Increasing Defensive Holdings

Gradual Change

According to the U.S. government, the country only grew 1% in Q4 of 2015. But that’s still better than Canada. Our GDP up here only increased 0.8%.  It doesn’t feel like the economy in either country is going to pick up any time soon. Personally I don’t mind slowing down or even contraction. Slow economic times is a natural part of the market cycle because it helps with the price discovery mechanism and prevents bubbles from becoming too big. But of course politicians want to encourage more growth all the time which means investors have to be smarter and more cautious about where to deploy capital.

One concern that affects everyone in the world is an aging global population. Japan is leading the charge on this one. Many Japanese couples grow fruit trees and live to a ripe old age. According to the World Bank, Japan has the oldest demographic with 26% of its population being age 65 or older. We all know what happened in Japan for the last 20 years. It’s GDP is basically unchanged from 1995 to 2015. Same goes for Japan’s stock market. Any money thrown into the Nikkei 225 index 20 years ago would have produced virtually no gains as of now. The couch potato method of index investing doesn’t always work for everyone.

The percentage of Canadians who are 65 or older is about 17% today. In the U.S. it’s about 15% of the population. We are still a long way off from Japan’s 26%, but it’s worth noting that 17% of Japan’s population was 65 years or older in the late 1990s.

16-03-old-people-meme-technology

I would continue to invest in large, profitable companies. But high quality stocks have been bid up so much that there isn’t much room for them to go higher in the short term based on fundamentals. This is why I look at alternative places to invest as well.

So earlier this month I added $7K to my Antrim Mortgage investment, bringing my total account balance for this one investment to $17,913. I had to dip into my Line of Credit to help come up with that cash. Canada’s population may be aging, but everyone needs a home so I expect this mortgage fund to continue delivering 6%+ annual returns to unit holders. I think mortgage investments are a good balance between risk and reward until better opportunities present themselves. Unlike buying a traditional REIT, if the housing market falls by 30% my mortgage fund wouldn’t lose any value. The borrower whom I indirectly lent money to still has to pay me back in full or else they risk foreclosure on their property. 🙂

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As fewer working people are supporting more retired people I may have to branch out more in unconventional investments such as riskier fixed income and private equity options to hit a decent return with my investments. 🙂

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Random Useless Fact:

If you were to take a regular sheet of paper that’s 0.1 mm thick and fold it in half 42 times, it would reach the moon.

16-03-42-folds-get-to-moon-paper

 

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Mr. PTM
Mr. PTM
03/24/2016 11:52 am

Dude! I’m totally with you on the aging population shift, which is why I’m long on biotech (as a sector in general, I’ve got no tolerance for the volatility of stock-picking). I see a huge boom in demand for new high tech health services in the coming decades. Your mortgage investment looks intriguing as well!

Anon
Anon
03/24/2016 10:29 pm
Reply to  Mr. PTM

Biotech and healthcare both hinge on government-supported non-legal monopolistic practices — the reason healthcare costs so much in the first place. Without govt allowance the firms are not nearly as profitable, thus reflected in their stock price. As our population ages into a state of ill repair over the next couple of decades, the high and wide-spread cost of health care heaped on the backs of a decreased wealth “middle class” (coupled with low-return equity markets), the govt just might decide to negate some of that monopoly money with more competition and actual adherence to law. Could be a turbulent ride for bio and health until all the Boomers are dead and buried.

Bricks
Bricks
03/24/2016 12:16 pm

“But high quality stocks have been bid up so much that there isn’t much room for them to go higher in the short term based on fundamentals.”

Can you expand on that? I also feel that the prices of stocks are high, but don’t know how to prove it. The only number I really know is about the P/E ratio. Apparently around 8 is historically a good number, and we’re up in the 15-20 for most companies. What other types of indicators do you look at?

Thanks

ChrisCD
ChrisCD
03/25/2016 4:56 am

I read somewhere that you can only physically fold any piece of paper 7x. Must have been fun calculating the above. :O)

As to your mortgage fund, yes, they can be foreclosed on but if that happens in a down market, the properties would lose value. Couldn’t that drastically affect your return?

cd :O)

Anon
Anon
03/25/2016 5:50 am
Reply to  ChrisCD

Anything can happen to any business, to think otherwise would be foolish. Look at what the US banks did during their housing collapse — mortgage owners stopped paying because they were either underwater or couldn’t afford the new ARM payments so they got foreclosed on…house values plummeted but banks didn’t sell because they would have had to put the loss on their books. So you had companies holding onto depressed assets generating zero income. What kind of return do you think you’d get in a situation like that?

Dividend Beginner
Dividend Beginner
03/25/2016 8:01 am

Oddly enough I haven’t put enough thought into investing into the aging population. I also think a lot of the bigger companies have been getting increasingly expensive lately and maybe it’s a good idea to look at mid-cap stocks more to get that sweet mix of growth and safety.

Enginerd555
Enginerd555
03/26/2016 5:26 pm

I hope that’s not your tfsa account number there! Assuming it’s the blacked out bar!

Investment Hunting
03/27/2016 5:41 am

Echoing a few of your comments here. I’m long Biotech and Assisted Living. Gilead Science, GILD and Amgen, AMGN are my two favorite Bio stocks. In the Assisted Living space I’m long Omega Health Investors, OHI.