Je viens de récupérer plusieurs article de et sur Benjamin Graham. Celui qui m’intéresse ici date de 1974 (2 ans avant sa disparition) et s’intitule « The Future of Common Stocks », paru dans le Financial Analysts Journal (n° de septembre-octobre).
Bien que rédigé à une époque différente, il montre combien l’histoire financière a tendance à se répéter. Les mots de prudence et de bon sens de Graham font écho avec une certaine pertinence avec la période actuelle, marquée par l’imprudence, la spéculation et la recherche du gain à court terme. L’actualité du texte me rappelle celle de son ouvrage L’investisseur intelligent, que j’avais lu pour la première fois en 2003, après mon 1er krach boursier.
Voici quelques passages de l’article, en VO.
“It is a safe prediction for me to take that, in future years as in the past, common stocks will advance too far an decline too far, and that investors, like speculators – and institutions, like individuals – will have their periods of enchantment and disenchantment with equities.”
Graham fait ensuite référence à deux épisodes pour appuyer son argument:
En 1924, un livre intitulé Common Stock as long term investments fut publié. A partie de cette date, le marché s’envola pour ensuite s’effondrer (le fameux krach de 1929). Cet épisode amène le commentaire suivant de Graham:
“Here was an example of the calamity that can ensue when reasoning that is entirely sound when applied to past conditions is blindly followed long after the relevant conditions have changed.”
Le deuxième épisode a lieu en 1948.
“The Dow sold as low as 165 or seven times earnings, while AAA bonds returned only 2.82%. Nevertheless, 90% of those canvassed were opposed to buying equities (…). This was just the moment before common stocks were to begin the greatest upward movement in market history.”
“The future of equities will be roughly the same as their past; in particular, common stock purchases will prove satisfactory when made at appropriate price levels.”
“It is absurd to conclude [from elements such as inflation, high interest rates, zero growth…] that from now on common stocks will be undesirable investments no matter how low their price level may fall. The real question is the same as it has always been in the past, namely: Is this a desirable time or price level to make equity purchases?”
Graham découpe l’univers des actions en 3: les titres qui ont un P/E supérieur à 20; ceux dont le P/E est inférieur à 7; ceux qui se situent entre ces deux bornes. A propos du groupe des titres se traitant moins de 7 fois les bénéfices, il écrit:
“If the earnings on which these multipliers are based can be counted on, more or less, in the future (…) it is evident that many NYSE issues can now compete in attractiveness with bonds at 8 ½ per cent.”
“These extraordinarily low multipliers present us with another phenomenon – the reestablishment of book value, or net worth, as a point of departure and possible guide to the selection of common stocks.”
“If [the] business has been prosperous, and is at least reasonably promising for the future, it should be worth its net asset value; hence an opportunity to buy an interest therein at a substantial discount from net worth could be considered attractive.”
…
“This is the idea of buying selected common stocks obtainable at two-thirds or less of book value, and holding them for sale at their net asset value – to show a non-spectacular but quite satisfactory 50% profit.”
Le groupe intermédiaire est de peu d’intérêt selon Graham.
« Those (common stocks) selling at intermediate multipliers may present individual opportunities, but they have no special interest for me as a category.
A propos du 1er groupe, il écrit:
“The first tier, high growth issues present a real challenge to past experience. Obviously they would be wonderful private of market-type investments if obtainable at book value or even twice that figure. The trouble is, of course, that most of them sell at more than five times book value…”
“At these levels, they take on a speculative character which is due entirely to their price level, and in no sense to any weakness of the companies themselves.”
Vient ensuite un passage sur les marchés efficients.
« Efficient market, in its extreme form, makes 2 statements: 1) the price of nearly every stock at nearly all times reflects whatever is knowable about the company’s affair; hence no consistent profits can be made by seeking out and using additional information, including that held by “insiders”; 2) because the market has complete or at least adequate information about each issue, the prices it registers are therefore “correct”, “reasonable” or “appropriate”. This would imply it is fruitless for security analysts to look for discrepancies between price and value.
« I have no particular quarrel with declaration one, though assuredly there are times when a researcher may unearth significant information about a stock, not generally known and reflected in the price.
« But I deny emphatically that because the market has all the information it needs to establish a correct price… [Take] Avon Products. How can it make sense to say that its price of 140 was “correct” in 1973 and that its price of 32 was also “correct” in 1974? Could anything have happened to reduce the value of that enterprise by 77%? The market may have had all the information it needed about Avon; what it has lacked is the right kind of judgment in evaluating its knowledge.
Graham fait ici une référence directe à Descartes, cité en version originale dans son texte: “ce n’est pas assez d’avoir l’esprit bon, mais le principal est de l’appliquer bien.”
« Among the issues selling below sevent times earnings today, there are plenty to be found for which the prices are not “correct” ones, in any meaningful sense of the term.”
Inflation and Investment Policy
“It seems only yesterday that everyone was saying that stocks, even at high prices, were definitely preferable to bonds because equities carried an important measure of protection against inflation.”
“But (…) equities have failed to provide the protection against inflation that was expected from them.”
“This is good reason not to be enthusiastic about equities at every market level.”
“Investor’s choice when confronted with high inflation? Short term obligations (when convinced that stocks are selling above their true value); Move from bonds and stocks to real things: real estate, gold, commodities, valuable pictures and the like.
“But it’s impossible for large sums of money to be invested in such tangibles without creating a huge advance in price level.
“It may turn out to be wise to have an indirect interest, via the common stock portfolio, in such tangible assets as land, buildings, machinery and inventories.
Institutional Dominance, Efficient Markets, and the Prospects for Security Analysis
“…The effect of large-scale participation by institutions in the equity market, and the work of innumerable financial analysts striving to establish proper valuation for all sorts, should be to stabilize stock-market movements, i.e. in theory at least, to dampen the unjustified fluctuation in stock prices.”
“I must confess, however, that I have seen no such result flowing from the preponderant position of the institutions in market activity.”
“The amplitude of price fluctuations has, if anything, been wider than before the institutions come into the market on a grand scale.”
“The only reason I can give is that the institutions and their financial analysts have not shown any more prudence and vision than the general public; they seem to have succumbed to the same siren song – expressed chiefly in the cult of “performance”. They, too, have put aside the once vital distinction between investment and speculation.”
“While I have been making a case for equity investment now, I am not proposing a 100% stock position for any investor. On the contrary, I think that everyone’s total portfolio should always have a minimum component of 25% in bonds, along with a complementary minimum holding of 25% in equities. The remaining half of the funds may be divided between the two, either on a standard 50-50 basis or in accordance with some consistent and conservative policy of increasing the bond proportion above the 50% when bonds appear more attractive than equities, and vice versa when equities appear more attractive than bonds.”