William Smead
Chief Executive Officer
Chief Investment Officer

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Dear Clients and Prospective Clients:

Paul Lim is a business writer for the New York Times and he had an interesting thesis in his article on July 19th entitled, “Picking Winners in the Next Bull Market”. He correctly acknowledged that it would be highly unusual for the leading sector of the previous Bull Market to lead the next one. For this reason, he advised hesitation on an urge to chase the emerging markets and those companies (like oil) which benefitted most from the last bull market. We can give you numerous examples from our 29 years in the investment business which back up his thesis.

From the 1974 low of 550 on the Dow Jones Industrial Average to the 1983 high around 1200, technology companies with fast earnings growth were popular. This wave crested soon after Apple and Genentech went public. Investors wanted fast growth to offset double-digit inflation rates and handed out high P/E ratios to those fast growers. When Paul Volker broke the back of inflation through tight credit and President Reagan stood down the Air-Traffic Controllers in late 1981, the game changed. Inflation began to decelerate and investor interest moved away from these popular names. Technology stocks spent seven to eight years in the dumper during a Roaring Bull Market which took the Dow to 3000 by 1990. The high P/E ratios came back to haunt investors.

Paul used the example of the Tech stocks leading the Bull Market which peaked in early 2000. The next Bull Market started in late 2002 and just like today, some of the best early gains came from the last Bull Market’s leaders—Technology. It was a head fake. Energy and emerging markets turned out to be the big winners. Microsoft, Cisco and Intel skipped the last Bull Market for the most part.

More important to us is who could lead the next Bull Market in U.S. stocks. To understand which groups might be the best place to be you have to ask what were the characteristics at the bottom of prior market lows of the leading sector. First, they were out of favor. This is primarily from poor stock price performance, but also usually because of bad news incorporated in their stock prices which they have no control over. The sector to buy at the 1982 low was consumer staples. The stocks were depressed and they were about to gain the economic benefit of commodity prices dropping dramatically. Lower input prices expanded profit margins and earnings. Coke, Pepsi, Kraft, General Mills, General Foods and Beatrice Foods were some of the names that lead that 1980’s Bull Market.

Second, to be the leading sector of the next Bull Market it helps to be the center of attention of the worst things that happened in the prior Bear Market. Banks and Savings and Loan institutions couldn’t have been any more out of favor coming out of our national financial crisis between 1988 and 1992. They were despised for being the heart of the problem which caused the first President Bush to not get re-elected because it was “the economy, stupid”. With Enron and the collapse of energy trading in 2001 and 2002 leading the Bear Market down, it was only natural that energy-related stocks bottomed at such depressed prices that they were a powerhouse for stock buyers from 2002 to 2007.

Third, and most importantly, the Bull Market’s leading sector offered its future success at a huge discount to the future success of other sectors and the market itself. We measure this by comparing P/E ratios and dividend payout ratios to the market overall and to the sector compared to the last 30 to 40 years. In other words, to find good long-term sectors to roost in, you try to buy the most future success for the least amount of money. What a novel concept!

Which group or sector fits these characteristics today? We believe the drug stocks are an obvious candidate. They have some of the lowest P/E ratios they’ve had in 20 years and they pay way above average dividends to the market. Their stocks have been poor performers since 2001 and they have the threat of socialized medicine breathing down their neck. Ironically, we also believe they are a great way to play the economic growth in emerging markets (see our missive “Playing Emerging Markets”).

Best Wishes,

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

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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.

We believe we will succeed over the next ten years because the quality and financial strength of our companies leads them to survival and survival leads to prosperity. The number one damager of long-term profitability is competition. How many new drug companies are being funded by the IPO’s of Common Stock? How many phone and cable companies? How many brand-name retailers are appearing on the seen? How many new asset custodians and money managers? How many software or technology consulting firms are debuting? The answer is nearly zero and in fact the opposite is happening! Our companies are seeing their competitors decline or disappear in direct industry competition and investment alternatives are dropping like flies. How about those hot commodities and commodity-related stocks? How about those emerging international stock markets? How about those glamour tech stocks?

Is the population of the world shrinking? In the U.S. we are delivering the most babies (4.3 million last year) since the height of the baby boom in 1957. China and India should create massive new markets for pharmaceuticals, entertainment, software, consulting and money management/custodianship. More customers and fewer competitors, sounds like a dream come true.

History is on our side! U.S. investors were doomed to succeed in 1932, 1942, 1974, 1982 and 1990. They were blessed to fail in 1929, 1966 and 1999.

We have no idea when this panic hits bottom. However, if you can survive this, we believe you are doomed to succeed!

Warmest regards,

William Smead