“The only thing worse than being blind is having sight and no vision.”
-Helen Keller
Earlier this week I made my annual visit to my eye doctor. As per usual for someone that has just eclipsed their 40th year, my eyes were a little worse this year compared to last. The doctor also had an interesting diagnosis, he told me I’m the perfect example of someone with environmental myopia.
Luckily enough this “problem” is not just mine and in some respects Darwin should be proud. According to Freakonomics.com:
“It has long been thought that nearsightedness is mostly a hereditary problem, but researchers led by Ian Morgan of Australian National University say the data suggest that environment has a lot more to do with it.
Reporting in the journal Lancet, the authors note that up to 90% of young adults in major East Asian countries, including China, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore and South Korea, are nearsighted. The overall rate of myopia in the U.K., by contrast, is about 20% to 30%.”
According to the aforementioned study, and others, there is an increasing prevalence of near sightedness globally and it is primarily the result of people spending too much time inside focused on small screens. Specifically, the bright indoor light stimulates the retinal transmitter dopamine, which is the structural basis of myopia and, for all intents and purposes, makes the eyes grow too big.
In the world in which many of us live working indoors and focusing on computer screens, this idea of environmental myopia is fine. That said, to the extent Armageddon actually arrives and our lives change meaningfully, long haul truck drivers would have a real advantage over many of us in a hunter gather world.
Back to the Global Macro Grind...
As the stock market year of 2014 winds down, environmentally caused near sightedness is really a good topic to contemplate as we head into 2015. It is actually, whether clinically diagnosed or not, an ailment that already effects many stock operators. Specifically, that is the over focus on short-term trends when thinking about and contemplating the future.
According to a summary from about a year ago, the venerable investment bank Goldman Sachs (and no offense to Goldman, as we probably could have picked on any major firm) made a number of key predictions for 2014, which included the following:
1) Oil – Oil will remain stable at current prices due to falling supply in some areas and political uncertainty in others;
2) China – Stable growth in China of 7.5% will be enough and give investors enough confidence to propel China higher in 2014;
3) Emerging markets – Expectation of rate hikes in emerging market as growth continues to accelerate.
Now to be fair, one area in which Goldman nailed it, at least according to this article, is that the Fed would remain on hold.
But in aggregate it reinforces the point, which is that the biggest challenge many stock operators face is actually themselves. Whether we call it environmental myopia or short termism, the risk is that we put too much credence in the recent past and project it forward. The classic example of this is probably oil.
While signs were emerging at the start of 2014 of an emerging production glut and strong U.S. dollar environment, very few, if any, prognosticators, predicted a total collapse in global energy prices. But as outlined in the Chart of the Day, this is exactly what happened.
So as we look forward into the stock market year of 2015, this biggest mistake we can make is likely to project the most recent past into the future. So does that mean that utilities are going to crash, oil is going to rally, and the ruble is set to become a safe haven? Likely not, but it does mean that if we all have one resolution in 2015 it is that we should become more aware of our person fallibilities.
As one of Hedgeye’s favorite academics Daniel Kahneman said about short termism:
“If owning stocks is a long-term project for you, following their changes constantly is a very, very bad idea. It's the worst possible thing you can do, because people are so sensitive to short-term losses. If you count your money every day, you'll be miserable.”
Despite the stress of short-term performance that many of you have to endure by the nature of the fund management business, Kahneman is definitely spot on as it relates to the emotional impact of focusing on short-term results in investing. This is the exact emotion, in fact, that causes many investors to sell low and buy high.
On a closing note, we’d like to thank all of your for continuing to support Hedgeye and our efforts to recreate Wall Street research in an accountable and transparent way. It’s been almost seven years since we started the firm and without the support of all of you it wouldn’t have been possible.
Our immediate-term Global Macro Risk Ranges are now :
UST 10yr Yield = 2.10-2.23%
SPX 2015-2115
VIX 12.85-19.95
YEN 118.49-121.66
Oil (WTI) 52.96-55.91
Gold 1168-1205
Keep your head up and stick on the ice,
Daryl G. Jones
Director of Research
