Rick Rule’s Rubrics: Riding the High Volatility Waves without Wipeouts

Source: Barbara Templeton of The Gold Report 07/19/2010
With the inviting California surf a stone’s throw from his office, Global Resource Investments Founder and CEO Rick Rule is always generous in sharing his wit and wisdom. In this Gold Report exclusive based on his Friday webcast, he covers a lot of territory and provides plenty of tips for investors. That the markets will deliver huge waves of volatility as the secular commodities bull market continues its charge is a foregone conclusion, as Rick sees it. Read on to find out what he says you need to ride the high curls and stay out of the soup.

Who Gets Stiffed?

Critiquing the Greek drama that’s been playing out since early this year, Rick Rule finds it curious for the European community to make additional loans to Greece, thinking it helpful to push the Grecian debt from the 120% of GDP (which it couldn’t pay) up to 150%. In the Daily Reckoning, Rick says, Bill Bonner observed that Greece as a society made promises—to workers who were paid more than they produced, to pensioners and others in the entitlements class who were promised more than they could deliver, to savers who loaned Greece more money than it could pay back. Who should get stiffed? Bill’s answer was all of them.

Rick recites these facts because “we face the same conundrum in the United States”—and the same dismal prospects. “We have lived beyond our means for many, many years. People who don’t produce as much utility as they take out by way of wages and salaries need to adjust their living standards. We have made promises that we cannot keep with regard to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. It’s as simple as that. Those who loaned money to various entities, individuals, corporations, governments are going to be stiffed either via a default or by inflation.”

U.S. Balance Sheet Blues

Rick sees one bright spot when he scans the country’s balance sheet picture: “Corporations have taken advantage of the last two years to shore up their balance sheets greatly.” In contrast to government balance sheets, which are in “horrible shape,” he considers corporate balance sheets to be in “very good shape,” by and large.

But the U.S. federal balance sheet? “Bad shape.” State balance sheets? “Bad shape, particularly in the People’s Republic of California.” And municipal balance sheets, the “great unsung tragedy” are in “very, very bad shape.” His list goes on. “Individual balance sheets, consumer balance sheets, worker balance sheets, voter balance sheets are in very bad condition.”

According to Rick, extraordinary short-term liquidity, particularly on bank balance sheets, fools us into believing that the economy is in better shape than it is. “Extraordinary amounts of capital have been added to bank balance sheets.” While the banks are extremely liquid, however, the underlying asset quality, “their so-called assets—loans to the zombie borrowers—remain problematic.” And despite the liquidity, the banks aren’t lending. There isn’t much demand for credit in the still-weak economy, particularly among credit-worthy borrowers. “The banks learned a lesson three years ago, and now prefer to lend money to people who will pay it back. The deterioration of credit quality around the country constrains the banks’ ability to make real loans.”

Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing

It’s not hard to see why people have been fooled. Some observers talk about shadow statistics. Rick cites bank earnings reports as one reason that the economic reality is so poorly understood. In the last quarter, he indicates, JPMorgan Chase showed earnings increased—but on what basis? Two things:

• Its debt—bonds it’s issued—have fallen in price, so the company booked as earnings what it would cost to reduce the debt. In other words, the fact that people are cautious about JPMorgan Chase’s ability to pay its debt shows up in its earnings. “Truly bizarre,” Rick observes.
• The company drew into earnings some of the reserves made for loan losses on a historic basis. So it’s reporting increased earnings as a function of collapsing reserves and a deteriorating standing in credit markets. An earnings increase in the face of declining deposits, declining loans and declining profitability? “Truly strange.”

Bank of America exhibited similar performance. “So while the economy is allegedly improving as a consequence of the ‘stimulus,'” Rick comments, “the best indicators of the private economy—the operating earnings of the banks—continue to deteriorate.”

The Lesser Evil

When people ask Rick about the U.S. dollar relative to other currencies, he falls back on what he calls an old truism: “It’s probably the worst currency in the world with the exception of all the others.” He sees the USD as a “deeply troubled but deeply liquid market” that “may fare less badly than the rest,” with its purchasing power falling 5% or 6% per annum against deeper declines in other currencies. The bad news about that dwindling purchasing power, though, is that people will have to maintain high cash balances to survive ongoing “turbulence and incredible volatility in global debt and equity markets.”

Cash on Hand

Rick figures that we can probably count on major equity markets to rise and/or fall by 25% in any given year going forward, “and the speculative markets will exaggerate those moves.” With volatility a given, “you absolutely, positively have to use it.”

Naturally, no one knows when these periods of volatility will occur, so we have to be prepared. Investors who are fortunate and are prudent enough to set aside significant cash savings in anticipation of volatility earn next to nothing on cash on deposit. Still, Rick recommends maintaining larger cash balances than you otherwise would despite the fact that your savings are losing purchasing power at the same time as they’re collecting scant interest. As he sees it, holding big wads of cash and exposing yourself to 5% declines in real purchasing power beats losing 20%, 30% or 40% in conventional debt and equity markets. “Painful but true,” he quips.

“But when very aggressive down moves and market crashes take place, remember to step in and buy. It’s not because the cash is valuable relative to the equities in your portfolio,” Rick says, “but because the cash will give you the opportunity to take advantage of periodic sales as they occur.”

Capital and Courage

As a case in point, Rick looks back to what happened, particularly in small-cap equity markets, in late ’07 and ’08. He hunted for and found about 20 stocks selling at less than 50% of working capital, “where you got the management teams and the assets for free.” With its Exploration Capital Partners 2008 portfolio, Global Resource Investments stepped into those stocks “very aggressively in a down market and profited mightily when the stocks responded upwards.” Maybe there was more money to be made “had we been less cautious about the nature of stocks we chose,” he adds, “but we speculated only in stocks selling at substantial discounts to free working capital.” In any case, “having the courage to step into the markets and having the capital available to do so—when our competitors had neither courage nor capital—stood us in extremely good stead.” So Rick’s core rule for individual investors, too, would be to have capacity available: capacity in capital and courage alike.

Sensible Speculations

And when you buy, what do you buy? Rick has a number of suggestions, which include:

• Pay attention to buying things that must appreciate over time.
• Buy “when” situations, not “if” situations.
• In addition to having liquidity yourself, buy into companies that have liquidity. If you are buying into an enterprise that will have to raise money in the next 6 or 12 months to continue its business plan, understand that the capital markets may absolutely snap shut.
• Speculate sensibly. It is true that there are 10-fold gains to be made on occasion buying into the gamiest of all possible speculations, but the capital markets experience is such that you should forego the outsize returns that may occur in the riskiest speculations in favor of very nice returns on more sensible speculations. The market is trying to make you more speculative right now, which is a consequence he thinks needs to make you less speculative.

But where to speculate?

Commodities in Context

Despite the condition of the broad economy, we are in an important secular bull market in resources. This bull market came at the heels of the secular bear market, as they always do. The 18-year bear market from 1982 through 2000 “took out all kinds of investor interest and all kinds of productive capacity,” Rick explains, and the constricted investment in natural resources eroded the supply side of the equation. As Rick points out, the large deposits that we as a society depend on—uranium, petroleum, copper and so on—were discovered and developed from the 1950s through the 1970s. But deposits are finite; every barrel you draw from an oil well or pound of ore you dig from a mine takes the resource closer to depletion. Because “you don’t stand at the top of a mine pouring in fertilizer and water and expect the mine to grow more copper,” those old deposits have grown old and passed their prime. Though the bull market has brought in new investment, from his vantage point we’ve not yet done a good enough job of replacing or replenishing the deposits that we’ve been busy exhausting.

Even as supply stagnated or even shrank, demand continued and continues to grow. Every year, more of us occupy the planet. In fits and starts over the last 20 years, populations in Communist countries, emerging markets and developing nations have begun enjoying measures of economic and political freedom that is expanding the middle class and elevating living standards. That phenomenon, in turn, fuels ever-increasing demand for commodities. Rick cites the BRIC countries—Brazil, Russia, India, China—as good, classic examples.

“At the bottom of the demographic and economic pyramid, as the poorest people get more money, they buy more stuff. Most of us here have too much stuff already. We may want more, but we tend to spend a lot on services. There isn’t much stuff in an iPod; the value-add is service. You pay $1 for songs for your iPod; none of those songs contains copper or oil. But if you’re on the bottom of the economic ladder in Nigeria or Sri Lanka or India or Indonesia and start making more money, instead of walking you might buy a motor scooter that’s made of stuff and consumes oil. You may build a cinder block home to replace your Visqueen and patch shanty. You may buy a refrigerator and an air conditioner. What adds utility to poor people as they get more money are things that are made of stuff. There is a boom in stuff in the emerging markets.”

Past Is Prologue

A decade into the new millennium, we find ourselves in a situation where constrained supply as a function of nearly 20 years of sparse investment meets unconstrained demand. “That means real raw material prices are going to go higher,” Rick says. And again turning to historical experience, he says, “The past is prologue. In the last great market in commodities, the market of the 1970s, the gold price escalated from $35 per ounce—admittedly, a price-controlled level—to $850 an ounce. But it’s instructive to remember that in 1975, in the midst of that great secular bull market, there was a 50% cyclical decline.”

When the gold price slid from $200-plus per ounce to just over $100, Rick recalls, “people who understood that the gold price would rise but were over-leveraged or psychologically unprepared for the decline still could go broke having made the right decision in the midst of a spectacular bull market.” He raises that point because he thinks another decade remains in this secular bull market in resources. “If you aren’t prepared for the volatility that you’re going to experience—financially in terms of your liquidity and psychologically in terms of your ability to deal with 30% or 40% price declines in your portfolio in one quarter—you’ll get shaken out of the best market you’ll ever experience.”

From where he stands, Rick says there’s no doubt that “we will see some ugly cyclical declines.” Nor is there any question that “absolutely incredible opportunities are ahead of us.” He reiterates his guidance: “Use this situation to your benefit by having the courage and the capital available to take advantage of the situation when the people competing with you in the markets have neither.”

Volatility ≠ Risk

“Understand that volatility is not the same as risk,” Rick says. “It isn’t a catastrophe if a company with $100 million in market cap that’s in reality worth $150 million experiences a drop to $50 million in market cap. It’s an opportunity. Pay attention to the underlying value of the assets, and use that underlying value to put the price of the stock into context. It’s absolutely critical if you’re going to maintain yourself in these markets that you pay attention to that liquidity.”

As he sees it, whether cyclical downturns affect investors unduly is not a function of the market but of the investor. “Cyclical downturns are periodic sales; that’s not a bad thing.” If you understand the companies you’re investing in and confine yourself to viable companies, downturns will be opportunities. “They will certainly test your character,” he quips, “but you are going to experience them so get ready for them and in fact welcome them.”

If you are the type of investor who considers volatility itself a risk, Rick has three words of advice: “Get out now.” But if you appreciate sales, understand that you have to buy companies based on value, not on price. And he thinks this is a pretty good time to be able to find those $100 million market cap companies that should be worth $150 million. “As a consequence of the deterioration in markets that we’ve already seen, some values are starting to appear,” he says. “If you own one of these companies and expect its prospects to improve over time, don’t worry that the market marks it down in a period of volatility.” If you have the psychological fortitude and financial wherewithal to take advantage of it, and if you like the idea of periodic half-off sales in a secular bull market, the volatility on the horizon will bring “unparalleled opportunities.” And, he says, “I think you’re going to see opportunities across the board in resources.”

Liquidity, Liquidity, Liquidity

In real estate, they say it’s location, location, location. In resources, Rick also has three words of advice to remember: liquidity, liquidity and liquidity. “These are capital-intensive cyclical businesses. Without capital they have no businesses. The companies that you invest in relative to their needs have to have liquidity.”

He reiterates his earlier point that investors themselves need ample liquidity, because “absolutely without a doubt you will experience volatility in your portfolios of up to 30% or 40% a year.” Without liquidity, you won’t be able to take advantage of the “unforeseen black swans” that swoop in—”brutal cyclical declines in the context of that secular bull market (that) knock markets off precipices.”

Ground-Floor Opportunities

Investors always want to know how to get in at the ground floor. Those who speculate in juniors need to pay particular attention to cash-rich shells, Rick advises. In these cases, the company’s market cap may be at a substantial discount to the free working capital and treasury. “These are ground-floor opportunities,” he states. “Cash at a discount always attracts management, always attracts assets. This is not to say that all of these situations work out, but the risk-reward parameter associated with this type of speculation is unparalleled in any other form of exploration.”

It’s not as if the bargains are everywhere at the moment. For instance, Rick finds the micro-cap precious metals stocks overpriced at this time “because the market has driven up the bad ones with the good ones.” However, the picture will start to change when one of those cyclical downturns hits. “It will flush down the good ones with the bad ones,” Rick says. “Be ready to take advantage and you will be able to snap up spectacular bargains.”

Cash Includes Bullion, ETFs

Rick will be the first to say that portfolio diversification for the average investor—if there is such a creature—is not exactly up his alley. “My whole portfolio is in my business and in things I understand,” he says. Besides, he doesn’t believe in a one-size-fits-all approach to investing. But with the caveat that he claims no expertise in what you might call “traditional asset allocation,” if pressed he’ll go out on a limb to say, “I would suspect that an intelligent passive investor at present needs to overweight cash—35% or 40% in cash and as much as 25% of the cash part in either physical gold or silver bullion or ETFs.” Beyond that, “I do suggest investors overweight the raw materials portion of their portfolios to the rest of the portfolio because I think we’re probably into a multi-year bull market in raw materials.”

Stock Picking

If you think the gold price is going to go up, Rick says, buy gold. That’s “the best way to participate.” As for equities, if you think a company has some competitive advantage, some facet that will cause the company to do well, buy stock in that company, irrespective of what it produces. Most of the time Global buys and recommends a stock, he says that the decision is based on organic growth or “some type of internal event, something that would make the share price respond even in a bad market.” The decision is not based on “any sense of what the market may or may not do to that stock in the next 12 months.”

Because most gold stocks are priced at substantial premiums to their net present value of their cash flow at today’s gold prices, Rick says that they’re inefficient stores of value in the context of rising gold prices. For those who want equities in their portfolios, though, he sees room for explorers as well as producers. In fact, he notes, because the explorers are only looking for gold, whether the price of gold goes up would probably have only a marginal impact on the company.

Resource Stocks vis-à-vis Stocks Overall

Rick says that he expects the resource stocks to correlate very well with the overall market in the very near term but will diverge in the longer term. He quotes Warren Buffett as “famously saying that markets are ‘voting machines’ in the very short term and ‘weighing machines’ in the long term.” In other words, emotions move the markets in the short term; in the long term, value becomes the driver.

When stocks fall, all stocks fall but recoveries are uneven. In Rick’s view, the recoveries inevitably occur where value is present; where value is absent, so is recovery. But in a dramatic selloff, he adds, the selling decision is not always the investor’s to make. “Margin clerks don’t care about an investor’s asset allocation style. When they are selling stocks to meet margin calls, they sell the things that have bids.” He says that the same thing happens in opened-ended mutual funds, when fund managers with $1 billion in assets get calls for redemptions, they sell what they can, not necessarily what the client wants to sell. In fact, “your best stuff, your more liquid stuff, has to be sold at the same time or even before the junk gets sold because there are bids.” For these reasons, he expects resource stocks to correlate very well to the overall market in a cyclical decline. “I would also expect the better resource stocks to recover,” he reiterates, adding, “That’s not something I can say for all stocks.”

A Lesson on Steroids

Rick is quick to remind investors that in the vehicles his company really made a reputation with—such as the Exploration Capital Partners 2000 series—most of the big returns came from less than 10% of the positions. “The portfolio performance occurs in a fairly small number of names,” he explains. It’s the “nature of speculation, sadly, that most positions make only a little bit of money or lose some.”

Almost without fail, he recalls clearly, the Exploration Capital Partners portfolio stocks that made 20- or 30-fold gains had handed in 30% or 40% losses before they went higher. In an “extravagant example” to illustrate the point, he talks about a stock Global bought in intervals at $0.10, $0.12 and then $0.015. “An 85% decline before the stock ran up to $10;” Rick says, “a really instructive lesson—a lesson on steroids.” But, he adds, “It’s important that people understand that value is more important than price and that volatility is an opportunity rather than a risk.”

Long or Short? A Matter of Math

As a rule, Rick doesn’t short stocks. His reasoning is a simple matter of math. “If I short a stock, the most I can make is 100% while my losses are theoretically incalculable,” he says. “In a long portfolio the odds are completely reversed. The most I can lose is 100% (which unfortunately I’ve done on a couple of occasions) but the amount of money I can make is almost unlimited (and mercifully I’ve enjoyed a couple of those too). I like the math on the long side way better than the math on the short side.”

The Taxman Cometh

Rick also has a take on tax matters that investors might find helpful. The Bush administration’s tax cuts will be allowed to expire, he says, but he anticipates that the Obama administration will probably find other ways to “raise revenue.” With that in mind, he says, “Investors who have very large embedded gains in some historic positions may want to take those gains this year. If you really like the company, you may want to sell and re-buy after 31 days—the opposite of taking tax losses.”

In addition, as a consequence of less favorable capital gains legislation, Rick says, “Equities markets, at least in the U.S., will become somewhat less buoyant than they have been. I think these tax changes will have a profound effect on the venture capital industry and a lot of equity trading.”

Furthermore, he sees the U.S. tax structure becoming more “progressive” as time goes on. The “more productive” taxpayers—the rich, as Washington might call them—”will be increasingly victimized.” Recalling Willie Sutton’s supposed reply when a reporter once asked him why he robbed banks—”because that’s where the money is”—Rick notes that already 5% of U.S. taxpayers pay almost 70% of the income and capital gains taxes that the federal government collects. “That’s going to continue,” he adds, “and that’s not the way you engender a recovery.” Among the reasons his overall economic outlook is so “muted,” he says, is that government’s share of GDP will continue to grow partially as a function of taxation.

And Will Gold Go Up or Down?

Year after year, at the beginning of the San Francisco Gold Show, Rick says, people ask him whether the gold price will go up or down. “I always say yes,” he chuckles.

Seriously. . .Generally speaking, he says, gold prices will rise in USD terms because gold is priced in USD and the currency will go inexorably lower. However, he points out that isn’t necessarily true in the short term. In a liquidity crisis, those same margin clerks he mentioned earlier “are the ones who set prices, hit bids.” For that reason, he says he can well imagine that the gold price will lower before it goes higher. At the same time, he adds, “I also think that the gold price will rise at least in nominal terms, because the denominator (USD) will decline in value while gold holds its own. But it will certainly be a volatile ride.”

“Listen,” he goes on, “I’m in an odd position. Separate and apart from my portfolio, I own three businesses that are leveraged to the gold price. Despite that, I have a fair bit of physical gold or physical gold proxies as constituents of my net worth. To put it bluntly, I own a lot of gold and I can honestly tell you that I hope that the price goes down.”

Did Rick Rule really say that? Yes, he did. But he explains why. “Gold has fulfilled a role for many centuries as catastrophe insurance and that’s the role it fills in my portfolio. I have no insurance policy at all that I’m dying to get paid off on. Think about it. Life insurance means somebody died. Home insurance means that your home burned down. Auto insurance means that you had a wreck. Gold is catastrophe insurance. I sleep better having catastrophe insurance, and I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you that I think that you should own some physical gold or physical gold proxies in your own portfolio for the same reasons that I have it in mine.”

Rick Rule, founder and CEO of Global Resource Investments, began his career in the securities business in 1974, and has been principally involved in natural resource security investments ever since. He is a leading American retail broker specializing in mining, energy, water utilities, forest products and agriculture. Rick’s company has built a national reputation for its specialist expertise in taking advantage of global opportunities in the oil and gas, mining, alternative energy, agriculture, forestry, and water industries. This article is based on his Global Resource Investments webcast, Friday, July 16.

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