William Smead
Chief Executive Officer
Chief Investment Officer

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Dear Clients and Prospective Clients:

We at Smead Capital Management are not afraid to admire people who disagree with us. If someone sincerely believes that the stock market is going to do poorly over the next two years, puts their money where their mouth is and sticks to their guns, we have nothing against them. We don’t agree with them, but we can accept their position. They are Bears on the market and they most likely believe that price earnings ratios didn’t get low enough in March to justify a bottom or they believe that the debt accumulated in the last ten years will stifle economic growth and retard the financial system. They go by names like Roubini, Faber, Tice and Rogers. We have no problem with them and we think that the way they have scared everyone is going to make long-term buy and hold investors like us a ton of money.

However, there is a second kind of Bear in the marketplace and we consider them to be dishonest Bears. They are the hedge fund managers, mutual fund managers and individual investors who temporarily own some stocks, but own them with one foot out the door the entire time. This is the “Fast Money” crowd and they are looking for something to own for six weeks to three months. Jim Cramer is there poster child and the discount brokers and stock exchanges are their sponsors. They are the worst kind of momentum investors. We consider them bears because the way they are organized and postured makes for very little likelihood that they or their clients would gain the benefits from holding common stocks for many years. After all, over long stretches of time a significant part of what you make from owning common stocks comes from dividends. In affect they rent stocks rather than own them. They whip around ETFs, are attracted to momentum markets like Gold and Oil and love high levels of volatility. Included in this category are the hyper-inflation folks who are invested in commodity oriented common stocks and think they are going to make a great deal of money from an economic comeback that ruins everything with high levels of inflation like in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s.

We normally wouldn’t really care about these “Closet Bears”. Unfortunately, in this market cycle, they have ended up with way more of the existing capital than normal. It makes sense because after the decline from October of 2007 to March of 2009 most humans who have the courage to participate want to get out of the way quickly if things turn sour again. So you have the “Real Bears” who are in cash and short stocks, mortified from what happened this year. Then you have the “Closet Bears” long stocks for two months at a time with one foot out the door all along.

To be a “Real Bull” you have to be fully invested in quality stocks which are selected based on how well they might do over the long term. Peter Lynch is our poster child. He was asked in early March about the stock market and he said, “I’m the wrong guy to ask because I’m always bullish.” Watch on T.V. and in what you read. If you see a hedge fund or mutual fund manager say that they are bullish on the market and then explain that they are long Oil, Gold and Basic Materials, you are staring a bear in the face!

Warm Regards,

William Smead

The information contained in this missive represents SCM’s opinions, and should not be construed as personalized or individualized investment advice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. The securities identified and described in this missive do not represent all of the securities purchased or recommended for our clients. It should not be assumed that investing in these securities was or will be profitable. A list of all recommendations made by Smead Capital Management with in the past twelve month period is available upon request.

William Smead
Chief Executive Officer
Chief Investment Officer

Printable Version
Subscribe to the Missives Podcast
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Dear Clients and Prospective Clients:

When a market has been strong, there is no limit to the number of people who will tell you how good it is going to be for the foreseeable future. When a market has gone down for a long time, a multitude will tell you how far down it is going and how long the downtrend will last.

At Smead Capital Management we have developed a term for this that we call a “Well-Known Fact”. By definition (Smead Unabridged Dictionary), a “Well-Known Fact” is a body of economic information which is known by all market participants and has been acted upon by nearly everyone who could care or has the financial wherewithal to care to act. It is best understood through the comments of former Intel CEO, Andy Grove, who said that the best advice he ever got in business came from a professor at the City College of New York. The professor said, “When everyone knows that something is so, nobody knows nothin’.” By nothin’ the professor infers nothing that could do you any good. When everyone believes a fact and has acted on it to an extreme, nothing good can come to you from believing it from an investment standpoint.

Here is a series of “Well-Known Facts” from recent history. Also noted are the assets that were purchased to act on the fact and the end result of the extreme:

Fact 1: The Internet will change our lives. — Asset Purchased: Tech Stocks — Result: From the peak of early 2000, tech stocks fell 80% in 2.5 years.

Fact 2: Residential Real Estate only goes up. — Asset Purchased: Homes in sunshine states of Arizona, Florida, Nevada and California. — Result: 40-50% price drops and a majority of the nation’s foreclosures.

Fact 3: Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) will grow faster than the industrialized world. — Assets Purchased: Commodities and Emerging Market Mutual Funds. — Result: Commodities drop 60-80% and Emerging Markets fall 50-70%.

At the extreme, whatever value that is connected to the assets involved with the “well-known fact” doesn’t matter in either direction and there is no shortage of both expert and non-expert opinion on how high or low the asset prices will go. Henry Blodgett saw the moon for Qualcomm and internet stocks in 1999. No shortage of cable shows taught you to “Flip this House” in 2005. And in 2008, Goldman Sachs’ Oil analyst put a $200-250 price possibility on a barrel of oil. Not to mention T. Boone Pickens, who has been attempting to talk oil prices up since it peaked at $147 per barrel last year.

In the opinion of SCM, here is the new “Well-Known Fact”.

Fact 4: The massive amount of borrowing attached to homes and personal finances in the U.S. over the last ten years dooms us to a three to four-year recession/depression which is not treatable by policy makers and could ultimately cause a total collapse of our financial system. — Assets Purchased: U.S. Treasury Bills, Notes and Bonds; Gold and “virtuous non-U.S. currencies”. — Assets Sold: Common Stocks including the finest companies in America. – Experts: Nouriel Roubini, Jimmy Rogers, Marc Faber, etc., etc. etc.

The T-bills and gold are easy for us to see through. There is a bubble of fear and uncertainty. Therefore, any asset which seems to give protection against fear should get way over-priced at the height of the fear. We wonder how people are going to feel about earning little or no interest for years. I drove by a guy on Pima Road in North Scottsdale today selling Safes on the side of the road. Gun sales are through the roof. These actually make more sense to me than the money-market funds, savings accounts, CD’s and T-bills. If the premier U.S. companies don’t survive and prosper, there will be no tax revenue to insure deposits, back money-market funds and redeem government debt. If our Disney, Abbott Labs and WalMart don’t make it, you need a one-acre garden, a nearby water supply and a set of big guns and lots of ammo.

As bad as this decline has beaten our stocks in the short-run, you’d think that we wouldn’t love it just as much as the other “well-known facts”. You’d be wrong. This one is possibly setting up faithful and persevering blue-chip stock investors for the positive ride of their lifetime. First, today’s Wall Street Journal is talking about an additional decline of more than 20% off a stock market which has been pummeled more than any market other than the 1929-32 “Great Depression” decline. Second, sentiment polls from the American Association of Individual Investors and Bespoke Research show that a MAJORITY of market participants believe that the stock market will fall more than 20% from here. Third, our wonderful and well-trained clients have called me more times in the last two weeks to tell me that the market is going down more and is going down for another one to two years. All these prognostications coming from folks we’ve worked for for years and have n ever had an personal opinion about the short-term stock market direction prior to this year.Fourth, there is more cash on the sidelines in money-market funds relative to total U.S. stock market capitalization than any time in the last 60 years.

We could go on all day with additional evidence, but we think you get the picture. We believe there has probably never been a better day to buy quality U.S. stocks (for a two to three-year holding period) in our lifetime than today. The reason is that everyone knows that the opposite is so and, therefore, “nobody knows nothin’.”

BUY-BUY-BUY

Warm Regards,

William Smead

The securities identified and described in this missive do not represent all of the securities purchased or recommended for our clients. It should not be assumed that investing in these securities was or will be profitable. A list of all recommendations made by Smead Capital Management with in the past twelve month period is available upon request.