-watering - and they all come from giving people what they really want rather than what they say they want.  We know what the Shah wanted (folding stuff).  We know what Israel wanted (oil).  We know what Spain wanted (cheap oil).  Who cares that Spain was publicly spouting anti-Israel rhetoric.  [Similar trades allowed South Africa to break the anti-Apartheid trade embargoes.]

It also helped that Marc Rich & Co was a (highly) multilingual firm.  Rich is fluent in Spanish (it is the language he talks to his children in).  He speaks English, German, Yiddish and presumably Hebrew.  His business partner (Pincus Green - pardoned the same day as Rich) speaks Farsi amongst many other languages.  They could do this deal because they could negotiate it and - deep in their heart they hold the Ayn Rand view that trade is a moral virtue and hence they do not need to be concerned with other morality.  [The only line that matters is the law - and then it might not be the law of his adopted country - Switzerland - rather than the United States where he was resident.]

And when the Shah fell?  Oh well - Pincus Green - an American Jewish businessman - gets on the plane to Iran and does a similar deal with the Mullahs - who - despite their rhetoric will sell oil down a pipeline through Israel - and will allow Israel to skim their take.  Trading through the American embargo - well that is just another instance of getting around restrictions and profiting (very) handsomely.  [Rich would argue that the trades were done by the Swiss company which was not subject to the American restrictions.]

The regulatory regime for domestic American oil was also perverse.  Old oil (meaning wells drilled before the first oil crisis) received one price.  New oil (wells drilled after the crisis) received a higher price.  Squeeze oil (oil that was extracted from wells that ran less than 10 barrels per day) received a higher price still.  The oil could be chemically identical and the price difference over $20 per barrel.  Obviously a trader with a method (any method) of changing the oil source could make a fortune.  Again I am not commenting on legality or morality.  That was just plain fact.  Ayn Rand applies - you give a value and you receive a value.

What all this regulation did was that it allowed people to make simply grotesque profits by thwarting regulation.  The regulation thus worked less well and it was socially unfair.  Pincus Green was good at negotiating in Farsi.  He was astoundingly brave going to Iran immediately after the Shah fell.  He was good at organising shipping.  He worked really hard - but he did not invent something that changed the world and he wound up a billionaire.   Traders make money by intermediating real business solutions - but these were real business solutions to problems made by legislation.  Bad regulation, moral indignation about “trading with the enemy” or “trading with Israel” or with racists in South Africa made people with Ayn Rand morals exceedingly wealthy because you could arbitrage your way around any of these regulations.  

If you read the Marc Rich book you will understand why lots of people who were generally left-of-center became ardent deregulation advocates.  Plenty written by Krugman look like it advocates deregulation. (Not convinced: see his review of Laura Tyson’s book on trade theory in Pop Internationalism.  Indeed see most of Pop Internationalism as favorably reviewed by - of all people - the Cato institute.)

Crank forward to the current crisis: what we see are the problems of deregulation and complexity.  We see traders and investment bankers who get rich - not as rich as Marc Rich and Pincus Green - but still frighteningly rich.  And they get there by taking risks that are ultimately absorbed by taxpayers or mutual fund holders (particularly taxpayers).  We see agency problems everywhere - where management enrich themselves at the expense of others - and they do so by capturing upside but (in part) socializing the downside.  Regulation in this case is about controlling agency problems - about stopping people privatizing the profit and socializing the losses.  

A plea

As a plea then I want a debate about the right form of regulation - a regulation that controls agency problems but does not allow arbitrage opportunities to people with “Ayn Rand morals”.  

We are not going to get that from the current Tea Party Republicans.  They simply argue that regulation (they say but do not mean all regulation) impinges on “freedom” (something that is clearly a good but hard to define).  However many of the same people want planning regulations to ban a mosque in downtown New York because it is an insult to the victims of 9/11 (and banning mosques is not a restriction on “freedom”).  

If that is the level of debate we are not going to get good re-regulation - we are just going to get pandering to whichever lobby group manages to garner most support.  And that is a real risk because we will leave agency problems in place (they benefit the rich and powerful) and we will introduce the same sort of (dumb) regulation that made Marc Rich and Pincus Green astoundingly wealthy.  That sort of regulation also benefits the rich and powerful - especially those with “Ayn Rand morals”.  [The rich and powerful - if you have not noticed - are good lobbyists.  Unless we are careful many amongst them will get their way.]

I don’t know how to do this well - but I thought I would state the obvious.  The most obvious things that need regulation are things with a government guarantee (implicit or explicit).  If you have an implicit guarantee (as we now know almost all large financial institutions have) then regulation really matters.  If there are large agency problems (small shareholders, large management) then regulation should be deliberately biased to put power in the hands of shareholders not managers (eg banning staggered board elections).  

Likewise other agency problems should be strongly policed and the regulation should be of the form that allows that policing.  When Elliot Spitzer found that Marsh - a large insurance broker - was participating in bid rigging against schools buying insurance that was shocking - and is precisely the sort of thing in financial markets that should be policed strongly.  But it took Elliot considerable effort to find and prove his case.  The rules should be established so that sort of behaviour is really difficult to hide.  

And I do not think that I need to explain to anyone how much mortgage brokers contributed to the crisis by (a) deliberately misleading borrowers about conditions on their mortgage and (b) participating in the faking of borrowers income/assets/education level when they on-sold the loans to Wall Street.  Agency problems were at the core of the crisis.

On the other side if there is no agency problem then deregulation should remain the order of the day.  Trade restrictions create arbitrageurs - and the arbitrageurs ensure the trade restrictions don’t work anyway.

There are obviously going to be extensions to this rough rule - and this post is really to garner discussion.  But for a start I expect agents who benefit from their agency (and the abuse of their agency) to join the Tea Party.  

It is difficult to get policy right.  And when and if the policy is got right we are in for a very long fight to implement it.  

 

 

John

Virtualization - one more benefit - and one more Hewlett Packard problem

The main market for virtualization is not desktop computers - it is servers.  Rackspace for instance is really a business running virtual private servers.

Rackspace claim 99.99 percent availability - but it did stuff up once and upset Michell Maulkin and Justin Timberlake.  That was a small failing (and I would not worry too much about either of those people being upset).  But more to the point - the failing was less than 20 minutes.

We however at Bronte have a server (an old Dell box!) connected to the net via a DSL modem and the vagaries of Telstra (possibly the OECDs worst incumbent phone company).  My business website is down.  Worse - my @brontecapital.com (that is business) emails are bouncing...

The problem is - you guessed it - Telstra.

One advantage of a virtual server in the "cloud" is that it can be mirrored in jurisdictions other than my own and hence removes the Telstra risk.  Telstra risk is a serious problem in Australia.

The cloud may be an online offer - but it is almost certainly a superior product.  And to anybody whose email bounced... sorry.

Over time we will give up on in-house information technology and move entirely into the clouds.

And if you are a Hewlett Packard shareholder you should think that through.  The cloud is ultimately cheaper, allows you to outsource (or remove) your IT staff and offers superior execution.  That is wonderful for many - but for the incumbent midrange server maker having a competitor that is superior in every way looks - well - ugly.

John

3Par - your blogger needs a brain transplant

I have just done a huge amount of work on virtualization (see the recent "geek" posts here and here and here and the post on Dell).  I worked out where Dell was going on virtualization and understood that HPQ was likely to play "catch-up".  (This surprised me - I was stunned how far Dell had travelled.)

I understood the 3Par acquisition - and knew that HPQ was also lacking in this area and thought that Dell was (cleverly) leaving Hewlett Packard strategically challenged.  I also put a small short on HPQ because of this.

So - having got all that way it never occurred to me Hewlett Packard would overbid Dell for 3Par.  

Going long 3Par was an easy bet.  Its downside was protected by Dell's cash bid (which would completed as the deal was important to Dell and Dell could finance it with cash on balance sheet).  The upside was an overbid by HPQ.  It was a bet with very nice risk-return characteristics.

And I did not do it.  

Politely that is "lack of execution" - but I should stop making excuses.  One word for that one: dumb.

 

John

A guide to the Australian election for non-Australians

I have already been asked by email what the Australian election result means and what will result from it.  At this point I do not know – and frankly nor does anybody else.  However I hope – and removing my politics from this – to give a quick handbook for someone with almost no knowledge of Australian politics.  So please forgive me starting very basic.

What you need to form government

Australian politics is based on a “Westminister system”.  That is – like the UK – to become a national leader you first need to elected a local representative in the “house”.  This representation is in single-member seats.  To become the national leader (the Prime Minister) you need to control the votes of a majority of the members of the House.  Normally this happens through tight “party affiliation”.  When you elect a member you know which party they belong to – and so you are really voting – indirectly and by convention – for a Prime Minister.

There are 150 members of the house – so 75 members for both sides would be a tie.  You need 76 members under tight control to form a majority government. 

A short summary of the political parties

I need this to explain roughly where the political parties sit.  The main conservative party in Australia is (strangely) called the Liberals.  There is a second conservative party called the Nationals.  It is generally impossible for the Liberals to form government without an alliance with the Nationals – and so the conservative parties are generally known as “the Coalition”. 

The Nationals are a strange and declining beast.  They started life as “the Country Party” and their affiliation was Agrarian Socialist and (highly) socially conservative.  The most famous of all Country Party politicians (Black Jack McEwan) was also probably the most economically interventionist politician Australia has ever had.  The reason that the Nationals are declining is largely demographic change.  Australia is becoming more urbanized as the average size of farms increases and agriculture becomes more of a “scale game”.  Secondly the coastal seats are having huge demographic change as Sydney and Melbourne voters are moving to the coast either for lifestyle reasons or retirement.   (“Sea change” is a big demographic trend in Australia.)

Like in America, conservative politics is an amalgam of economic conservatives and social conservatives.  In America the social conservatives are the dominant voting block within the conservative party.  In Australia it is more balanced.

The main non-conservative force is the Labor Party – a party which grew out of the (declining) unions and – is to some extent – still beholden to the unions.  In the dim-distant past Labor party officials used to refer to each other as “comrades”.  They continued to do it ironically well into the 1980s because it infuriated the right wing members.  Now they just call each other friends (which is itself ironic).  This is the party of factionalized power and voting blocks.  Other than ensuring a remaining power base for union officials it has been difficult for many years to say what the party stands for other than a pragmatic approach to gaining and holding power. 

Mostly to the left of the Labor party is the Greens.  The Greens are hard-line on environmental issues (mostly), mostly very left-wing on straight economic issues and mostly extremely liberal on social issues.  The Green policy summary for this election are (a) not just have an emission trading scheme for carbon but tax the polluters into the bargain, (b) make the miners pay the full-undiscounted original mining tax, and (c) legalize gay marriage.

The classic dividing line between the Greens and the Labor party is logging of high conservation value forests.  The Greens are hard-line opposed.  The Labor party is (mostly) inclined to take the position of the (unionized) forestry workers.  They can irregularly (say once per 20 years) take a power-pragmatic position to align with the Greens in exchange for Green preferences in urban areas. 

If you are mostly economically conservative, mostly socially liberal and fairly hard line on environmental issues there is simply no single party to belong to or vote for in that you will disagree with their positioning on something.

The balance elected last night

There are many “seats” (meaning positions in the “house”) that will come within a couple of hundred votes so final results will not be known for a while.  However the split is likely to be 73 Coalition, 72 Labor, 4 independents and a Green.  Three of the independents started their career with the National Party – so the most likely outcome is that they will support the Coalition on matters of confidence and we will get a Coalition minority government.  But that assumes (as I would not) that the independents are a stable block. 

The three conservative independents are very different beasts indeed.  Firstly Bob Katter – representing an electorate in remote far north Queensland – is an old-fashioned National Party politician – and split from the Nationals over differences on economic policy and social policy.  He is more interventionist on economic policy and more conservative on social policy than the Coalition.  Indeed his positions are so strong they are almost a caricature of old-fashioned National Party values.  The expression – not necessarily unkindly - is that he is as “mad as a Katter”.   This advert is representative of the man.

 

Do look at this video.  I cannot imagine any other politician advertising himself as the right guy when there are crocodiles on the loose or cattle have gone astray.

Rob Oakeshott by contrast represents a coastal electorate much closer to Sydney.  He is an economic conservative and social liberal.  His split with the Nationals is because his socially liberal values did not fit in.

My only involvement with him (or more precisely his office) came about because of Astarra.  He represents a coastal electorate with many retirees and some victims and he is the only politician who has taken up the issue.  Rob Oakeshott is likely to be friendly with Bob Katter – but on many issues they are a long way apart.  I can’t imagine myself ever voting National – but I have to confess to liking Oakeshott a lot of the time – and I suspect I would like the man (though I have never met him).   

I do not know anything about Tony Windsor (the third conservative independent) except that his electorate is more mainstream National Party territory – and it is likely the man is closer to the National Party than either of the other two conservative independents.

The Green is – as far as I can tell – a typical Green – he won a safe Labor seat taking extremely socially liberal positions in a socially liberal inner-urban electorate.

The remaining independent victory was a total surprise.  He is the only minor Australian politician I would expect any of my non-Australian readers to know.  The name is Andrew Wilkie – and I would describe him as a centrist with a white-hot fierce moral integrity that could easily be confused for self-righteousness.  He started his career in the military and was educated at Duntroon (the Australian equivalent of West Point).  He rose rapidly to Colonel and along the way joined the Liberal Party.  He left to be an analyst at ASIO – the Australian equivalent of the CIA.  He famously and publicly resigned when he felt the intelligence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was being doctored for political reasons.  His resignation was global news.  He later stood as a Green against the incumbent Prime Minister in the 2004 election.  He moved to Tasmania and stood as an independent against the Greens in a Labor stronghold seat and he has probably won. 

Summary

I do not know whether a stable alliance can be made of these people – but the Coalition plus three originally conservative independents makes one think the most likely outcome is a Coalition government.  However it will be very hard to keep Bob Katter in the tent simply because he is so extreme on so many issues.  If the issue-of-the-day however is one where the government is more socially liberal than Katter (ie most people on most issues) then perhaps they can make up the numbers with either Wilkie or the Green. 

Hope this helps.

 

 

 

John

Dell and virtualization

I recently posted three long pieces on computing and virtualization.  There were two trends that mattered.

(a).  Enterprise computing was moving to the cloud - sometimes an external cloud - but more often-than-not an enterprise cloud.  Computers would henceforth be virtual machines sitting on some mondo-powerful server and thin clients.  This setup was superior for a range of reasons that I went into.  But more than superior - it was cheaper to set up and MUCH cheaper to run.

(b).  Personal computing was going towards ever-more-powerful handheld devices on which I thought PC as-an-app would be an end game.  These devices will plug into screens and keyboards at home if you wanted - and to a large extent they would replace or displace the personal computer.  

Microsoft would be a winner if it remained the cloud desktop (which it has at every firm I know who uses an enterprise cloud).  It would be a big winner if it also captured a worthwhile place in the handheld device market.  I thought that unlikely - but the reviews of new Windows 7 phones are convincing me that a Windows 10 phone could be a big winner.  

Although I did not discuss this, one implication was a bleak future for "beige box makers".  Computers disappeared into a cloud or into a shiny and extremely well made personal computing device.  A logistics firm which assembled beige boxes (as Dell was in its glory days) had no future.  You either needed to be in the enterprise server (especially blade server*) market or a consumer good maker.  Dell I posited was an extremely poor consumer good maker - as my old XPS1330 laptop would attest.  [That laptop had the notorious Nvidia graphics chip problem...  Hewlett Packard also dealt with it badly.]  

Now I know of no evidence that Dell is getting its device business together (I will never trust Dell with another consumer device).  However some think the new Dell phone (The Thunder) is cool.  

But Dell is approaching the enterprise cloud product in a purposeful and seemingly effective way.  Sure mostly they are doing it via acquisitions - see the latest purchase of 3Par.  3Par make integrated hardware-software solutions for storage in enterprise clouds - in other words sophisticated jbods**.  And this is after a few other acquisitions in that area.  

And surprisingly it is working.  Dell server growth was rapid even as their beige-box business continued to falter.  As they they stated "storage and server revenue increased 35 percent with rapid growth in blades".  They talk about integrated solutions to enterprise cloud - presumably so relatively unsophisticated IT guys can install it.  

Hewlett Packard is also getting its growth in blades - but - frankly - not at anything like this rate.  Partly they are incumbent - but mostly I think they are just ceding share to a company - that at least on that area has its eyes firmly focussed on the prize.  Here - and I quote verbatim - is the quarterly highlights.

Dell’s commercial business continues to benefit from improved demand across all products and services, and in all geographies as Dell expands its enterprise solutions portfolio. Recently, Dell acquired Scalent, developer of virtual infrastructure management technology, and Ocarina Networks, a leading developer of storage optimization technology. The company also announced an agreement to acquire 3PAR, the leading global provider of utility storage for cloud computing. These moves illustrate Dell’s commitment to build its capabilities for open and affordable enterprise solutions.

This has me more-than-passingly surprised.  In a world where the beige-box disappears Dell, once the biggest maker of beige-boxes, is finding itself a seat at the table.   It may not be as good a seat as they held in 1998 - but it is a seat nonetheless.  And they are doing it by going where the puck is going to be.   And that has me surprised because - personally - I hate Dell like I hate few other companies.  They sold a defective computer, replaced the defective part with another defective part and kept me waiting in endless phone-center loops.  

But their agility here had me covering my short last night. 

I am - I confess - truly stunned.  If you ask me whether Michael Dell should keep his job.  On the evidence of this I have no doubt...

 

 

John

*blades - for the non-geek - are the most effective way of getting really dense and cheap mondo-computing capacity.  Blades sit in boxes which have integrated power supply and cooling and are effectively the ready-built motherboard of a server ready to plug in.  You can get an enormous amount of computing capacity into a small room filled with blade servers.  [The room will also need serious cooling.]

**jbod = just a bunch of discs.

Astarra weekend edition: some of my best friends are architects

Some of my best friends are architects…

Actually my wife is an architect – so I risk marital issues by ripping into the profession for the vacuous waffle-bags they are.

Well sometimes are.

I present to you McNally – an Australian architecture private company which did a commercial fit-out for Absolute Alpha – the funds management company that later renamed itself the Astarra Asset Management and were responsible for the Astarra Strategic Fund.  (Regular followers of this blog will know this fund for the disaster that turned out to be…)

Here is McNally advertising their commercial fitout skills – showing pictures of what they have achieved.

And here is the text:

Absolute Alpha, MLC Centre, Sydney

This is a high quality commercial fitout for a Funds Management company.

The design came from close study of the organisation’s work methods, practices, technology, culture and vision. High quality finishes are used throughout with colours reflecting the companies [sic] corporate identity. All spaces have connection to the external windows that have panoramic city and harbour views. The end result is improved office efficiencies and productivity. This, along with enhanced staff satisfaction, makes this project a success.

Completed 2007.

Now McNally say that their design came about – and I quote again – “from close study of the organisation’s work methods, practices, technology, culture and vision”.

Ok – here is what the work practices now appear to be:  Absolute (or later the Astarra Asset Management) invented the returns for the “strategic fund” (or their Hong Kong controllers invent their returns).  They looked good.  They had an impressive sales function that paid undisclosed (hidden) commissions to financial planners.  When they raised money they wired it to a bank account in either the British Virgin Islands or the Caymans never to be seen again.

The conclusion – either the architecture company is

(a)   Vacuous – as they did their “close study” and did not notice the bleatingly obvious truth,

(b)   Complicit in the crime – in that their close study did reveal the truth but they chose to ignore it for the commission or

(c)   Lying – in that they did not do a close study of the “work methods, practices, technology, culture and vision” but said they did for marketing purposes.

When shown a patina of architect marketing I think of that profession as arty-farty, quasi-psuedo intellectuals who get invited to pretty darn good cocaine snorting parties.

And when an architect says that they get to know their clients I guess it is because they imagine the clients going to those same parties.

Here are photos of the old premises – ripped off the McNally website.

 

 

Enjoy…

 

 

John

Microsoft – an accounting geek’s summarizes his purpose and lessons

This is not a post with investment conclusions.  It is more a little about my own voyage.  If you want the stock posts read the last two posts in order.

My purpose

The purpose of this blog (as stated in my profile) is:

to explore investment ideas. [This blog] differs from most investing blogs as I have no intention of talking my own book. However I will explore what is wrong with my investments and that means I need to talk about positives and negatives. I welcome criticism. I most value criticism which demonstrates that some of my ideas are wrong.

I wrote the post to try and explore what was wrong with Microsoft stock (which – for the record I own in small quantity).  I was slightly annoyed with the title put on the post when it was reprinted by Business Insider because it misrepresented my purpose.  That said – there are real negatives with the Microsoft story – and it is worth exploring them. 

Microsoft is (way) outside my usual beat.  I am an accounting geek.  I like to read accounts to find out where things have been clipped, where the statements are aggressive, where the bodies are buried. 

Microsoft is an unusual company because there are no bodies buried in the accounts.  The business is staggeringly profitable – and those profits are entirely visible in cash (and equivalents).  Usually I add value (if I manage to add it at all) by understanding how the business makes its money and how that is reflected in their accounts.  For me reading Microsoft’s accounts beyond a summary and cash flow statement is pointless.

With a complex financial institution (my usual beat) understanding the accounts can be a difficult job.  Schiff’s Insurance Observer still refers to “the blonde with more curves than Conseco’s financial statements”.  Microsoft’s statements are as curvy as Bill Gates.  This is a fabulous business – arguably the best business in the history of capitalism. 

So the question:

The outcome for Microsoft stock will be driven by whether – in ten years – we wake up and find that Microsoft has retained dominance in the way corporations interact with their data and a decent position in the relationship of retail consumers and digital data. 

If Microsoft is dominant in that they will be making much more money in a decade because there will be much more information – and more computers - and the cost-per-computer is not outrageous even if the total revenue line is. 

If Microsoft loses its dominance then the stock could have another weak decade (notwithstanding the fact that it starts at a low price relative to current cash flow).  The stock price is so low relative to indisputable current cash flows that Microsoft would really have to stuff it up from here to make the stock a worse investment than say the current ten year bond.  But this is technology and it is subject to rapid change.

In my semi-geeky way I tried to run through the threats to understand them.  The threats are obvious: virtualization (and hence the end of the hardware-dependent computer), virtualization (and hence the end of the client-server model Microsoft rode to glory), Linux (and free software generally), the resurgence of the Macintosh platform, and (possibly most importantly and certainly most obviously) the increase in (mostly non-Microsoft) mobile devices (which are increasingly how the young and the affluent consumer relates to music and the internet and to data generally). 

So far – with respect to most of those threats – Microsoft has not been victorious – but has left itself a place at the table.  Even Zune has a place at the table even if it is up the end... 

Microsoft has not had an unambiguous winner in a decade – but then they are so entrenched that even without a winner they remain a strong company.  They produced one (very) weak flagship product (Vista).  But they have a (very) good product now (Windows 7) – it is however sufficiently late to cede a lot of ground to Apple.  Still you could imagine a world with an absolutely brilliant Windows 10 (!) phone which integrates near perfectly with business data (being a thin client for the work computer) but also has a lossless music player, high quality music jacks, integrates with Facebook (or its successor) perfectly – oh – and it is as cool as any future iPhone.  It just has not happened yet – but a super-hot product would add 100 billion to the cumulative cash flow Microsoft might produce and make the stock a fabulous investment.

On virtualization the “clients” in my experience are mostly windows (or often virtualized windows servers sitting on linux boxes).  Microsoft has a position.  But the virtualization platforms are Citrix, VMWare and others.  The underlying operating system is linux.  Indeed Wikipedia gives a huge list of programs and Windows is by no means dominant.  Linux (outside the server market) remains a product for geeks and Baltic grandmothers (but is getting better rapidly).  Apple look like the winner in mobile devices – but it is early in that game still and I think Linux in its Android form is likely to wind up the winner just because Apple extracts too much margin and the Android product is likely to be just as good (except for the killer iPod app).  That said the Windows 7 phone reviews pretty well.  Ten years ago Palm was the likely winner in mobile devices.  These things change!

A comment on the comments

The comments were very high quality. Sure I found someone who believed that Linux must run on top of (pirated) Windows XP.  He simply could not believe that you could run a computer without Windows.  [That level of ignorance is itself interesting because it tells you just how entrenched Microsoft is…]  But I also found down-in-the-trenches people who could not imagine that any business could go all thin client.  [I observed however that quite sophisticated businesses have gone that way already – and it is far superior to the client-server arrangement for security and disaster recovery – but not only is it superior – it is cheaper.]   I found religious open-source zealots but also entirely practical people who thought you could not get fired for buying Microsoft.  (I noted that in the server business for many applications you would be fired for buying Microsoft…) 

I met open-source geeks who thought that Ubuntu – at its current rate of improvement – would be as user friendly as a Mac within 12 months.  That is aggressive. It took me considerable effort to permanently mount the windows-share hard drives on my new computer – enough difficulty that I can be sure Ubuntu is not ready for prime time.  But given the improvement between my first linux machine [a Mandriva 2006 release] and the current Ubuntu release I think Ubuntu will be up to it in a few years.  That said the Mac is more user friendly than Windows and it has not won the war at corporate level.  The better product does not necessarily win because of the advantages of incumbency.   

A comment on the stock selection

This a long way outside my circle of competence.  I reckon I can read a bank’s financial account as well as anybody – but nothing is added by reading Microsoft’s accounts.  So to do this I had to become more geeky than is natural for me.  Alas I discovered there is as much debate amongst geeks as there is debate amongst bank analysts and – like bank analysts – they are probably all wrong about most things. 

I really want to thank everyone who commented.

 

John

Follow up on the “geek post”

I never realized I had quite so many super-smart and geeky readers.  The quality of comments – especially those that came through my inbox – was amazing. 

This post attempts a synthesis.  That is difficult because many of the super-smart and geeky readers had diametrically opposed views.  This was typical:

The bottom line is none of this stuff matters enough to get religious about it. If you want to go through a four week learning curve to use Ubuntu, have it. If you want to use second-rate office software because it's good enough, by all means do that. But if you're preaching for a mass conversion to happen, don't hold your breath waiting. In all likelihood your son will soon want a Windows machine so he can play the same games his friends are playing.

And I have to say he is right.  Ubuntu is faster – and it is nicer for some things – but I have such huge capital embedded in Windows (years of use) that I will use Windows for many things.  Moreover getting Windows games to play on Ubuntu is (frankly) not worth the chop (even inside “virtual windows” – explanation below).  Also my son does have a windows partition – and the only thing he runs on it is Cyberlink Powerdirector 8.  Games get run on the Wii (or Playstation) – but a non-linear video editor is essential for him in these days of YouTube.  My son communicates with movies…

My purpose was not to learn to use Ubuntu.   My purpose was to work out where I stood as a stock analyst.  It makes no sense whatsoever to change unless you have very specific needs [the usual need being to maintain servers]. 

By contrast I was told a story about an elderly (and non-techie) woman in Lithuania who was given a brand new laptop with Windows 7 on it.  The first thing she did was wipe the disc and install Ubuntu.  Why?  Because she was used to it and knew how things worked.

And that is the point: these things have inertia – and the inertia is real.  Windows is useful primarily because it is there.  In particular:

(a).  The easiest system to use is the one you are used to.  If you use Windows at work it is likely you will use it at home.  I feel uncomfortable on a Mac because I have not used one since I gave away my Mac Plus.  [That I guess dates me…]  The woman in Lithuania felt uncomfortable with Windows because that is not what she is used to using.  The cost of changing (four weeks) is just too high. 

(b).  The price does not really matter.  The OEM cost of Windows is about $50.  The laptop lasts three years.  There is no way that anyone is going through 4 weeks of hard intellectual work of learning a new system (any new system) for saving of about $17 a year.  That is simply a non-starter.  This defends market share.  I hated going from my Mac to a Windows machine at work – but once I crossed that divide all my future machines were Windows.  However the young are back buying Macs and that will weaken the Windows incumbency.  There are a few places where Ubuntu has serious share (the Baltic states spring to mind) but that is rare.  The proof that price does not really matter is the sudden willingness of people to buy Macs at price points up to $500 higher than current PC offerings.  They do this because – well – the Mac is nice…

(c)  Lots of software is written already for windows – especially games – but also video drivers etc – that do not run as native on linux.  Moreover because the desktop share of linux is so small nobody wants to bother porting their software.  You use Windows because everyone else does.

(d).  Microsoft had a really useful suite of “developer tools”.  This meant that many businesses wrote software for their businesses that works in Windows and does not work elsewhere.  This also means that they have a reluctance to change.  [By contrast most business software these days is written with web-interfaces.  We have written a database for work – and our developer wrote it to work on our linux server – but the interface is our browser…]

Microsoft has not come up with a really good “must have” product in a while.  That said – Windows 7 is quite a good system – and even my tech friends who are linux devotees – confess an admiration for the new-found stability.  This will drive some sales as sensible people did not move from XP to Vista – but will move from either XP or Vista to Windows 7. 

Inertia matters and this bodes well for Microsoft.  The tailwind (developing countries) remains strong for some time.  Inertia saves the Western business momentum.  The cash-flow is robust for at least a few years – and will probably grow.  I even purchased some Microsoft stock.

Some thought I was overstating virtualization as a future because it is reliant on very fast connections.  There are a few responses to that.  Firstly within the enterprise (which is the core Microsoft market) virtualization is a reality now.  I know a 50 person financial firm whose computers are really two mondo-powerful servers.  The 50 staff all have a “virtual box” with the computing capacity shared on the servers.  One server would do the job – but two is for redundancy.  There are an exact copy two servers in a remote location about 50 miles away – that is the disaster recovery.  This is superior in lots of ways.  There are no distributed hard drives which makes data much safer from theft (you cannot walk out with a hard drive).  There are no USB keys or other ways to pilfer data in the field.  The computers are mobile – someone can log on from anywhere in the world.  If they move desk they do not need to move their computer.  The disaster recovery is really simple – and is an exact duplication of the work machines.  No decentralized data to lose.  No problem with mirroring. 

This is a sophisticated and superior set up.  But it is cheaper than the existing set up – and easier to maintain.  That is a winner.  What works there will work elsewhere.  I mentioned this to a UBS executive and he just said they were miles behind on that.  But hey – even UBS will catch up!  It will happen in the home too – maybe earlier in countries like Australia (which is rolling out the National Broadband Network) – but it will happen more generally.   I have gone personally from opposing the NBN (a costly government project) to being supportive (it will allow us to save huge amounts in IT infrastructure).  That said – if it works in Australia it will happen everywhere with sufficient population density.  Anywhere that you can deliver high definition TV on demand has more-than-sufficient bandwidth. 

Linux as the dominant operating system

So lets get to the big point.  I am going to put it in bold because it – at first look is such an outrageous statement – but I think it is inevitable.  Within 18 months the world’s biggest selling operating system (that is the one in the largest number of new devices) will be linux.  It is not even going to be close.  Within three years linux will be utterly dominant – maybe a 70 percent share. 

The thing is all that share will not be on laptops or desktops.  It probably won’t even be on tablets or pads.  It will be on telephone handsets.  The handset market is about a billion pieces per year.  The computer market maybe a fifth that.  The dominant phone operating system will be Android – and Android is just a cut-down linux.  Who cares about the front-end of Ubuntu (which is adequate).  What we should care about is the front-end of Android – which is a winner.

That has implications – and if you were a PC maker or a Microsoft investor you better think them through.  But I will outline a couple. 

(a).  You can run a windows machine or even a Mac on a linux machine using virtualization.  This makes possible Windows as an app – or for that matter Mac as an app.  This will require more computing power than a handset currently has (but give it time).  It will also require some form of “docking stand” into which you plug your keyboard, mouse, printer, very fast internet connection, sound system and maybe a hard drive for mass storage.

(b).  Virtual machines can be spread across multiple platforms and can share computing capacity with the platform.  So you can have your “windows as an app” which uses the handset for simple tasks (such as word processing etc) and uses the cloud’s processing power for complex tasks (such as rendering an MPEG4 movie for YouTube). 

This machine can be far better than the computers of today.  Here are a few drivers:

1.  Software only from repositories.  One of the reasons why Linux has far fewer glitches than Windows is the software loading process.  With windows I go to a site and download a .exe file and click (although there are even drive-by infections on the web).  Nobody polices the sites I get software from.  With Linux most software comes from “repositories” where the software is downloaded from vast servers.  (Downloading software from outside repositories is surprisingly difficult…)  When the software comes from “trusted sources” it is far less likely to contain a virus or trojan.  The Apps store is just a repository – and refusing to allow software purchases outside the store is a protection mechanism.  When we do cloud-software the service provider will probably also provide repositories.  Cloud computing increases security – and the absence of trojans will increase privacy.

2. Machines are mirrored in the cloud.  If you lose your phone you buy another one.  You then download your old computer from the cloud.  No data is lost.  The new “owner” of your phone will not have access to your machine without some serious identification – probably your thumbprint and a password.

So here is the question: can Microsoft – or even Apple – win the “pc as an app” war?  Is incumbency enough protection?  In the corporate area it clearly is enough for now.  The financial firm I described above is fully virtualized.  The servers run linux – but the (thin) clients are all Windows.

I learnt a bundle from the comments – so more requested.

Thanks.

 

 

 

John

 

PS.  I mentioned that the virtualized PC does not play games well.  There is a reason – I run a laptop.  To play the game well the virtual computer would need to take direct control of my graphics card.  If it does that the host computer (ie the linux box) loses control of it – and hence loses its screen images.  So I can’t play even simple 3d games in my virtual computer.  Every business function is fine – but the “fun-stuff” is not.  The graphics card companies (ATI, Nvidia) can probably solve this by having dual-chip graphics cards or the like.  But no matter where I looked I discovered that graphics cards were the biggest problem with my set up. 

It is probably good for me to have a work computer that cannot play games.  (Saves much time wasting.)  But it is not ready for general prime time.  Again solutions cannot be far away – but they are not really viable for a non-geek now.  [My computer will accept a second graphics card through a PCI slot.  This is precisely what is envisaged by the manufacturer when they put that option in the BIOS.]