Wow, lots of interesting things appeared in the Google doc! I have some questions . . .
Item: Presence of large positions as a % of daily trading volume by activist investors taking large positions in the stock and looking to ‘agitate’ for change
Question: While there is risk of decline if the agitator goes away, I suspect that most of the time, this is seen as an attraction, not a source of potential drawdown. In my experience, when there’s smoke, fire, if it isn’; there on day one, tends to follow eventually
Item: Senior Management issues - age of CEO (i.e. Buffett) or key players
Question: BRK is BRK, one in who knows how many. More often than not, however, this can be seen as a bullish situation, a special situation. It may spark a sale of the company, a major restructuring, or even simply fresh innovation from new blood. I think many investors would prefer to load up on situations like this if they feel hard times are coming, even to the point of paying a “death premium” in valuation.
Item: Industry wide Margin erosion; for example due to industry big dog trying to buy market share and put people out of business (i.e. the Amazon effect) - companies may be less stable when a giant market player is in their space
Reaction: May need to change that from margin erosion to ROE erosion. Margins are over-rated by journalists. If narrowing margins is accompanied by greater turnover, then the end result may be net positive (look at the history of technology)
Item: Collapse of a major industry ‘player’
Reaction: Could be bullish. Look, for example, at how the fall from the summit for the likes of AOL or MSFT played out. One giant gets hammered; losts of other companies flourish
Items: Earnings and/or Sales of Beta/Correlation to GDP and Earnings and/or Sales of Beta/Correlation to other companies in portfolio and other discussions involving, one way or another, correlation
Reaction: I’d be careful about doing too much with correlation. These things tend to be unstable over time and may bear some of the problems I expressed with share price histories; statistical report cards. In the economy and in businesses, correlations in general seem to be rising in many respects (likely relating to globalization) and I’m not sure new norms have yet been established. Notice that commodities, for example, are no longer widely seen as uncorrelated hedges against stocks. I would urge that no correlations be considered unless a non-quantiative explanation can be made for what we can expect of future correlations. Relying on purely statistical correlations could actually result in a dramatic increase in risk of disaster (besides leverage, I believe this was one of the LTCM problems and also was the bomb that blew up a lot of other hedge funds in the late 2000s).
Items: Sensitivity to Fama French Factors and Sensitivity to Barra (or similar) equity factors
Reaction: Maybe I’ve had too long a day; I’m not sure what these are getting at.