Podcast Episode 49: Bear or No Bear? | OK, It’s a Bear.

In this episode Josh & Colin discuss how, when we recorded this, we weren’t officially in a Bear market. However, things have changed. Importantly, the message of the podcast remains salient – no matter what the market condition. So listen in as we discuss whether or not a bear market matters.

Episode Transcript

BARENAKED MONEY PODCAST: EPISODE 49

Bear or No Bear? | OK, It’s a Bear.

Announcer:
You’re about to get lucky with the Barenaked Money Podcast. The show that gives you the naked truth about personal finance with your hosts, Josh Sheluk and Colin White, portfolio managers with WLWP wealth planners, iA Private Wealth

Colin White:
Editor’s note. Well, not actually the editor. The editor told me to make this note. Following excerpt from a conversation between Josh and I predated the official start of a bear market in the U.S. markets. So yeah, it has happened, but this following presentation does contain some interesting salient points. So it’s still worth listening to, but please ignore the part where we talk about the fact we’re not in a bear market and that would be great. Thank you very much and thanks to our editor. Welcome to the next episode of Barenaked Money, hot off the presses, and this one’s going to be very particularly negative to a point in time. We’re going to talk a little bit about the market fluctuations recently. More generally, some of the lessons that maybe can be learned or relearned or reinforced over the last little bit. So Josh, I’m going to throw it to you. What’s happening with the markets? Can you explain that to me?

Josh Sheluk:
It’s been a spicy year. I think I use-

Colin White:
Spicy.

Josh Sheluk:
Yeah, I’ve used the word spicy a bunch this year, but that’s how it’s been. It’s been tough. It’s been a bit of a slog. So as of today, we sit here kind of early June. Global stock markets are down about 15% on the year. So not a great start to the year for stocks, for sure. Canadian stocks fared quite a bit better than their global counterparts. Most of this out performance in Canada, and they’re still down slightly, but closer to flat than down 15% for sure. Most of this out performance in Canada has come from the energy and material sector. So anything resource related really has been driving the Canadian market. If you’ve filled up your, your car with gas or bought lumber or any supplies for building a place over the last little while, you know exactly what we’re talking about, those types of sort of raw materials have gone up a lot in value and that’s really been, been driving the performance of the Canadian stock market.

Josh Sheluk:
Canadian bonds down about 11% this year, so that may not sound too bad relative to the global stocks that I just told you about, but this is the worst start to bond markets in all of recorded history and that’s not a hyperbole. So it has been a very tough year for bonds. So stocks down, bonds down, very unusual. I’ll just mention quickly in the years that we can track a bond index and a stock index, so back to 1970, we’ve never had a calendar year when stocks and bonds have ended the year both down. So we sit here today, coming up on mid-year and both global stocks and bonds are down by double digits or so. If we ended the year today, that would be the first time both those markets were down in the same calendar year in all of recorded history. So in a lot of ways, it has been an unprecedented year, I guess.

Colin White:
Yeah. It’s funny how often we say that and I guess it just goes to show relying completely on history in any kind of detail is going to lead you open to surprises. These things can happen for sure. I started to see that the term bear market got thrown around a little bit specific to a couple markets. So maybe you could refresh our listeners, Josh, on the definition of a bear market, what that signifies.

Josh Sheluk:
Yeah. There’s no definition of a bear market. There’s no specific level that a market has to get to be in a bear market. The general consensus is that a bear market is when stock markets go down 20% or more. So we didn’t quite touch that. I don’t think we touched 20% down. Did we Colin?

Colin White:
No, no, we didn’t quite touch it. We got close enough that the headlines were showing up. It was like they were almost hoping for it.

Josh Sheluk:
Yeah. So yeah, I guess technically we haven’t hit a bear market yet. It kind of feels like we’re in a bear market to me. Maybe it’s more of a feeling than an actual precise definition. I don’t know how you ascribe something to a feeling like that, but because this year, because both stocks and bonds are down, which are major components in basically every investor’s portfolio and they’re both down substantially. I think that it feels worse this year and it feels like a bear market this year, even though, maybe by that definition that has been given to it, it’s not actually

Colin White:
Well, yeah. I guess this just goes to preparing people if we cross that threshold in the stock market, you’re not in a bear market, a bear market has happened and that’s just, by definition, how far it’s pulled back. Largely, it’s how it’s judged and that’s where you’ll see the headlines. I mean, but again, things pulled back 20%, not everything probably lost 20% of its value. There’s the opportunity to jump in and take advantage of things.

Josh Sheluk:
Well, the thing that I find funny about this is there’s been a whole bunch of times for whatever reason in the past that stock markets have dropped like 19 point something percent. So if you went to somebody and said, “Well, your portfolio’s only down 19.7%. It’s not down 20%, you’re not in a bear market. You don’t have anything to complain about.” They’d look at you. Like you had four heads. Like, what the hell are you talking about?

Colin White:
Oh yeah. Yeah. So some of it’s abstract. I mean, again, this is just a bit of trying to prepare people for when they start hearing that term and why they’ll start hearing that term because again, a bear market sounds scary. Hey, do you want trivia? Do you know why they call it a bear market in a bull market, Josh?

Josh Sheluk:
No. Tell me.

Colin White:
You don’t know?

Josh Sheluk:
I don’t know. I don’t know this, yeah.

Colin White:
Well, because when a bear attacks it’s prey, it pushes it down and when a bull attacks its prey, it throws it up.

Josh Sheluk:
Okay.

Colin White:
See, bear and bull.

Josh Sheluk:
Yeah, interesting. Bears don’t attack prey though. They’re scavengers. We’ve been around bears lots.

Colin White:
Yeah. They tend to push stuff down. They’re they’re not a throw it up in the air kind of animal. So that’s the way to keep track of what bull and bear markets mean.

Josh Sheluk:
So I explained Colin, sort of the context of where we’re at today. Now let’s just look at stocks first. Is this highly unusual? Is this usual? How are you feeling? You’ve been through a number of these before? How are you feeling right now?

Colin White:
Well, it’s funny because I’ve been able to get my feelings in check. I still wake up and I have that pit in my stomach, “Ah, crap.” Then I quickly do the math in my head and go, “No, that’s the wrong reaction.” Because again, it is what it is. From how far it’s pulled back, it doesn’t compare to with the pandemic, and to me that was a much more uncertain time, but it resolved itself quicker. So this has been a bit more lingering. Where I think we’re up to three or four monthly statements now that have come out as negative. So it’s been more lingering I think, which has caused a little bit more grief for people. The quick selloff, and before you can react to quick rebound, okay, maybe that’s a little bit easier to stomach. So it’s starting to feel heavy, would be the way I would describe it. The longer it persists, the heavier it gets. Now again, if you’re accumulating that money at this phase, that’s fantastic. You should be hoping for it to get way worse.

Colin White:
If you’re spending money at this phase, well it’s a reminder to keep enough cash on hand to be able to ride out storms like this. I think those are little lessons that come out of this, but for me, it’s getting heavy. It’s getting to the point where people are asking more pointed questions about, “Okay, what is the reason to be optimistic?” I mean, people that are looking for that hope a little bit more as time goes on, for sure.

Josh Sheluk:
Yeah. It’s it certainly seems to me that 2020 was, you mentioned it’s not nearly down as much as it was in 2020 when the pandemic hit and that’s true, but it feels like this one’s harder to deal with somehow. I don’t know if that’s the duration of it.

Colin White:
I think it’s the duration, but also, and it’s funny, everybody’s completely forgotten. We had a global pandemic where everything shut down and we were all sitting at home going, “Holy crap, how long are we going to be stuck at home?” The unknown factor there was off the charts. Everybody forgets that feeling. Everybody just says, “Oh, well that wasn’t a big deal.” I call. Yes, it was a big deal. No, you weren’t nearly this confident sitting in your house not knowing when you’re going to be able to get back out. No, of you’re really being honest with yourself, at the start of it there was a big, big, big list of unknowns as to if things were going to come back, how they were going to come back.

Colin White:
So I think that we’re very, very quick to forget those motions. The panic when Donald Trump became president, the financial collapse of 2008, those were all super emotional things in the moment, but we don’t remember emotion. That’s the funny thing. That’s why women have two kids. Anybody who remembered having their first child wouldn’t have a second one. So it’s almost part of the human condition to be able to forget things so that you can go on with life, right?

Josh Sheluk:
Yeah. I was listening to a podcast recently and the guy was talking about if you ask most people what was the best sort of decade in recent history? You’ll unanimously, not unanimously, but a lot of people will tell you that the fifties was the best period of time. It seems like they say that just because it’s sort of just far enough in the past that we don’t really know exactly what it was like. We’ve kind of forgotten all the painful things that have happened during that period of time. Right here and now, basically by every measurable standard we’re way better off today than we were in the fifties.

Josh Sheluk:
But people, for some reason seem to think that we were way better then. One of the things that actually, just to moderate that a little bit, one of the things where we’re a little bit better off today I would say is, the level of equality is much more even, whereas it’s getting a little bit extreme in a lot of senses today. But other than that, I mean, by every measurable standard things are way better today than they were in the fifties.

Colin White:
Well, I think the fifties one because of the base effect and you were comparing yourself to the forties. It was a World War, there’s millions of people dying. What happened in the fifties? Well, we weren’t at World War. Okay. Let’s be happy, right? The difference between the forties and the fifties would be almost immeasurable.

Josh Sheluk:
Yeah. Yeah, and you mentioned people kind of forget a lot of these things. I’ve had many people tell me over the last couple months, “Well, my portfolio has never been down this much before.” It’s like, “Yeah, it was. Two years ago.” I don’t know why it’s hard to remember. I guess we focus on the numbers a lot more than other people do.

Colin White:
Well, no, but again, the emotion and I throw it there as an example, but it is true. Childbirth is like that. You ask most women going through childbirth, “I’m never doing this again.” But the ability to forget hate, the ability to forget discomfort is, I think, truly one of the most powerful things of the human condition. It allows you to keep going, but it maybe causes you more pain because you keep walking into the same hot stove and I think this might be an example of that.

Josh Sheluk:
Right. Now, I know you haven’t seen anything exactly like this in the bond market before Colin, but given that you have more experience than I do in the business, does this remind you any period before, or is it flying completely in new territory right now?

Colin White:
Oh, it’s new territory, but it’s flying the territory that we’ve been predicting for 20 years. So this has been talked about for a solid 20 years, interest rates have been too low and obviously going to go higher. So there’s somebody out there going, “I’m right.” So this is what has been projected. But again, it catches everybody a little bit flatfooted when it actually happens because you stop looking for it and then it occurs and it’s like, “Well, okay. Yeah, I guess we were due.” But no, not in my lifetime because again, this bond interest rate cycle, if you go back is probably close to 40 years in length and I’ve only been in the industry a measly 30 years. So my whole career has been one way. So I guess you got to find somebody with more, more depth of experience than me to guide you through this, Josh.

Josh Sheluk:
Yeah, I guess so. We’ll have to hire somebody in their eighties or something like that.

Colin White:
There you go. So what lessons do we want people to take from what’s going on in the market right now, Josh? What useful information or what useful lessons does this teach us that we can relearn or be reminded of?

Josh Sheluk:
I think people always need to relearn or reteach themselves that the stock market is volatile and during periods of time, we’re not sure when these periods of time are going to be, you’re going to see big swings in it. So just to throw some numbers at you. So a lot of people are thinking right now, well, this is an unprecedented period of time. My portfolio’s gone down for four or five months in a row, extremely painful. Stock market’s way down. They have all these crazy things going on in the world. Well, I mentioned at the outset, stock market’s down about 15% this year. Since 2009 we’ve had, and we use this as a reference because this is sort of when we last came out of a pretty significant bear market, there’s been nine market corrections of more than 10% over that period of time.

Josh Sheluk:
So we were talking about a 13-ish year period, nine market corrections of more than 10%. Some significantly more than 10%. Stocks go down by 10% or more about two out of every three years. So as much as we can say this is an extremely unusual period of time, for stocks it’s really not that. This is something that happens more often than not. So for me, this is one big reminder, like, “Hey, the stock part of your portfolio’s going to be volatile.” That doesn’t make it a bad thing. Doesn’t make it a bad investment. In fact, this is actually what makes it a good investment. The volatility is the fee that you pay to get a higher return over time. So it’s almost like this is a feature and not a bug of the stock market because this is what’s going to drive higher, long term returns. But it’s good to remind yourself that, I’m going to see these painful periods from time to time.

Colin White:
Well, it allows you to recalibrate as well. I mean as much as people hate when I bring this up, you remember that capital gain you were worried about? It’s less of an issue now, so you can make maybe a change that you were holding off making, and it gives an opportunity to reposition a portfolio from time to time that may be getting stale. When you see things come down and there’s an opportunity to re-diversify or re-look at things and have ideas. So, I mean, there are opportunities in this and I’m certainly seeing much more within our group. There’s much more, I think the word excitement was even thrown around a couple weeks ago with the kinds of opportunities that are beginning to present themselves.

Colin White:
Trust me, it’s not a group that gets excited often. So to see a little bit of excitement in it, because again, this is where we go to work and try to suss out where the opportunity is and for rebalancing things are. I guess I’ll make the comment at this point as well about there are those who say, “Well, interest rates are obviously going to go up and I see you’ve been saying that for 20 years.” We agreed with that. I mean, within our group, yeah, interest rates are likely to go up at some point and there’s ways to mitigate these kinds of things.

Colin White:
We’re talking overall market, but when it comes to portfolio construction, there are ways to mitigate the negative aspects of what’s going on to a degree. So, I mean, there are ways, and again, we’ve put out a couple of podcasts talking about the technical aspect of portfolios and stuff like that. So while we’re talking about overall markets, again, individual portfolio constructions can mitigate some of the extreme fluctuations that we’re seeing in some markets.

Josh Sheluk:
Yeah. So, so let’s talk about portfolio construction, because I mentioned at the outset that since 1970, we’ve never had a year, a calendar year where stocks and bonds are both down in the same year and it looks like we’re on track for that this year. Do you think we should do anything different? Do you think the average investor should do anything different with regards to portfolio construction because we’ve experienced this this year?

Colin White:
Well, I don’t necessarily think, again, I don’t like people changing their risk appetite based on markets. Your risk appetite should be your risk appetite, but it is sort of… Like inflation coming back, it’s just a reminder of something that is there. So go back and take a look at your short term money. Do you really have enough money set aside to protect yourself, to buy yourself the time to let the rest of your portfolio do what it’s going to do? Inflation is a thing, so you got to take that into account as well. But I don’t think from an individual investor standpoint that you want to start, “Oh, I should be riskier now.” Or, “This is the time take risk off the table.” Your risk profile really shouldn’t change based on market conditions. Your risk profile should be based on your attitude, how comfortable you are with things, what your time horizon is, what you’re counting on the money for, all these other really super important things.

Colin White:
But to make changes to your risk profile at times like this, as a rule, no. I mean, for clients that we have in our discretionary management, we make slight moves from one side to the other, but they’re fairly small from a risk perspective, and they’re done with a great deal of caution. So, it is very complicated and difficult. So to a listener saying, “Hey, this is time to get more risky.” Easy they’re big shooter. Take about 50% off if you’re really sure this is the time to be getting riskier. Don’t take your rent money and put it in the market, because we could still see some more volatility.

Josh Sheluk:
Yeah, from a portfolio construction perspective, I wasn’t so much talking about risk level, but so stocks and bonds are both down. Do you introduce new things? Do you introduce gold? Do you introduce Bitcoin? Do, you go buy that rental property you’ve been salivating over for five years? Do you think we should be doing that type of thing?

Colin White:
Well, so somebody said to me just yesterday actually was like, “Yeah, I used to be a Long-Only investor, but I’ve got into alternative investments like pension.” Holy crap, did you read the brochure, right? So that is out there right now. Everybody’s talking about, “Oh, you’re just a Long-Only investor.” Saying it like it’s a negative thing. I don’t think you understand what that phrase means. So there’s more available in the alternative space and we’ve taken a look at it and we’ve dabbled at some of the alternative investments, but typically you’re giving up something. If you’re giving up liquidity, the risk profile can be a little bit more opaque in that space. It can have a role, but I’m not sure that this is necessarily the time to introduce those kind of investments. I mean, again, it’s one of those ones where there’s a big market for it because a lot of people are looking for it and it’s going to get very attractive, which is the barrier of entry in that space is very low.

Colin White:
So you got to be really careful when you start trying to diversify out a Long-Only portfolio. Because again, there’s a reason the vast majority of people are long investors, it’s because all that other stuff has got hair on it. Sometimes it’s difficult to figure out exactly where the lumps are, but yeah, there can be a role for that. I guess the other thing I ended up going off on, they may even edit all this out. The other soapbox I’ll get up on is, you’re not a pension fund. You’re not Warren Buffet. Don’t invest like a billionaire. Don’t invest like a pension fund. That’s not what you are. Just because the Canadian Pension Plan just bought an airport, New Zealand doesn’t mean you should own an airport in New Zealand.

Colin White:
It just doesn’t fit. The individual investing is way different than institutional investing. I don’t care what anybody tells you. There’s stuff to learn from it, for sure. But to try to follow it in long step and say the Yale Endowment has put 80% of its assets, real investments, whatever that means, and I’m pulling those numbers over the air, doesn’t mean it’s a good idea for you. So I’ll leave that piece at that. Did I miss anything Josh?

Josh Sheluk:
No, I think it’s a good point, I guess for me, I said to you yesterday, again, the stocks and bond markets have not been down on the same calendar year since 1970 and probably before that, because before that we didn’t have good bond index data, so I don’t think we can really measure it. Should you really be revolutionizing your approach to your portfolio based on something that has happened for the first time in 50 some odd years? I think the answer is no. If you told me that, yeah, something has changed where this is going to happen every year going forward, then yeah, of course you need to rethink your portfolio construction, but I just don’t believe that. If it has happened so infrequently in the past, what is to change that it’s going to happen so much more frequently going forward where you need to completely rethink your philosophy?

Colin White:
Well, what you’re talking about is a healthy skepticism, right? You’re right at this moment in time to say, let’s re-plan our portfolio for what’s going to happen 50 years from now. No there’s no benefit to that. If you were considering making any kind of a fundamental material change to your investment approach at this moment, I would just say an abundant caution. Because again, to design something that works in the margins, like we’re going through now, I mean, these are rarefied times to design something that works now.

Josh Sheluk:
Yeah. One out of 50 years.

Colin White:
Exactly. You want something that’s going to bat more the six out of seven or the five out of six years. If you can stick with a strategy that has been that kind of successful. Moneyball, there you go. You want to play Moneyball with your investments. It’s all about getting base hits and not about home runs, right?

Josh Sheluk:
Yeah, that’s right. So we haven’t talked a lot about the actual reasons for markets being down, stock markets, bond markets being down this year. I think that stuff’s pretty well publicized. So I don’t know if we need to rehash it too much, but let me ask you this Colin, for things to kind of turn around through the last half of the year, and for us to see better results going forward, what do you think needs to happen?

Colin White:
Well, markets tend to like clarity. So if there’s a clear direction going forward, if we could remove some of the uncertainty with what’s going on in Ukraine, or if we just get bored of it. Because again, we’ve had conflicts going on the planet for decades and we get really worried about them for a little while and then we seem to stop caring about them. So the resolution of that I think could cause an upswing. There’s expectations built into the market and I’m not sure what the most recent number is Josh, but the market’s pricing in like another 2% rate hikes out of the federal reserves at this point. So if that expectation all of a sudden is looking too dower because of the language that comes out of the federal reserve [inaudible 00:23:45] little bit, I think that could be a bit of win to many throwings.

Colin White:
The other thing what everybody’s looking for is for the supply chain issues to begin to resolve. That’s more of a nebulous thing. I’m not sure how we’re going to track that except maybe an increase GDP as we’re actually able to complete transactions that everybody’s trying to complete. Number of clients I have now that are sitting on money, waiting for stuff is, I’ve never in my entire life seen this much of pent up demand with people with cash ready to do stuff. I think that’s going to factor into this as well.

Colin White:
But the economy’s going to find a way forward. It just has to understand what the game is, the same as every other major change that’s happened. Donald Trump being president or all these other things that have happened [inaudible 00:24:31] times a week. As to what combination it takes to unlock things right now, you’re the one that talks all the time about how the labor member comes out and is the reason the market went up, and later in the day is the reason the market went down. I mean, everybody’s trying to hang market movements on a data point, sometimes using the same data point to hang it up and down market on. So it’s tough to define what the actual thing is. I’m sure 10 years from now we could be very certain about what moved the markets this year.

Josh Sheluk:
Yeah, yeah. That’s for sure. You mentioned inflation, and supply chains, and interest rates, and all those fun things and especially the central banks. So the Bank of Canada increased interest rates yesterday and is still projected to increase interest rates by another 2% going forward over the next 12 months as you had suggested. It’s interesting because one of the conversations I had recently was with an individual who used to work for the Bank of England and the theory from their team, from a guy who’s pretty well in the know, we do get to talk to some cool people sometimes or at least people that we think are cool. It’s maybe not Tom Brady or George Clooney cool but, people that we actually find interesting.

Josh Sheluk:
Anyway, this individual said to me, “Central banks don’t really understand supply driven inflation that well.” Right now they’re saying, “Well, we’ve got to in increase interest rates. We got to increase interest rates. We’ve got to stem inflation.” But a lot of it’s driven from the supply side. It’s driven from supply chain issues or lack of supply for this or that or the other thing. So they don’t really understand that that well is this person’s theory who actually worked firsthand with one of those central banks.

Josh Sheluk:
So their theory is that central banks are going to talk this big game. They’re going to increase interest rates. Interest rates are going to go up. Inflation will come down naturally, not due to anything that central banks are doing, just because supply chains are going to fix themselves over time. Central banks are going to claim victory and hey, maybe interest rate expectations come down a little bit, things start to stabilize. People worry less about the inflation and its impact that it’s going to have on their pocketbook, and that’s where you see a whole bunch of worries, just kind of melt away and that sort of stabilize things and markets kind of continue to climb higher from there. We’ve seen some decent things over the last couple of weeks, starting to see this play out just a little bit. So we’ll see. Time will tell, as you said, we’ll know in the future looking backwards, what exactly it was, but that’s sort of the optimistic glass half full point of view right now.

Colin White:
Well, absolutely. But I think the other thing that allows, I mean, because there’s some really good things coming out of this because they raised interest rates off of emergency level loans, they’re reloading the gun. So if they are right and they raise interest rates a little bit like they have and we move forward and there comes a time when they need to cut interest rates in order to stimulate things, they’re going to have that ability again, right? So it has reloaded the gun a little bit to get us back on an even keel with one more protector in place. Again, we’ve talked about before the inflation that’s going on right now is actually making the government debt levels sustainable. So, I mean, again, there’s, there’s some positives to take with what’s going on right now.

Josh Sheluk:
Yeah, silver linings. We’re awfully glass half full today. I think that’s good.

Colin White:
I choose to be because otherwise what’s the point?

Josh Sheluk:
Yeah.

Colin White:
So we’re going to thank everybody for tuning in again, Josh?

Josh Sheluk:
Yeah, I think so. I think it’s that point. Thanks everybody for joining us today for a bit of a recap on what’s happened in markets this year. As we said, there’s a lot of different reasons out there for what we’ve seen market wise, and I’m sure you can go read any of your favorite news sources to get that info. What we try to do is go a little bit under the hood and give you some, maybe a little bit of pause before you jump to conclusions before the bear market media is all over your mind. Just take a step back, don’t panic, take a couple deep breaths. Things are going to be okay.

Colin White:
If you’re doing all that, you’re still worried, give us a call.

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This information has been prepared by White Leblanc Wealth Planners, who is a portfolio manager for iA Private Wealth. Opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the portfolio manager only and do not necessarily reflect those of iA Private Wealth, Inc. IA Private Wealth Inc, is a member of the Canadian Investor Protection Fund and the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada. IA Private Wealth is a trademark and business name under which iA Private Wealth Inc operates.

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