5 Steps to Managing Risk as a Microfinancier

It might surprise some of you that lending money to middle-class American home owners to buy houses may be much riskier than lending money to Bangladeshi farmers to buy their first cellphones. (The beauty of diversification at work here?)

I have invited guest blogger Heather Johnson to explain microfinancing, and the quantitative risk management tools available if you want to do it yourself.

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5 Steps to Managing Risk as a Microfinancier

By Heather Johnson

Microfinancing is a growing trend among investors, as it offers low-risk money opportunities and a way to bring social change to poverty-stricken communities. "Low-risk" doesn't equal "no risk," of course, so many potential microlenders are keen to learn the ins and outs of credit risk management in this arena. After all, most microborrowers have poor credit or no credit at all. A villager who needs $200 for starting a third-world chicken farm isn't going to fare well in that department, as you can imagine.

The good news is, even in the event of a loan delinquency, you won't be losing a substantial amount of money. Most microloans range from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. Any losses are unfortunate, though, so you will want to manage your microlending risks and keep loan delinquencies to a minimum.

Here are five steps to managing your risk as a microfinancier:

1. Research Your Borrower – If you're lending through a site, such as Prosper, then you will have access to your borrower's profile and credit reports. However, don’t be afraid to ask more questions if you have any doubts about this person's ability to repay the loan. If you are lending the money through other channels, definitely start with the credit reports and interview the borrower.
2. Lend With a Group – Though this won't make your borrower any more likely to repay a loan, lending with a group will help to spread out the cost and share responsibility. In other words, you will be risking less money and will have other people with the same interests to consult with.
3. Use Analytical Tools – Third-party applications can help you determine what is working best with your microlending. Both seasoned microlenders and newcomers are highly encouraged to use such tools. Microfinance sites that come with excellent built-in tools include Trickle Up, Opportunity International and Heifer International.
4. Provide Incentives – Consider an incentive program for those who pay on time. A small, inexpensive gift will be very appreciated by those living in third-world countries. Lenders have used food, such as rice or corn meal, as a bonus.
5. Be Proactive in Collecting – This doesn't mean you should harass your borrowers. However, you should research your delinquent accounts as soon as payments are late, rather than letting them go into default. There could be a simple breakdown in communication or an emergency on the borrower's end.

One of the biggest draws of microfinancing is the relatively low risk involved. However, that doesn't mean that you will have a 100% success rate. The best way to get your feet wet is to start with a small loan. Something as low as $100 will let you learn the process and allow you to become more comfortable with the system. Microfinancing isn't for everyone, but you may just find your niche with this kind of investment.

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Heather Johnson is a freelance finance and economics writer, as well as a regular contributor for CurrencyTrading.net, a site for currency trading and forex trading information. Heather welcomes comments and freelancing job inquiries at her email address heatherjohnson2323@gmail.com .

Upcoming seminar on subprime mortgage crisis

For readers who live in the New York area, here is an interesting upcoming seminar at Columbia University:

The subprime mortgage crisis of 2007: Anatomy of a market failure

Date: 03-10-2008
Start Time: 6:00pm
End Time: 7:30pm
Speaker: Kenneth A. Posner, Morgan Stanley
Location: 412 Schapiro CEPSR, Davis Auditorium


ABSTRACT

As home prices soared in 2004-5, consumers, realtors, mortgage lenders,
homebuilders, and investment banks all benefited. But few thought the good
times would last -- after all, everyone had learned to recognize a bubble
when they saw one. If that's the case, how did mortgage losses turn out so
large, and why do we find ourselves today confronting a major financial
crisis? This presentation will survey the damage resulting from the
subprime mortgage crash and provide a possible explanation for the magnitude
of the surprise which may be relevant to investors and risk managers in
other markets.


BIO

Kenneth Posner is a managing director and head of the mortgage finance and
specialty finance equity research team. Prior to joining the Equity Research
department in 1995, Ken worked in Morgan Stanley's investment banking group,
where he focused on commercial real estate transactions. He previously
served as a captain of infantry in the US Army, and was airborne and ranger
qualified. Ken earned a B.A. from Yale University in 1985 and an M.B.A. with
honors from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business in 1991.
He is a Certified Public Accountant and holds the Chartered Financial
Analyst and Financial Risk Manager designations

Had it been really that bad?

According to Eurekahedge Hedge Fund Index, hedge funds had the worst performance in eight years during this past January. And long-short equity funds had the poorest performance among them all.

Looking for momentum? Check outside the US

Momentum vs. mean-reversion has been a perennial theme in investing, not least quantitative investing. My contention has always been that momentum strategies are generally less reliable than mean-reversal strategies. (See here or here.) My reader Mr. J. Rigg told me about a recent article in the Financial Times suggesting that momentum strategies are alive and well, according to the research by Prof. Elroy Dimson et al at the London Business School. The strategy is very simple: buy the stocks with the highest returns in, say, the last 12 months, short the ones with the lowest returns, and hold for, say, 1 month. If you run this strategy for the top 100 UK stocks from 1900 to 2007, the average annualized return before costs is about 10%.

There are, however, a number of caveats worth noting in this study:

First, it is very transaction-costly to implement momentum strategies for small or even mid-cap stocks. If you factor in costs, 10% can easily become 5% -- not an impressive number even for a dollar-neutral strategy. (Though one should note that the infrequent rebalancing renders transaction costs consideration less important.)

Second, the drawdown durations are quite lengthy -- sometimes exceeding 2 years. This is not acceptable performance for many hedge funds. Such lengthy drawdowns have been a common feature of many momentum strategies that I have personally studied and traded.

Third, and most interestingly, in the period 2001-2007, this momentum strategy has stopped working altogether for the US market, while continuing to deliver positive returns in other markets!

What may be the reason for this dichotomy between US and international markets? Momentum strategies generally derive their power from the slow diffusion and analysis of information: if all investors are simultaneously aware of all the relevant financial information about a company and can analyze the significance of the information instantaneously, they will have come to a consensus fair market value instantaneously and no momentum in the price will result. Hence perhaps the disappearance of momentum in the US equity market means what most people know already: that it is the most efficient equity market of all.

Are quant strategies in trouble yet again?

There were reports that quant strategies have been suffering again in January, given the market turmoil generated partly by the Societe Generale scandal. Mr. Matthew Rothman of Lehman Brothers pinned the blame on momentum strategies (Hat tip: 1440 Wall Street). I partly agree with that assessment, but the full picture is more nuanced.

As I have written in my previous post, December has been a disastrous month for value (or mean-reverting) strategies, based on both public commentaries and personal experience. Yet, as always, mean-reverting strategies bounced back in January and all the pain is gone. In fact, the Societe Generale scandal and the subsequent 1/22 Fed bailout has been a huge bonanza to mean-reversion traders, just like the August disaster had been. (Remember: mean-reversion traders profit from providing liquidity during market panic.) Meanwhile, though December has been a good month for momentum strategies, January has become increasingly inhospitable to them. But one should not be surprised at all. As I have explained before, momentum strategies generally tend to be more unstable and have lower Sharpe ratios than reversal strategies. Any wise quantitative portfolio managers would always allocate a lower proportion of capital to momentum strategies than to reversal strategies. Hence it is no excuse at all to say that a quant portfolio has been hurt by losses in momentum trading -- they are to be expected quite frequently!

A sea of pain

This Economist Magazine article confirms my personal experience that value investing is in a sea of pain at the moment. The reasons are quite different from the last time (during the dotcom era) when value investing was in the doldrums. This time around, people are not full of euphoria about the prospects of growth stocks -- they are just getting increasingly gloomy of value stocks which seem to be getting cheaper by the minute.

Seasonal trades in stocks

Readers of this blog have seen my discussions of various seasonal trades in commodities futures (e.g. see this article). Recently, Mark Hulbert of the NYTimes drew our attention to a seasonal trade in stocks. The strategy is very simple: each month, buy a number of stocks that performed the best in the same month a year earlier, and short the same number of stocks that performed poorest in that month a year earlier. The average annual return is more than 13% before transaction costs, and since it is market neutral, this already considerable return can be leveraged to 2 or 3 times higher. Also, since it turns over the stocks only once a month, transaction costs should not be a major problem. The strategy was developed by Profs. Steven Heston and Ronnie Sadka, and details can be found online here. Besides its simplicity, the strategy is not as affected by survivorship bias in the data set as a mean-reverting strategy, since survivorship bias would tend to lower its backtest performance by excluding very poorly performing stocks that we would short. All in all, it seems to be a market neutral strategy made for retail trading!

Economist article on quant funds

The media seems to have an endless fascination with quant funds. Here is the latest article from the Economist magazine, summarizing the postmortem published by several researchers. (Hat tip, once again, to reader Mr. J. Rigg.)

The key points are as follows:

1) Quant funds are now becoming the primary market makers in many securities, which normally would provide liquidity and decrease volatility.

2) Unlike ordinary market makers, however, quant funds are highly leveraged.

3) Because of the high leverage, in the face of large losses these market-making quant funds are forced to liquidate their assets instead of buying them, thus behaving in a way opposite to ordinary market makers just when the need for liquidity is direst.

4) Thus quant funds are actually contributing to instability of the market despite their apparent market-making function.

Fortunately, when all else has gone wrong, there is alway Mr. Bernanke to count on ...

Emerging markets stocks vs. natural resource stocks

Emerging market stocks have been reaching new highs almost everyday (see this article in the Economist magazine), and the natural resource sector has been on a tear as well. Given the giddy valuations of both sectors, which one is a better relative buy at this point? For those of you who have been following the IGE-EEM spread that I proposed before, its value is at an all-time-low these days -- it was at -6.77 standard deviations. Given their historical cointegration, I wouldn't be surprised if it will revert to a more sane value in the near future.

How a mean-reversion strategy performed in August

Prof. Andrew Lo and Mr. Amir Khandani at MIT recently wrote a paper on "What Happened To The Quants In August 2007?" (Hat tip to my reader Mr. J. Rigg for the article). Most of their conclusions confirm what many observers already suspected: that the loss is likely due to the simultaneous forced liquidation of portfolios holding similar positions by various quantitative funds. What is noteworthy, however, is that they constructed a mean-reversion strategy and observed what happened to it during August. This strategy is very simple: buy the stocks with the worst previous 1-day returns, and short the ones with the best previous 1-day returns. Despite its utter simplicity, this strategy has had great performance since 1995, ignoring transaction costs. The Sharpe ratio was an astounding 53.87 in 1995, gradually decreasing to 4.47 in 2006. However, the strategy also had a disastrous few days on August 7-9, suffering a cumulative (arithmetic) return of -6.85% in those 3 days. Then on August 10, it rebounded, like the rest of the quant funds, with a return of 5.92%, almost reversing all of its previous losses. For me, this experiment reveals three interesting points: 1) a simple price factor seems to capture most of the performance of the complex factor models run by the gigantic hedge funds; 2) even technical mean-reverting factors suffer losses, not just momentum (growth) factors based on fundamentals; and 3) if one wants to avoid disasters and enjoy spectacular returns, even a one-day holding period is too long. I haven't done the experiment myself yet, but I bet that if we were to liquidate the portfolio at market close each day, not only would we avoid the loss of -6.85% in those 3 days, but would probably end up with a positive return of a similar magnitude!

So how much did quantitative strategies actually lose last quarter?

The numbers have started to come in: Morgan Stanley lost $480MM last quarter due to quantitative trading -- about 10% of operating profits.

Hedge fund replication

I wrote about how hedge fund returns can be replicated with simple factor models. I just learn that IndexIQ, a company in Rye Brook, NY, has just launched such products available to retail investors as managed accounts.

More discussion on returns, risk and leverage

Previously I discussed an important debate on whether it is better to increase a portfolio's return by taking on more risks (e.g. holding high-beta stocks), or by increasing leverage but holding low-risk assets. A reader Mr. F. Sudirga has kindly send me some other research papers supporting the conclusion that increasing leverage is the preferred way.

In a paper titled "Risk Parity Portfolios", Dr. Edward Qian at PanAgora Asset Management argued that a typical 60-40 asset allocation between stocks and bonds is not optimal because it is overweighted with risky assets (stocks in this case). Instead, to achieve a higher Sharpe ratio while maintaining the same risk level as the 60-40 portfolio, Dr. Qian recommended a 23-77 allocation while leveraging the entire portfolio by 1.8. The stock-bond dichotomy is for illustration only -- the results can be improved further by including other asset classes such as commodities.

The only reservation I have with all this enthusiasm with increasing leverage is one that many risk-managers are aware of: most of the research uses concepts such as standard deviations to measure risk. But as the LTCM debacle as well as the recent subprime mortgage meltdown has reminded us, risky events have fat-tailed distributions. Therefore, one should be very wary of using standard deviation as the sole determinant of leverage.

Whatever happened to the XLE-USO spread?

Recently Mr. Teetor, a subscriber of mine, has posted an enthusiastic comment on trading the XLE-USO spread that I suggested. While Mr. Teetor has a lot of success trading this spread, I must say that I have lost faith in the cointegrating characteristic of this spread because of two reasons:

1) The spread appeared to have experienced a regime-shift since the historic backtest period before August 2006: the out-of-sample performance of the spread since then did not support cointegration; and

2) The fundamental argument in support of cointegration between XLE and USO fell apart upon closer investigation.

The two reasons are, I believe, intertwined. Unlike GLD (part of a much more cointegrating spread that I discussed and tracked in my premium content area), USO does not actually hold commodity assets in its portfolio. It holds nearby futures contracts in oil. When the USO fund started trading in April 2006, its price per share was very close to the spot oil price. Now, however, USO is trading at about $53, while spot oil price is at about $70.6. How can a fund that is supposed to reflect oil price diverge so much from it after a year and 5 months? The reason is that the oil futures market has been in contango since 2005 or so, i.e. far month futures costs more than the nearby contracts, which results in negative roll-yield for long position in oil futures. In the historic period from which the XLE-USO cointegration relation was established, oil futures market exhibited backwardation: far month futures cost less than nearby futures. This regime shift partially explains the breakdown of the cointegration relation in the present out-of-sample period.

The lesson I have learned from all these is to avoid analyzing cointegration relation when either side of a spread involves futures contracts at different points of the forward curve, at least on a time-scale when the shape of that curve might change. (I argued before that XLE, the other side of the spread, can be modeled as an average over the entire forward curve.) Meanwhile, the fund manager of USO would really have done investors a much better favor by getting their hands dirty, leasing some oil storage tanks and buying some real oil assets rather than keeping their hands clean and dealing in futures contracts alone. After all, retail investors like myself can just as easily buy oil futures ourselves, but we can't very well go out and rent an oil tank.

CIO Magazine Innovation and IT Strategy blog

Ms. Elana Varon who writes the CIO Magazine's Innovation and IT Strategy blog quoted me today in saying that some quantitative investment models are over-engineered. This old article of mine is an elaboration of my view on this.

The Perils of Momentum Strategies

Not so long ago I was an agnostic with respect to choosing between mean-reverting and momentum models: I felt that depending on the particular model or environment, each can be profitable. Lately, however, I am increasingly skeptical about the long-term profitability of momentum models. The main reason is the increasing competition among traders, algorithmic or otherwise.

As I mentioned in my previous post, when more and more traders decide to adopt mean-reverting strategies, all they do is to eliminate the trading opportunity. The market becomes efficient, and nobody makes any money, but nobody loses either. In contrast, when more and more traders decide to adopt momentum strategies, the momentum will be established sooner and sooner. For e.g. in the case of event-driven strategies which are mostly momentum-based, the new equilibrium price will have been established almost instantaneously after the event is publicly disclosed. Under this circumstance, any momentum trades that are entered just a little bit late will not only suffer zero profit, but will likely suffer losses as mean-reversion almost inevitably takes over. But how soon do we need to enter in order to avoid this fate? (It can't be too soon either because often a trend need to be established first in order to trigger an entry signal.) It is unfortunately a moving target as competition increases: 1 day earlier might work now, but may not be sufficient a few months from now. (The exit trade also suffers the same problem, as we don't know how long the momentum will last.) It is a dangerous game to play.

Indeed, time is often a friend of the mean-reversion trader: the longer s/he waits, perhaps the more profitable the trading opportunity. And if s/he enters too early and suffers a loss, s/he can always double the position. As I explained in a previous article, stop-loss should generally not be applied to mean-reverting trades on a short time-scale. So even if the trader does not double-up the position, an eventual re-couping of the loss is more than likely. On the other hand, time is an enemy of the momentum trader: if s/he loses the first-mover advantage and suffers heavy loss, I argued in that article that a stop-loss is advised, and thus the loss is forever locked-in.

Given this asymmetry, it is no wonder that algorithmic traders have been warning me long ago that it is hard to find a profitable momentum trade. And I was silly enough not to pay heed to them until now.

Further debate on factor models

A reader from a hedge fund (who wishes to remain anonymous) sends me some thoughtful comments about factor models. He has graciously allowed me to reprint them here:

"With regards to your blog entry, 'The Robin Hood regime': this weekend I was actually also thinking about the philosophy behind factor models which you allude to in the post. I am wondering if you have any other thoughts as to what service factor models provide? Relegating them to 'just arrogant bets on the correctness of the managers' convictions' isn’t completely intellectually satisfying to me.

I look at factors as such: the returns I get for exposure to various factors can come either because the market is inefficient and systematically misprices those factors (alpha), and/or because I am providing some service via the exposure (and collecting some kind of risk premium associated with that service). My question #1 to you is, are you convinced that all of the returns to factor models are indeed simply from risk premiums and not alpha? If alpha exists, it’s less clear that a service needs to be provided to the market, at least to me.

However, let’s assume (as I believe your boss did) that in the long run, the market is efficient. Then, you will be compensated for factor exposure only by bearing some risk or providing some service. In my mind, some particular conviction of a manager doesn’t necessarily qualify for a risk factor in and of itself - I think we agree on that point. But are there possible fundamental, valuation-based explanations behind these factors? Perhaps low VALUE companies are generally those companies with bad recent performance but which are expected to turnaround / mean-revert (as you somewhat suggest in your post) and the risk you bear when buying a low P/E company is “turnaround risk”. Or perhaps high MOMENTUM companies are companies riding an industry trend and you are bearing “trend continuation risk”. So, my question #2 to you is, are you convinced that there are no such explanations?

If factor models do indeed work, it seems to me that there must either be real risks behind the factors, or alpha, or both."

And here is my response:

"I believe the service that some value factors provide is the efficient allocation of capital to those companies that deserve them, just like any value investors do. In this case, the factors hope to identify these companies faster than humans can, and therefore bring capital to them sooner. I have no argument with these factors as they also provide liquidity, albeit on a longer time-scale. However, with regard to various momentum factors, they are in fact just betting on certain behavioral characteristics of investors, or on the slow dissemination of news, etc. You can argue that they provide a service by improving the efficiency with which information about companies disseminate. But the problem is that once everybody are using these momentum factors, the market becomes efficient and any further bets generate losses.

So I am quite willing to accept that many of these (momentum) factors represent alpha, but these factors are generating more losses as more investors employ them. I am also willing to accept that many of the (value) factors represent risk premia. As more investors employ these, the profit goes to zero, but fortunately not negative as the risk also disappears."

The "failed" factors have reverted

As I said in my CNBC interview, investors just got to be patient with the factor models. Sure enough, we are seeing reports that the large drawdown suffered by these models has already reverted as of Friday.

The Robin Hood regime

It has become apparent to me in the last month that there has been a massive transfer of wealth from the gigantic hedge funds running factor models to many day-traders with accounts less than $10M. I call this the Robin Hood regime (regime being a common technical term referring to a particular trading environment, as in "this is a mean-reverting regime"). Many, many day-traders that I heard from have had one of their best months in a long while. Is this just luck, or is there a deeper explanation?

I believe that there is a philosophical difference between factor models and many of the mean-reverting strategies that day-traders like to employ, a difference that works to the day-traders' favor. I recall a wise musing from one of my former bosses: he believes that a trading strategy will be profitable in the long run only if it performs a service for other market participants. The service that mean-reverting strategies performs is the provision of liquidity, in particular, short-term liquidity. What service does factor models provide? They seem to be just arrogant bets on the correctness of the managers' convictions. For e.g. I believe that stocks with good earnings will rise in value. Or, I believe that stocks with increasing price momentum will continue in that momentum. True, most of the time the convictions of the best managers are correct, and many of these convictions are actually mean-reverting as well (for e.g. the "value" factors). But on average, a factor model may take away as much liquidity from the market as it provides. And sooner or later, some of these convictions are wrong. Maybe not wrong for very long, but long enough to cause investors' panic. This may be part of what we are seeing recently.

Now am I advocating that every gigantic fund simply just switch from factor models to pure mean-reverting strategies? No: that would be impractical when the portfolios involved are in the tens of billions. If everybody run mean-reverting strategies, there will hardly be any mean-reversion left to profit from. (Look what happened to pair-trading in the last few years.) When you are an investor in a multi-billion fund, and you expect the fund to deliver higher returns than the risk-free rate, you just have to accept that high short-term returns volatilities will be part of the bargain, just like any long-term investments.

CNBC Interview video

Here is the link to my interview on why quantitative models are losing money of late: