Speaker 1:
From the library of the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall And Broad Streets in New York City, you're Inside the ICE House, our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange on markets, leadership, and vision in global business, the dream drivers that have made the NYSE an indispensable institution for global growth for more than 225 years. Each week, we feature stories of those who hatch plans, create jobs, and harness the engine of capitalism right here, right now at the NYSE and at ICE'S 12 exchanges and seven clearing houses around the world. Now here's your host, Josh King, head of communications at Intercontinental Exchange.
Josh King:
We're recording this podcast on the 226th anniversary of the founding of the New York Stock Exchange. That's right today in 1792, the Buttonwood Agreement, the New York Stock Exchange's founding document, was signed, establishing a framework for trading securities. When you think about the changes that have occurred over the centuries, we tend to focus on the technology that has transformed how we trade. In a recent Inside the ICE House episode, Intercontinental Exchange founder and chairman Jeff Sprecher dove deep into how trading, clearing, and data distribution has adapted technology to become more efficient and transparent over the past two decades.
Josh King:
But today, we dive into the underlying principles that have changed in the past few decades around investing. The axiom of "Buy low, sell high," is as simple as it could be, but what should you buy? How should you choose the right asset class to fit your individual investment philosophy? Technology and access to increasingly sophisticated data sets has revolutionized the study of finance in same way that it has transformed how securities are traded. Our guest today, Professor Roger Ibbotson, first caught the attention of economists when he predicted, in 1974, that the Dow Jones Industrial Average, at the time hovering just around 800, would hit 10,000 by the end of 1999. Well, how'd he do? Here's CNBC on March 29th of that year, 1999.
CNBC March 29, 1999:
The closing bell is still just about 30 seconds away, the Dow up 188 points with the S&P strong, the NASDAQ shooting for its high of the day, up 72 points. Big winners include GE, JP Morgan, American Express, Chevron, and Exxon, all stronger today with Microsoft boosting the NASDAQ. The Dow, as we said, holding on here at 10,009, and the seconds are ticking away. It is possibly the Dow's date with destiny, as the closing be rings on Wall Street. The fourth attempt for Dow 10,000 appears to be successful.
Josh King:
Ah, Dow 10,000, 1999. Our conversation with Professor Roger Ibbotson just after this.
Speaker 1:
Inside the Ice House is presented this week by ICE Global Index System, or GIS. ICE's index families combine leading reference data, evaluated pricing and analytics, along with a track record in index provisioning, spending 50 years to deliver unique cross asset and best in class index solutions.
Josh King:
Our guest today, Roger Ibbotson, chairman and CIO of Zebra Capital Management. He's also a professor at Yale School Of Management. In 1977, while he was an assistant professor of finance at the University of Chicago, Roger published Stocks, Bonds, Bills, And Inflation®, which has become the industry standard for information on capital markets returns. Welcome to the program, Roger.
Professor Roger Ibbotson:
Glad to be here.
Josh King:
You are in the Stock Exchange today. You just heard that clip of 1999. What are your reflections? You got any sort of jitters as your prophecy comes true back in '99?
Professor Roger Ibbotson:
Wow. It's always great to be in the New York Stock Exchange and it's actually something I've been studying my whole life. I've thought about the stock market. I've collected the data. And actually, we talked about how the stock market started at the Buttonwood Agreement in 1792. Well, I didn't get back that far, but I did look at the data all the way back into really 1815. And we put together returns of the stock market from 1815 all the way to the present. I published this and it's now actually republished every year in the Stocks, Bonds, Bills, And Inflation® Yearbooks that you talked about. So I've been studying it the whole time. I've gone after and looked at the data. And being on the floor and being in the Stock Exchange, it's actually one of the greatest experiences of my life.
Josh King:
We've had some interesting moments this year. At the beginning of the year, we crossed the threshold of 24,000, 25,000, 26,000. We're back at around 25,000 today. In '99, Professor, you predicted that by 2025, we might see it hit 120,000. Are we on pace?
Professor Roger Ibbotson:
Well, we're not on pace for that. And actually, we've had two really bad periods since 1999. We've had the technology bubble crash in 2000 to 2002. We had the big financial crisis in 2008. So we're not likely to hit over 100,000 by say, 2025, but we're doing fine. And actually, I think we've actually got decent returns.
Josh King:
Your 1974 prediction was based on looking at historical data over this long period that you spoke about. Not going back all the way to 1792, but you were looking at what was going to happen at the time. Professor, you were at the University of Chicago, working with Rex Sinquefield on what would become your Stocks, Bonds, Bills, And Inflation® chart. I think I have it here somewhere. For our listeners, what is the basis for this chart and why did it over a half century for an economist to pull together asset classes into one place to look at all that data?
Professor Roger Ibbotson:
Well, that is the basis. Getting all the data together, to look at it all at once. And that was the motivation. People were talking about risk and return, and they recognized that the greater the risk, the greater the return. And there was some data on the stock market and a bit of data on the bond markets and so forth, but nobody had put this together. And what the chart was meant to show originally was that there were these risk premiums. So that long term bonds would be more risky than shorter term bonds. And corporate bonds would be more risky than government bonds. And of course, stocks would be, that's what it particularly showed, that stocks would be more risky than bonds. And of course, stocks have had much higher returns than bonds because of that.
Josh King:
I can go to Yahoo Finance, Professor, now and plug in GE and ask for a chart showing the max number of years and see GE's stock going all the way back to its founding, in five seconds, if I want to today. Going back to the time when you were pulling this chart together, could you describe the process that went into a project like that in the 1970s? No easy trick.
Professor Roger Ibbotson:
I was a PhD student at the time at the University of Chicago. And they brought me in as a consultant, "What should we do with the investment portfolios?" And one of the things they were asking particularly, what they should do with the on portfolio. And I said, "Well, I can do that." So I managed the bond portfolio for a few years at the University of Chicago.
Professor Roger Ibbotson:
But while I was doing that, everybody I talked to, everybody wanted to know, "What's going on with the stock market? What are the long term returns? What do they look like in the stock market and how do they compare to bonds?" And the professors were talking the same way, because they said, "We know there are these risk premiums, how big are they?" And so nobody actually had a measure at that time.
Professor Roger Ibbotson:
So actually it was a really fascinating time to pull all that data together, which took, of course, a fair amount of work. Being at the University of Chicago was probably the best place to do it because we did have the Center for Research in Security Prices, which had a lot raw data there. And later on, I actually stayed on as a professor there.
Josh King:
So you were in a big archive room? I mean, how does that all work? Do you say, "Let me get all the microfilm out?"
Professor Roger Ibbotson:
Well, we didn't have to do it with the microfilm, but there were actual books and data. But a lot of this data was actually already on computers because actually [James Laurie 00:08:39] and [Larry Fischer 00:08:40] had done this at the University of Chicago and accumulated a lot of the data. So we could actually look at the data on computers, but we did have to do a lot of work also by actually pulling data manually out of books, as well. After we put that chart together, people were very interested in that chart. And nowadays you see that chart in brokerage firms and on people's walls and so forth, because it easily describes a long term history of markets and what really happened over the long term, at a glance.
Josh King:
Yes. So let's talk about that chart. I mean, and maybe I'm looking at a one part of it, but what were the biggest revelations and takeaways once you were able to put it on a piece of paper?
Professor Roger Ibbotson:
Well, it's pretty shocking how much, if you say, the stock market starting in 1926 through today even, has been about a 10% return. 10% returns mean you double your money roughly a little more than every seven years. That grows exponentially, explosively, to a number into the thousands for how much actually wealth is created even over a lifetime. So over the last 90 years, you would've made thousands of times your money by just being in stock market. Some of that would be eaten up by inflation. But even after inflation, you would've made hundreds of times your money by being in the stock market.
Josh King:
Bring me back to '74. Still, you produced the chart, it's there on a piece of paper. Did you see light bulbs going off everywhere, people saying, "Aha?"
Professor Roger Ibbotson:
They were. They definitely were, because actually, as you said, it was in 1974. So we had a situation where everybody was looking for some good news, and I show a chart. And then at the same time, I made this projection out to the year 2000, and actually it actually made some newspaper headlines. It was so interesting because people were grasping for something positive. And of course there was lots of reasons to be positive because, just because you've had a bad market at a time, doesn't mean it's going to continue.
Josh King:
Now every year since '74, you've updated the chart. Any surprising trends crop up that you didn't expect?
Professor Roger Ibbotson:
Well, of course every year's a surprise. I never know what's going to happen in a given year. We've had some little dips. I mean, they look like dips on the chart, like the crash of 1987, or the technology bubble crash or the financial crisis. These things are very severe to live through when you're in it. But when you look at the long term perspective, they actually haven't really damaged the stock market or the economy. So there's a lot of benefits to being a long term investor, but this is something that people have to be trained to do because we live moment to moment.
Josh King:
You got your PhD from the University of Chicago's Booth School where you also taught, and also led the CRSP Institute. In your Booth days, you were studying and collaborating with many of these great academics of our time, Eugene Fama and his efficient-market theory, Merton Miller and his research on capital structure, Fischer Black and Myron Scholes on their Black-Scholes options pricing model. What was it like interacting with these minds and how did it shape your own studies and career?
Professor Roger Ibbotson:
Well, actually every one of those names that you named were actually my dissertation committee. And later I became a faculty member there, so they were also my colleagues later. So it was obviously a very stimulating time because the University of Chicago, many of the big discoveries were taking place there. Whether it was in the options model, the Black-Scholes options model, or in corporate finance, the Miller-Modigliani or the efficient-markets with Eugene Fama, Eugene Fama was the chairman of my committee. So it was a wonderful environment. And you mentioned that the school is now called the Booth School of Business. Actually, David Booth was my roommate for a year as well there, as a PhD student. So, yeah, it was a great time, lots of ideas. That was where things were... I mean nowadays, I think ideas are very spread out where they happen and so forth. That doesn't happen all in one place, but it was very concentrated at that one time. And most of those people you named actually came up won Nobel Prizes.
Josh King:
I've been reading up about the Zebra Index and the sample of hot and cool stocks. Much of your studies focuses on the area of behavioral finance. For an average investor out there, could you describe what behavioral finance is and how it can affect trading and valuations?
Professor Roger Ibbotson:
Behavioral finances means that we're irrational in some way. And really there's two kinds of ways you're irrational. You may make cognitive errors. People tend to make mistakes. They don't have this kind of perfect rational knowledge. They don't know enough. So one form is being irrational by making mistakes. But another form is actually intentionally going with your emotions because we basically put too much emphasis on our emotions. And that's why when other people really like a stock, we tend to like the stock too. But those are the kind of stocks that if everybody likes it too much, it's actually, they're going to be the stocks that are overpriced. It's the other stocks, the overlooked stocks, that actually end up with the higher returns over the long run.
Josh King:
Where do you find the overlooked stocks? What's your process for seeing what other people aren't seeing, or getting excited about what bores other people and being turned off by things that are really heating up and making a lot of headlines?
Professor Roger Ibbotson:
Well, one of the ways you see this is just how much trading activity there is in a stock, because that shows how much interest there is in a stock. The stocks that have a lot of action going on at the moment, and even a lot of volatility from that stock, those kind of stocks actually have great interest in them. They're very popular.
Josh King:
You founded Ibbotson Associates back in 1977 to bridge the gap between academic knowledge, everything you had picked up at the University of Chicago, and what was actually happening in the industry. How were you received by the trading community and how has the gap closed in the decade since this academic professor coming into trading?
Professor Roger Ibbotson:
Well at Ibbotson Associates, I wasn't actually in the portfolio business, but I was providing information, and we were providing software and data. So I was in the data business. And of course it was a good business to begin, in the sense that there was a paucity of data, actually, at the time. And of course we now know that the whole business in general, the whole investment business has become far more quantitative and data oriented, but there was not that much data to go around at that time. It was really a kind of an educator function to the industry and ultimately to the investors, because once they understood the actual risk-return relationships, they actually were much more interested in investing in the stock market, for example.
Josh King:
Did you feel warmly welcomed?
Professor Roger Ibbotson:
Actually, I did feel warmly welcomed from the start. The academic side was the harder side because they were used to... Even though they needed all this data, they really were saying, "Give me a hypothesis." And they had a certain way of looking at things. So actually, it was a little harder to sell the ideas on the academic side, surprisingly, than in the business world, because the business world really knew that they were missing this information.
Josh King:
That's one of the hallmarks of the Yale School, isn't it? I mean, an embrace of more business world principles over academia.
Professor Roger Ibbotson:
Well, I wouldn't say we're embracing over academia, but certainly one of the hallmarks of the Yale School of Management is behavioral finance, and behavioral economics in general, where we don't just take the classical views of everybody's rational, that we actually... It's more complicated, but you actually start looking at how people behave.
Josh King:
So one of the remarkable, but perhaps unfortunate characteristics of our current bull market, Professor, is, since the 2008, recession retail investor participation remains pretty low. What are your thoughts on that in the context of your research?
Professor Roger Ibbotson:
Yeah, and it's unfortunate that it has been low because, of course, we've had now nine years in a row of up markets, at least up markets as measured by the total returns and it gets into again in behavioral finance because people are really... They have great loss aversion. After they went through the financial crisis, it was such a scary thing to go through that they're very reluctant to go back into the stock markets. I think they have too much loss aversion. I think they should be more aggressive. But in general, we've actually at my company Zebra Capital, tried to devise products that actually solve this for them, so that they can actually get some upside at the same time protecting against that downside.
Josh King:
A perfect lead into our break, Roger. After the break, Professor Ibbotson and I talk about the NYSE Zebra Edge Index that ICE and his firm Zebra Capital launched in 2017. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1:
GIS provides access to top level and constituent data for the complete universes of ICE BAML Bond Index and convertible index families. GIS has extensive functionality that allows you to view and download current and historical performance data and statistics. With the customization tools on the site, you can analyze relative value of individual bonds, sectors and indices. Visit theice.com/indices for more information.
Josh King:
Back now with Professor Roger Ibbotson. Before the break we were talking about how stocks have performed over time versus bonds. Professor, what are your general thoughts about the current state of the markets and the important factors to consider? How have the last 10 years been different than the 100 years before that?
Professor Roger Ibbotson:
Well, the last 10 years, stocks have actually done about as well always they have historically, despite the fact that they've had these couple of downturns. It's the bond market that's so unusual, because the bonds actually, if you want to measure a bond return, it's essentially the yield on the bond minus the duration times the change in yields. That's a good summary of what's going to happen to a bond return. So what this means is that in a bond return, as the yields rise, you have a negative capital gain on the bond. We've actually though, been in the opposite situation for the last 30 years, or the last 35 years or so, where the yields peaked out in 1980, 1981. They were in double digit yields on those bonds. But the returns on the bonds have actually been phenomenal over that whole period of time, because the returns of bonds, you got that high yield, but you also got the drop in yield, which gave you a capital gain. So you got a return, the yield plus a capital gain.
Professor Roger Ibbotson:
The problem though, now, as we go forward here, is now we're at low yields. Yields are, on government bonds, are mostly below 3%. And what this means is the forward return on a bond is going to be 3%, likely minus a number if it rises. So you'll actually have, if yields rise, you're going to have a capital loss. You're going to get 3% at a capital loss on bonds. So you have potentially even negative returns on these bonds. We're in a very different situation. Historically, you could say, "Well, our returns, the last 35 plus years have been great on bonds." But going forward, they're probably not going to be so well, do so well. Stocks will probably be okay, but not bonds.
Josh King:
So in 2006, you sold Ibbotson Associates to Morningstar and focused your attention on Zebra Capital. Why did you start Zebra?
Professor Roger Ibbotson:
One thing I hadn't done in my career is actually directly managed money. I really did back in the 1970s when I managed the bond portfolios for the University of Chicago, but I hadn't done that since then. I'd been more in the data business and the quantitative and the programming and the software business and so forth. Even before I sold Ibbotson Associates, I had started Zebra Capital. It was a way I could manage money directly and we're actually managing different types of money. For example, we manage the absolute return money, but we had also manage a lot of long equity money, especially in the small and micro cap areas. And we also manage indexes, of course.
Josh King:
So let's talk about some of the strategies that the firm offers to its clients. I'm looking at the NYSC Zebra Index versus the S&P 500 Index over a time period of basically 2000 to the present. What are you saying to your clients about the way your index works versus the market overall?
Professor Roger Ibbotson:
Well, our index is based on popularity. We're buying the less popular stocks. There's lots of capacity here because these are big cap stocks. They're actually among the 500 largest stocks that the New York Stock Exchange puts together, but our index is buying the less popular. And generally, that has the feature of these stocks having generally higher returns over the long run, but also lower risk. And the nice feature about having an index that's is lower risk means that it's great to use actually in insurance products, because insurance products, what we're talking about here, and we actually use this in the fixed index annuity type products, where they actually guarantee the downside. They give you principle protection. So when the investor gets that principle protection, they don't lose any money. And what they do get is equity participation. And the lower the risk that the index is, the more equity participation you can actually take in that index. I guess this gets back to sort of the fear and greed that I talked about.
Josh King:
The trade off is Nationwide takes a little bit of the premium as the insurance product.
Professor Roger Ibbotson:
It's a risk control product, purposely, to be low risk. And then, with Nationwide, actually literally insuring the principal protection. So every three years usually are, they have two year and three year periodic groupings, but every two or three years, you cannot lose any money because Nationwide is insuring the principal here. So this actually is something that people really like. It's a way of actually participating in the market without losing any money. The index that we've done with the New York Stock Exchange, it's actually, as you say, it's called the NYSE Zebra Edge Index. It's a risk-controlled index. It's listed on the Exchange and we've worked with the New York Stock Exchange in order to make this practical and investible.
Josh King:
This week's news cycle has been hitting. We've been seeing how little Americans save for retirement, that almost half the country has not taken any steps to prepare to grow what they've saved up. You've conducted a lot of academic research, we've been talking it about on the show, so far in the area of fixed indexed annuities and how they should fit into the portfolio of retirees. Can you highlight the conclusions you've reached and what your recent white paper tells retirees about the role of equities and bonds for retirement?
Professor Roger Ibbotson:
I'll start with bonds again. As you start approaching retirement, of course you need to actually invest something, but you have a need to actually take on less equities. You need to have less risk in your portfolio as you approach retirement. The typical way you would do this would be adding bonds to your portfolio. Taking away some of your equities, and adding bonds. But as I've indicated here, the problem with today's bond market, the yields are 3%. And if the yields are going to rise, they're going to actually give you capital losses on those bonds.
Professor Roger Ibbotson:
So we need a substitute for bonds, and fixed index annuities are a substitute. The principal is protected there, on a fixed index annuity. And actually from our examination of this and our research here, it shows that fixed index annuities actually have done historically, in a simulated portfolios, a little better than bonds, generally. I think they're in a particular position today with the bond yields being so low, that they might even have better potential. So we're in a situation where I guess our research shows that fixed index annuities can fit into the portfolio, if you're a long term investor. That's the key though. And we want people to be long term investors, because that's how you actually can protect your retirement.
Josh King:
So as a strategy, Professor, what are some of the pros and cons of using fixed index annuities?
Professor Roger Ibbotson:
Well, fixed index annuities are very beneficial to people in the sense that it's a way for people to protect their principal and to also get equity participation on the upside. Now, of course, these are wonderful attributes. They're not really for everybody though. Because, first of all, if you're not a long-term investor, you might actually have surrender charges. If you want to get out early, you can get this liquidity, but it isn't free.
Josh King:
How long do you have to hold?
Professor Roger Ibbotson:
Well, you can buy eight year, nine year, 12 year. They're all different types of holding periods, but you have to make that commitment over the time. So it's much like a retirement plan where you actually can make the commitment. You put the money in. In a retirement fund you would also have penalties if you take your money out early. So the kind of investor you want in this is the people who have that long term perspective. One of the things they also say on the negative side is, "Well, there's a lot of costs." Well, the biggest cost is these potential surrender charges. The costs are not so high if you are this long term investors.
Josh King:
In an age when so many fewer people can enjoy the benefits of the long term pension, so much of that disappearing, replaced often by fixed annuities.
Professor Roger Ibbotson:
That's right. Defined benefit plans were so prevalent when you go back to the seventies and eighties and so forth. But nowadays, we mostly don't have those defined benefit plans. Most companies have abandoned them. We do have social security, but social security does not necessarily cover a big part of your income. These are effectively filling that hole. Annuities can pay out over the rest of your life, much as a defined benefit plan would have done, if you actually had that available to you.
Josh King:
So let's talk about how they work on the end of the process. The holding time could be 8, 9, 10, 12 years, you're a retiree. At the end of that dozen years, they've put their faith in the market, it's appreciated nicely. How does it pay off at the end?
Professor Roger Ibbotson:
Yeah. You brought up a very good point here. There are really two kinds of annuities here. There's the deferred annuities that I just talked about here, where it helps you to build up your capital. But every kind of annuity actually can be converted into these more immediate payout annuities. And they serve a very important purpose for people because one of the risks, we all face is longevity risk. And we all want to live long, but actually, living long from a financial perspective can be dangerous because you can outlive your assets. What an annuity does, once you go into that payout, is gives you lifetime income.
Josh King:
Your material about the power of selecting the cool stocks. And you've got a sample set of cool stocks like United Technologies, Ingredion, Kimberly-Clark, Accenture, BlackRock, Alphabet, Waste Management. This is compared to hot stocks, stocks we see in the news all the time. Netflix, Best Buy, Chipotle, Harley Davidson, Ralph Lauren, Halliburton, Wynn Resorts, and Under Armour. The difference between those two sets of stocks?
Professor Roger Ibbotson:
Well, the difference is they're all recognizable names because they're all of the big cap stocks, that's the universe we're picking from. But some of those names get people excited. The hot stocks get people really excited, and because they're excited, they actually like them a lot. In fact, they like them too much. And there's a tendency for those stocks to be overpriced. These stocks that are kind of, frankly a little more boring, they often have a lot of earning power. They're often very successful companies, but they tend to be more overlooked. If you want to get higher returns, though, it's the overlooked stocks that have the lower valuations. You also tend to have lower volatility. And these are the stocks that actually are more likely to have higher returns. And also with this lower volatility, actually, these are the stocks that actually lend themselves better for insurance products.
Josh King:
The area of economics and finance has undergone a revolution over the last number of years, Professor, with breakthroughs in behavioral finance and data science and incorporation of various technologies, such as machine learning into the field. What do you feel is the single greatest change in finance today versus 30 years ago?
Professor Roger Ibbotson:
First of all, it's data. We're much more driven by data than we ever have been. And related to that is all the development of these indexes. Indexes, because once you have all the data, it's easy to put indexes together. We now have more indexes than we do have stocks, for example. And they actually play a very important purpose, because they make it easy for people to actually invest, and buying a whole chunk of the market at one time. They typically have to be investible indexes, but it's a very practical type of thing. So it isn't so much stock picking, it's more general ways of putting together portfolios. Portfolio management, usually it actually turns out to be more important than the actual stock picking part in expanding your returns.
Josh King:
Are you still as optimistic in 2018 as you were, that hotshot professor in 1974 who looked at a market of 800 and said, "It'll be 10,000 by 99?"
Professor Roger Ibbotson:
I may not be quite as optimistic, but I do certainly think that stocks will outperform bonds over the long run. I think as you go to a long run, the probabilities of that happening are extremely high. We may not be able to continue these 10% returns, particularly when you have inflation that's so low today. But yes, I'm overall long term, very optimistic on markets.
Josh King:
So in the NYSE Zebra Index, every quarter you look at the 500 largest stocks, you remove the hot stocks and you weight the cool stocks coming out with the basket that's in the index.
Professor Roger Ibbotson:
That's right. That's what we do. We actually take out the hot stocks and we actually take out the most volatile stocks as well. And those 200 and stocks or so, those stocks are the ones that are in the NYSE Zebra Edge Index.
Josh King:
Thanks so much for joining us in the ICE House today, Professor.
Professor Roger Ibbotson:
Thank you.
Josh King:
That's our conversation for this week. Our guest was Roger Ibbotson, chairman and CIO of Zebra Capital Management. If you like what you heard, please rate us on iTunes so other folks know where to find us. And if you've got a comment or a question you'd like one of our experts to tackle in a future show, email us at [email protected], or Tweet at us at NYSE. Our show is produced by Pete Asch and Ian Wolff with production assistance from Ken Abel and Steven Portner. I'm Josh King signing off from the library of the New York Stock Exchange. Thanks for listening. Talk to you next week.
Speaker 1:
Information contained in this podcast was obtained in part from publicly available sources and not independently verified. Neither ICE nor its affiliates make any representations or warranties, expressed or implied, as to the accuracy or completeness of this information and do not sponsor, approve, or endorse any of the content herein, all of which is presented solely for informational and educational purposes. Nothing herein constitutes an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any security or recommendation of any security or trading practice.