TIP 049: Quantitative Value Investing

W/ Wesley Gray

5 August 2015

In this episode, we continue our discussion with best selling author, Dr. Wesley Gray. Preston and Stig ask Wesley to describe some of the finer points found in his book, Quantitative Value. Wesley also discusses his step-by-step approach to finding the best values in the world, all while minimize risk and maximizing returns with ETFs.

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IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL LEARN:

  • How do I estimate the intrinsic value of an ETF?
  • What is the investment philosophy behind Wesley Gray’s value ETF?
  • Ask The Investors: Can you apply principles from Growth Investing in Value Investing?

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TRANSCRIPT

Disclaimer: The transcript that follows has been generated using artificial intelligence. We strive to be as accurate as possible, but minor errors and slightly off timestamps may be present due to platform differences.

Preston Pysh  01:03

Hey, how’s everybody doing out there? This is Preston Pysh. I’m your host for The Investor’s Podcast. And as usual, I’m accompanied by my co-host, Stig Brodersen, out in Denmark. And this is the second part interview that we have with Dr. Wesley Gray. And we’re going to go ahead and cut to that tape right now.

Stig Brodersen  01:18

Okay, so let’s talk about ETFs again, so I think the difference between ETFs and mutual funds is really something that the public will realize the next five or 10 years. At least, that is the trend I’m seeing in the market right now. But Wes, let’s just make a shortcut through those five or 10 years. Let’s just say, what is the one secret, if there’s any secret, there’s the difference between ETFs and mutual funds, what is it that people haven’t realized yet?

Wesley Gray  01:51

I think tax is huge. That’s probably 80% of it. And then the other one is the structural sales difference where it’s disintermediated by nature. And that just lowers the cost of how I would deliver any strategy when the distribution is at the margin lower cost structurally. But yeah, that’s number one.

Stig Brodersen  02:17

Yeah. And perhaps we could *revert to tax also removes that tax before. But could you just very simply explain why is it that we can defer tax on ETFs, which is basically 80% less you’re saying? And why is that we have to pay tax on mutual funds?

Wesley Gray  02:33

So I don’t know why it is. That’s just how the rules are set… I can just explain how the rules work, right? So in a mutual fund construct, or any construct, frankly, outside of like an insurance company, there are all kinds of other ways you can deal with tax problems. But let’s say we want to deal with the non-billionaire versions of these. You can do a mutual fund. You could do a hedge fund. You could do a managed account. You can you could do a limited partnership or hedge fund structure.

If it’s a mutual fund managed account or hedge fund structure, what will happen is if that portfolio trades, and it has a game that needs to be distributed out to the clients on a K1, in the case of a hedge fund, or some sort of 1099 in the case of a mutual fund person or a managed account person. And that’s fine. That would actually also happen in an ETF if you traded securities in the ETF and you didn’t trade them in kind through the authorized participants.

Now, the essence of how the tax works, and this is how a lot of tax ideas concepts work, is banks have what they call mark-to-market P&L accounting, which means that if I were, let’s say Stig is a bank and Preston is just some individual registered investment company. If Preston gives Stig a $10 stock with a zero dollar basis, and Stig is a bank, he doesn’t give his right because when he gets that security, he pulls it in with mark-to-market accounting, so his basis is 10. If he turns around and sells it immediately, he’s indifferent.

04:26

Now let’s revert this. Let’s say Stig is an individual, Preston is an individual. If Preston gives Stig a $10, security with zero dollar basis, Stig is going to swiftly turn around and punch Preston in the face because you just gave him a deferred capital gain liability, right? So I guess you call it the tax arbitrage happens because we deal with two tax regimes. ETF structures or registered investment companies have flown through capital gain prompts like QRI. Banks are mark-to-market, so when we dump low basis stock on a bank, they’re indifferent. And essentially that capital gain liability it vanishes.

So that’s the same thing like they do structured products, swaps, and all these other different tax minimization concepts that are out on the street that most people don’t know about unless they got a large amount of dough. It all works on that, right? You go to a bank, and if you want to swap, you say, “Listen, I don’t want to pay capital gains on or day to day short term on the strategy. I’m going to give you this index, can you write me a total return swap on this index?”

So now, instead of buying and holding the index, which has a lot of activity that would kill you on taxes, you go to the bank and they write a swap on that contract, which now you turn something that has a lot of taxes into something that is long-term tax-deferred. It’s the same … It’s just structuring an ETFs leveraged the fact that banks and people or individuals or RICS, registered investment committees have a different tax regime.

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