Rising Commissions? Since When?

I had to double check to make sure what I heard over the weekend was correct. A.G. Edwards (AGE), a St. Louis based firm with 7,000 brokers nationwide, is planning to raise their commissions by 5 percent beginning on March 15th. In addition, their postage and handling fee is jumping 10 percent to $5.50 per transaction. Yes, that is correct. The company will charge customers $5.50 to mail them each trade confirmation. BrownCo actually only charges $5 to make a trade, so you can see how out of whack these fees really are.

Amazingly, full service brokers continue to thrive, even when they are ripping off millions of investors. AG Edwards stands to bring in an estimated $50 million in incremental revenue from the price hike, as they generate $1 billion per year in commissions (40 percent of total sales). Now I understand investors take comfort in having a personal broker with whom to work with, but at what point does one think twice about paying these astronomical fees? After all, it costs next to nothing to execute trade, which is why discounters can charge less than $10 and still make a lot of money.

The statistics have shown that analysts aren't good stock pickers (sell-side research generates the investment ideas brokers in turn recommend to their clients) and the majority of mutual funds lag the market, so the buy side isn't that great either. Meanwhile, discount brokers now offer all kinds of stock research reports, the same research high-priced brokers are using.

Why then are investors content to pay a 2 percent commission to full service brokers? Think about it this way. Let's say you hold your average stock for a year. If you are paying 2% when you buy it and another 2% when you sell it, you're 4% behind the market's return assuming your stock picks are average performers.

With valuations where they are today in the U.S. stock market, the S&P 500 is likely to only average a mid-to-high single digit annual return for the rest of the decade at least. So, a full service brokerage customer is going to make about 4% per year net of commissions if the market returns 8% per year. Mutual funds will return about 7% in such a scenario, but transaction fees and loads could take that number even lower. No wonder index funds have become so popular. Compared with actively managed mutual funds and full service brokers, they are often a better option.

This current state of the investment advisory industry is exactly why I started Peridot Capital Management. The average mutual fund investor is going to underperform. The average stock broker is going to underperform. Investors who pick their own stocks often buy what they know and like, paying no attention to valuation. In doing so, they buy overpriced blue chips stocks that have done wonderfully over the last twenty years, and as a result, are set to underperform.

Unless you can earn above-average returns on your own, index funds are the best option of the four most common investment options, but by definition you can not outperform by owning them.

The answer, at least in my eyes, is pretty simple; investing with superior independent research from a personal investment manager, who is not working on commission, through an online discount brokerage account. Hence Peridot Capital was born.

Investment Banks Shed Profitable Asset Management Divisions

Last year's asset swap between Citigroup (C) and Legg Mason (LM) looked like a great move on the part of Legg. After all, retail brokers are hardly the future. Individual investors can only tolerate absurdly high commissions for so long, I would hope. Trading their retail brokers for Citi's huge asset management division, including Smith Barney's mutual funds, should be a huge lift for LM shareholders, and the stock's movement since the deal was announced bears that out.Now we learn that Merrill Lynch (MER) has decided to send Merrill Lynch Investment Management (MLIM) to BlackRock (BLK) in exchange for a 49% stake in the newly formed asset management giant. As was the case with Legg Mason, Blackrock stock has gone through the roof on news of a deal.

Evidently this Merrill deal was a much better alternative than the "let's change our fund company's name to Princeton Research and Management and see if that helps get us more business." Once Morgan Stanley's deal to acquire BlackRock fell through, Merrill swooped in and decided it was a much better idea to hand over MLIM to a somebody who could better run it. Doing so also rids Merrill of having the appearance of conflicts of interest with its investment bankers, research analysts, and mutual fund managers all under the same roof.

So in a matter of months both Legg Mason and Blackrock have strengthened themselves as pure play asset managers, a business that has great margins. With the growing popularity of hedge funds and international investment options, their fortunes will be much less tied to the direction of the S&P 500 than they were five or ten years ago.

The stocks have soared, and on current profit estimates they do look pricey. However, it is apparent that margin expansion will occur, both due to cost-cutting and an overall higher average profit margin across the business. Accordingly, current analyst expectations for profits (about $6 for LM in 2006 and $5 for BLK) will prove quite conservative.

And they better since LM is trading over $130 and BLK recently hit $150 per share. It is entirely possible that 2006 is a transition year for the integration of these very large deals, but come 2007 and 2008, they should be coining money. Add in the fact that asset managers have always traded at a premium to the overall market and financial services sector, and the stocks could outperform for the rest of the decade even after the recent run-ups we've seen. Of the two, Legg Mason looks cheaper than Blockrock, however. 

Bernanke Reign Begins

The markets really aren't reacting much, if at all, after newly appointed FOMC Chairman Ben Bernake answered questions on Capitol Hill today. Aside from Bernanke's preference to avoid partisanship, his answers and views on the economy were very similar to Greenspan's. As far as interest rates go, I continue to think we'll see 5% Fed Funds this year.

Implications for the stock market aren't very bullish in such a scenario. Stocks tend to be flat to slightly down after the last hike of a rate tightening cycle, and any move above 5% Fed Funds would indicate inflation is fierce enough to further crimp corporate profit growth. All in all, there are many excellent investment opportunities out there, but index funds won't fall into that category in the short-to-intermediate term, in my view.

Vonage Files for $250M IPO

Phone service upstart Vonage Holdings has filed initial paperwork with the SEC, the first step toward a possible IPO that aims to raise up to $250 million. Given the recent appetite investors have had for well-known consumer-related initial public offerings (Chipotle, Under Armour, to name a couple), the timing of this filing makes sense from the corporate perspective.

So, does the stock make for a good investment? Should the IPO come to fruition, we'll likely see a huge first day spike, allowing all of the investment banks' best clients to make a bundle. However, a closer look at Vonage's financials shows that any after-market valuation might be too high. For the first nine months of 2005, Vonage lost $190 million on sales of $174 million. Marketing costs totaled $176 million, a staggering figure.

IPO proceeds would undoubtedly go toward more marketing. While Vonage does have 1.4 million customers, how much are they actually worth? The Vonage service is a commodity, offering no differentiation from Comcast's service or anyone elses. Vonage is under cutting the competition on price ($24.95 for unlimited long distance calling to the U.S., Canada, and Puerto Rico) but there is no reason to think larger players won't attack that advantage in the future, and company's like Skype are focusing on free consumer voice services.

Much like other data and voice services, more competitors will enter the market, pushing prices down. Without a differentiated product offering, Vonage shares will likely be overpriced by retail investors should the IPO go smoothly.

Time to Unload Commodities?

Days like Tuesday don't feel too great when you have bets in the energy and industrial metals sectors. Many stocks were down as much as 6 percent yesterday alone. Despite the huge moves we've seen dating back to last year, the combination of strong fundamentals and low valuations continue to explain my bullishness.

Commodities are cyclical, and one day the party will certainly end, however I think the bull market in energy and materials still has ways to go. Really, it's simple supply and demand. Even at today's elevated prices, demand worldwide should remain strong. On the supply front, there is no reason to believe the world is going to all-of-the-sudden find lots more oil. Metals such as copper and gold take years to be mined, and unmined supply is fairly limited as well.

The stocks will always be very volatile, as a one-year chart of any company in the sector will show, but I can't help but think sell-offs like the one we saw Tuesday are opportunities for those who have yet to jump in.

Take Anadarko Petroleum (APC) as an example. Late Monday, the company reported earnings of $3.88 per share on sales of $2.25 billion, easily surpassing estimates of $3.35 and $2.09 billion. In fact, actual results even beat the highest printed estimate on the Street ($3.77/$2.23B). However, the stock fell more than $3 to $102 per share as crude oil prices dropped by a decent amount.

APC also announced a 2006 capital expenditure budget of $4 billion versus $3.4 billion in 2005. Production growth is expected to be in the 4-8 percent range this year. It's not just an oil price story, but production is growing too.

After seeing last quarter's results, I have no reason to think the highest 2006 estimate coming into that report, earnings of $15.73 per share, is unattainable. That would put the stock's forward P/E at 6.5x. Most investors will tell you such a multiple signifies peak earnings, and they'd be right. Price-earnings ratios are always lowest at cyclical tops and highest at cyclical bottoms. The bullish case for Anadarko centers around the idea that 2006 might not be the top.

If China and India continue to grow as a percentage of the world economy, and other nations follow their lead, oil could reach at least $100 per barrel by the end of the decade. That might not happen, but I think it very well could, and the odds of $30 oil anytime soon are very, very low. Energy and materials represent 10% and 3% of the S&P 500, respectively. I think investors should be overweight these areas for the next several years.

Is Merrill Lynch Serious?

Merrill Lynch (MER) is changing the name of its mutual fund group to Princeton Portfolio Research and Management later this year. Now this might seem strange on the surface, just because as far as name recognition and brand awareness go, I would think investors would choose to invest with Merrill over Princeton. Maybe that's just me.

The part of this story that really got a laugh out of me was Merrill Lynch's reasoning for making the change. In essence they think a new brand will make it easier for them to gain market share in the retail mutual fund business. Their concern is that brokers and financial advisors with other major firms have avoided offering Merrill Lynch funds because they see it as giving business to their competition.

That seems like a very valid concern. I can't see many Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs brokers trying to sell Merrill funds to their clients. But isn't it hilarious that they think changing the name will help this problem? Do they think retail brokers are just going to start blindly recommending this new fund family without looking into them at all?

So they'll do a little research to find out exactly who these "Princeton" folks are, and they'll learn, if they haven't heard already, that it's the old Merrill Lynch fund family. And we're back to square one.

Side notes:

Amazon (AMZN) is getting hit by $4 today after earnings. As much as I like Legg Mason's Bill Miller, I really don't know what he likes about this stock. All I see is a perennial 40+ forward P/E, decent but not overly impressive sales growth, and very low margins (not much better than Borders and Barnes and Noble as was once predicted).

OccuLogix (RHEO) is down more than $9 in the pre-market, to $3 per share. The only reason I even know about this company is because I recall Cramer pumping it on his Mad Money show. Evidently their product showed no difference versus placebo. How he can suggest to average investors that they buy something this speculative on national television is beyond me. Maybe a 75% haircut in a single day will help viewers understand what he is doing. I still have not exactly figured out his motivation (and/or conflicts of interest) in pumping the small caps he does, but I suspect the answer is not comforting.

Google and Wall Street Finally Converge

After picking up some Google (GOOG) shares yesterday afternoon as the stock plummeted from $430 to $350 on word of their disappointing earnings report, I just sold those shares, and all others I own for myself and for my clients, at $400 per share. Think of it as wanting to go out on top after a great trade.

The case can be made that Google should be held at current levels. Inclusion in the S&P 500 will be upcoming, and word is that the company will be announcing several large distribution deals with large, popular content providers in coming months. There will be positive catalysts after last night's shocker.

After all, if Google gave quarterly guidance like other firms, investors and analysts would not have been surprised with a headline EPS number of $1.54 per share for Q4, because they would have known where tax rates were going to be. The business is still solid, taking market share and expanding into new areas. Last night's report did not show that fundamentals have deterioriated. Rather, growth is simply slowing down due to the law of large numbers. That is the bullish case.

However, these are not the reasons I have owned the stock since $170 per share. The "value" I saw had to do with the fact that the Street didn't fully understand what the earnings power of the company's search franchise was. If investors knew Google could earn $8 or $9 in 2006, their IPO in August 2004 would never have been priced at $85.

Last night's report showed me that Wall Street is no longer underestimating Google's growth outlook. Earnings, adjusted for the tax rate increase, were a few cents above consensus, but below the highest printed estimate. Revenue came in right at the estimate. Upside from domestic search appears limited from here.

Does that mean the stock is done going up? Not necessarily. Google is investing huge amounts of money in international operations and new products outside of core search. The potential is huge, and they have the money, the people, and the momentum to conquer new markets. The next task for Google is to monetize these other products. Can they make decent money with Gmail, Google Video, Google Earth, Google China, Google Images, and the many other areas we are speculating they will enter?

Nobody knows for sure. Bulls on the stock believe they can. However, just because they are in position to do so does not mean they will. If they can monetize these product lines, growth will continue and the stock could very well go a lot higher. However, it is not as clear to me that this will happen, at least not as clear as it was that GOOG was too cheap at $170 per share.

Google is trading at 45 times this year's projected earnings. The issues the company addressed last night (growth deceleration in search and massive spending on international markets) could very well result in more earnings disappointments in the near term.

The risk-reward outlook seems to be less compelling to me today. Maybe that will change in the future if we get another quarter or two of disappointing earnings, or if other product lines boom, but right now I'm content with selling at $400 and seeing how it all plays out.

Google Drops $80 in After Hours Trading

The headline numbers at Google (GOOG) were $1.29B in sales and $1.54 EPS, versus expectations of $1.29B and $1.76. The stock just opened down $80 to $350 in the extended hours session. The reason for the EPS miss was a higher tax rate (41.8%) than what most people expected (26%-30%). Had the rate been in-line with estimates, EPS would have beat consensus by a few cents. The company said it expects a 30% tax rate in 2006, so it could be a one-time hiccup and not that big of a deal. I am going long a little stock into the conference call, thinking that the initial reaction might be too violent to the downside after we hear what they have to say. It should be interesting.