Category: Market Action

On March 28 I highlighted an issue of structured notes from TD. Assiduous Reader AB writes in and provides me with a link to the National Bank Structured Solutions Group page, who issued five separate notes “linked to a Canadian preferred share ETF” between April 10 and April 18.

There was a disorderly close in the market today, as TXPR lost 49bp in the last five minutes to close down 28bp from yesterday on high volume of over 4-million shares.

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One of the hard-working geniuses who are such a feature of Canadian investment management made extensive use of the Market-on-Close facility, which I assume helped him leave early for the long weekend.

On March 18 I reported:

Assiduous Readers will remember that Manulife was bailed out by the regulators again after a hedge fund claimed the terms of its contract with the firm allowed it to deposit unlimited funds with the firm at a guaranteed rate of up to 5%.

It turns out the bail-out was unnecessary! Manulife won the court case

‘Not so fast!’ scream the plaintiffs:

A pivotal court ruling that dismissed three lawsuits against Canadian life insurers has been formally appealed, extending a battle between the companies and three investment funds over the fine print of decades-old contracts.
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This week the funds appealed all three cases, arguing that the core argument made by Justice Brian Scherman of the Court of Queen’s Bench for Saskatchewan when dismissing the lawsuits is incorrect. Justice Scherman ruled that the contracts were designed to be used for insurance purposes only, and that “in the some 30 years since universal life insurance policies have been sold, there is no judicial record of these policies being used in the manner proposed” by the investment funds.

In its appeal of the ruling that related to Manulife, Mosten Investment LP argued “the learned Chambers Judge erred in law in his interpretation of the contract.”

There is a fascinating chart made available in the OECD release of its publication “Taxing Wages”:

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Of course, this just refers to taxes on wages; it does not include things like sales tax and property tax. In the interest of avoiding vitriolic attacks by worshippers of the Awesome and Holy United States of Free America, I will also publish a chart more favourable to that glorious nation:

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Of course, neither chart includes the cost of health insurance, which is a big ticket item in the Awesome and Holy United States of Free America, but that’s because health insurance is FREE ENTERPRISE, dammit, and any free citizen has a CHOICE between between buying Health Insurance, dying, or being bankrupted by medical bills.

Reasonable people can argue all day and all night regarding whether a single-payer system like Canada’s is better or worse than the US system. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages. But to take tax rates as a straight-up, single-number meaningful comparison of anything at all is simply ridiculous and annoys me.

PerpetualDiscounts now yield 5.45%, equivalent to 7.08% interest at the standard equivalency factor of 1.3x. Long corporates now yield 3.82%, so the pre-tax interest-equivalent spread (in this context, the “Seniority Spread”) is now about 325bp, unchanged from the figure reported April 10.

I noticed another recent corporate long bond issue, this one some thirty-year notes from Pembina:

Pembina Pipeline Corporation (“Pembina” or the “Company”) (TSX: PPL; NYSE: PBA) is pleased to announce that it has closed its previously announced offering of $800 million of senior unsecured medium-term notes (the “Offering”). The Offering was conducted in two tranches consisting of $400 million in senior unsecured medium-term notes, series 12 (the “Series 12 Notes”) having a fixed coupon of 3.62% per annum, paid semi-annually, and maturing on April 3, 2029, and $400 million in senior unsecured medium-term notes, series 13 (the “Series 13 Notes”) having a fixed coupon of 4.54% per annum, paid semi-annually, and maturing on April 3, 2049.

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TXPR closed at 627.58, up 0.57% on the day. Volume was 2.48-million, on the high side but nothing special in the context of the past thirty days.

CPD closed at 12.55, up 0.72% on the day. Volume of 94,423 was low in the context of the past thirty days.

ZPR closed at 10.12, up 0.60% on the day. Volume of 474,940 was very high in the context of the past thirty days, second only to March 13, when a stunning 1,007,639 shares changed hands.

Five-year Canada yields were up, up 6bp to 1.52% today, but that’s not sufficient to be considered a glib explanation.

So it was a fine way to close the month, but not enough to save the TXPR total return index, which saw performance of -0.46% in March but (thank heavens for small mercies) +1.11% for the quarter.

There was a late afternoon rally in the market yesterday which I mentioned but did not even guess at a cause. Assiduous Reader AB writes in and says:

TD issued a note tied to ZPR. They had to hedge some of their risk into the close.

He even provided a link to the product description. There’s an ongoing link to the prospectus, which states:

As of the date of this Pricing Supplement, the Bank estimates that the value of the Notes is $97.10 per $100 in principal amount.

There are a lot of moving parts in the valuation of this note and I’m not even going to try to come up with my own valuation. But the issue sold out, $20-million worth, so there’s clearly some speculative interest in buying at these levels.

Some illuminating charts from a Statistics Canada study:

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Meanwhile, PrefBlog’s Department Studying Artificial Intelligence Because There’s Not Bloody Much Of The Real Kind has learned something of interest to insurers:

The predictions of early death that were made by AI algorithms were “significantly more accurate” than predictions delivered by a model that did not use machine learning, lead study author Dr. Stephen Weng, an assistant professor of epidemiology and data science at the University of Nottingham (UN) in the U.K., said in a statement.

It was an interesting day for the Canadian preferred share market, which steadily fell until 2:15pm, down 45bp, when the cavalry arrived and the index finished with a gain of 8bp on the day.

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PerpetualDiscounts now yield 5.40%, equivalent to 7.02% interest at the standard equivalency factor of 1.3x. Long corporates now yield 3.66%, so the pre-tax interest-equivalent spread (in this context, the “Seniority Spread”) is now about 335bp, a sharp narrowing from the 350bp reported March 20.

PerpetualDiscounts now yield 5.58%, equivalent to 7.25% interest at the standard equivalency factor of 1.3x. Long corporates now yield a little over 3.85%, so the pre-tax interest-equivalent spread (in this context, the “Seniority Spread”) is now about 340bp, a sharp narrowing from the 355bp reported February 20.

Rob Carrick of the Globe published an article last week titled Critics of the overhauled CPP say it’s a bad deal – here’s why they’re wrong which contained the following puzzling statements:

Critics say the CPP pay outs offer a poor rate of return on contributions…
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The Fraser Institute think tank critiqued this column, partly for not deploring the rate of return people will get on money contributed to the expanded CPP. The institute quotes a study saying the overall return is 2.5 per cent, which is described as “meagre.”

Based on numbers only, maybe so. Guidelines for financial planners set out after-fee returns of 3.2 per cent for conservative portfolios (25 per cent stocks, 75 per cent bonds and cash), 3.9 per cent for balanced portfolios (50 per cent stocks, 50 per cent bonds/cash) and 4.7 per cent for aggressive (75 per cent stocks, 25 per cent bonds/cash.

This puzzled me because the last time I reviewed it, I figured the CPP was doing a pretty good job. The primary reason for this is that they have a captive market; therefore they have no salesmen; and therefore they don’t have to come up with interesting stories and ensure their portfolios are aligned with that story. All they have to do is choose good investments. This is an extremely important determinant of investment management results, as I have stated in this blog to the point of weariness when discussing outfits like OMERS, Teachers and HOOPP. It also helps that they can fire people without having to worry about clients’ reactions.

So I did a little checking and a little digging and, after the Fraser Institute came out with another volley in their debate, had an eMail exchange with one of the Fraser Institute honchos which included the following, taken from my side of the exchange:

Aren’t the figures quoted by Carrick (which appear to be from the FPSC Projection Assumption Guidelines, published online at [LINK] ) nominal returns, gross of 2.0% inflation, as opposed to your figures, which are net of inflation?

It makes quite a difference to the comparison!

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As you are doubtless aware, the CPP was only 6% funded in 1996 (see [LINK] ) as the CPP was conceived as having a pay-as-you-go basis.

This was changed in 1997 to a requirement for steady-state funding and full funding (see [LINK] ).

It is clear that a transition from 6% funding to 100% funding must be paid for somehow, and I see only three avenues for accomplishing this task:
– reduce benefits for the ‘early benefiticiaries’ [sic], some of whom achieved staggering rates of return on their contributions, as discussed in [LINK]
– increase contributions for ‘late beneficiaries’
– make up the difference through government general revenue, i.e., taxpayers in general irrespective of CPP status.

The solution reached was to adjust the contribution and benefit rates with the effect that current contributors are over-funding their benefits. Right or wrong, that was a political decision that people seem happy with, although it leads to the gap you deprecate between the fund’s required rate of return and the rate of return realized in benefits to current contributors.

Thus, the existence of this gap is irrelevant to any discussion of CPP expansion, as the gap that existed in 1996 is slowly being erased through increased contribution rates. Any changes to the level of expected benefits must be fully funded; this implies that the gap, expressed in terms of fund- and contributor-returns will actually narrow as the plan is expanded (or, conversely, widen if the fund should become less ambitious; I note that as per the 16th Actuarial report referenced above, the contribution rate was projected to rise to 10.1% in 2016 and 14.2% in 2030.

Even after accounting for the gap in returns, contributors are expected to achieve a 2.5% real rate of return on their contributions according to your figures, a rate that can hardly be described as meagre. This is equivalent to a 4.5% nominal rate given generally accepted estimates of future inflation, handsomely exceeding the ‘conservative’ (3.2%) and ‘balanced’ (3.9%) portfolios of the FPSC Projection Assumption Guidelines quoted by Carrick. The projected contributor rate of return is exceeded only slightly by the ‘aggressive’ projection (4.7%). It is my experience in the investment management business that there are far more investors who will demand ‘conservative’ or ‘balanced’ investment portfolios – particularly among those who hold less than the median non-pension financial assets of a mere $11,600 in 2016 (see [LINK] ).

You claim that “the CPP has to earn a 4% ROR over time in order to sustainably provide a 2.5% ROR to retirees. No worker would likely make that deal voluntarily” This is absurd. There exist a huge number of Canadian equity mutual funds with MERs in excess of 1.5%, and (according to the OSC in 2013 (see [LINK] : “According to analysis from Strategic Insight on advisory fees charged by client asset size under U.S. fee-based programs (2011), 70% of U.S. investors with account sizes of $100,000 are charged advisory fees higher than 1.25% and 31% are charged over 1.50%”. Note also that, as discussed above, elimination of this gap with respect to current contributors would only move the requirement for increasing the CPP funded ratio onto other shoulders; this is in distinction to the extortionate levels of fees in the Canadian financial services industry which are paid very happily by investors.

I will also note that my analysis of annuity rates indicates that the expected rate of return on annuities offered to retail investors is 0% – the profits due to investment returns during the lives of the annuities are captured entirely by the sponsoring company – and are well in excess of 1.5% (the value of annuities lies not in their value as investments, but as insurance against unexpected longevity). Additionally, the Net Interest Margins achieved by Canadian banks are grossly in excess of the 1.5% that “no worker would likely make … voluntarily”. (see [LINK] ). It is also clear that almost every investor in Canada bonds for the past ten-plus years has voluntarily accepted a rate of return far below 2.5% real.

I remain perplexed by your statement that “please note that the CPP doesn’t offer any inheritable asset other than the death benefit. That issue isn’t included in the comparison.” Surely your analysis included all cash-flows from the CPP to beneficiaries; therefore your claim of a 2.5% expected rate of return will – under the “full funding” regime – be unaffected by whether any given outflow is labelled as a death benefit or otherwise.

Sincerely,

For the record, I don’t consider the Fraser Institute to be a think-tank at all. It’s just another murky mouthpiece for the vested interests … their funding is unusually opaque.

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