February 2015 – Dearest Leader

Efficient Markets in Security

We have a question from #DTsR listener @fsmontenegero regarding security and efficient market hypothesis. That is a very broad topic that could go in many different directions, and the ambiguous answer is one that people are sure to dislike.

@Wh1t3Rabbit @dearestleader loved your recent pod cast. Any thoughts on security and efficient market hypothesis?

— Fernando Montenegro (@fsmontenegro) February 20, 2015

Efficient Markets Hypothesis (EMH) via Investopedia:

…defined as a theory that it is impossible to beat the market because stock market efficiency causes existing share prices to always incorporate and reflect all relevant information. According to the EMH, stocks always trade at their fair value on stock exchanges, making it impossible for investors to either purchase undervalued stocks or sell stocks for inflated prices. As such, it should be impossible to outperform the overall market through expert stock selection or market timing, and that the only way an investor can possibly obtain higher returns is by purchasing riskier investments.

I’m not a fan of EMH for the same reasons I’m not a fan of the economic theory of perfect competition. Generally speaking many of these theories and hypothesis were invented as an unrealistic baseline. Why would anyone want to do that? My Finance II professor had a nice simple explanation. There are so many variables in the world it’s difficult to compare one company to another. We use many different theories and hypotheses to create an apples-to-apples or even playing field to compare Company A to Company B. We then add real world variables to help determine which one is the better company. We also have to realize that Investor A may be more concerned with double bottom line efficiency, while Investor B may care about triple bottom line corporate social responsibility. Once you get past a few variables you can come to different conclusions.

Another interesting fact from class is that with all the financial professionals and their predictive models the best you can hope for is to get it right 60% of the time. A coin toss has a 50% chance of winning so why spend all this time and money on financial engineering and forecasting? It turns out that 10% is huge so it’s definitely worth the effort. The lesson here is small percentages have big effects so don’t thumb your nose at 1%. 1% better than you were yesterday is better than 0%. You can take this to anything beyond finance as well. 1% improvement in this iteration of your anti-bribery, infosec, environmental, or other programs is a win. Iterate often and don’t give in to managers who say we need to show 5% improvement before beginning your next iteration because you’re likely to iterate only once or twice per year. If you get 1% 12x per year that’s a better payoff.

There is also another angle to everyone knowing the same thing. It does no good unless you act on it. This is a lesson learned from Tom Sosnoff, founder of ThinkOrSwim (now part of TDAmeritrade) and TastyTrade.com. Every stock market pundit can say what they want. For example, I think the US Dollar is going to continue to decline over the next 3 years due to Quantitative Easing and the debt the Government has taken out. Well, that’s great what kind of trade are you going to put on and why? Information needs to be insightful and actionable. Otherwise you’re just talking on CNBC or you’re the guest columnist of the week in SC Magazine or CISO Online. If you watch any of Tom’s shows they always have a trade to go with a hypothesis.

To illustrate the failure of EMH we can look at many of the recent hacks such as $TGT. The intruders something about $TGT that they didn’t know. We do not have an efficient market here because one side knows more than the other. Based on what was reported there has been speculation that $TGT had a team that notified another team who didn’t respond. If we follow this scenario we have two different levels of knowledge on one side with a different level on another side. Definitely not equal. Then when we look at actionable information, the hackers were taking action against $TGT while their response teams were still in the dark.

Let’s also take a look at EMH from the investor’s point of view. Until we tested our hypothesis of shorting the equities of hacked companies many people in the Infosec world made the mistake contributing to echo chamber that hacked companies were going to $0 just like the political doomsayers state that the USD is going to $0 because of Federal Reserve money printing and the debt load the US is carrying. If you were to take action on those (bad) assumptions would be down $45,000 in our simulated portfolio of hacked stocks. The same would have happened if you had bet long on EUR/USD. If you were to have placed a $100,000 bet on the dollar going down the day after President Obama was reelected, you would have had to put up $2,276.30 in collateral to borrow $100,000 from your broker and you would be down $17,000 on your $2,200 bet. As a matter of fact the whole notion that the USD was going to $0 was a fantasy, much like hacked companies going to $0. The reality hurts the wallet big time. There’s a saying, markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. If you had bet against the USD since the election you would have lost more money than you had put up on the wager.

2015-02-21-USDvsEverything-ThinkBack — When FX Trades Go Wrong

When you panic sell on news of a hacking there will always be someone there to #BTFD. If investors did know everything the big funds know, then they wouldn’t be selling and the buying pressure would be lower because there would not be a discount from selling. EMH and other theories are excellent in a classroom setting, but quickly fall apart once you enter the real world. Not everyone can know everything, but do your research and put the research to the test and you will be victorious. All strategies need to be insightful and actionable. Some people have the insightful part down, we all need to work on the actionable.

Where Are The Infosec Activists

In continuing our exploration of the world of Corporate risk and the markets we will take a look at the role of activist investors, who they are and what they want. Activists are becoming a prominent factor in how the Board and C-Suite address investor demands. Their activities affect all aspects of a company and when they arrive your department may be in for the shock of its existence.

Who are the activists and what do they want?

According to Investopedia an activist investor is:

An individual or group that purchases large numbers of a public company’s shares and/or tries to obtain seats on the company’s board with the goal of effecting a major change in the company. A company can become a target for activist investors if it is mismanaged, has excessive costs, could be run more profitably as a private company or has another problem that the activist investor believes it can fix to make the company more valuable.

The most common type of activist investor believes they can improve a company’s value for the shareholders by attempting to direct divestures, cost cutting measures, breaking up a big company, or a change in strategy. The more uncommon type of activist investor may buy shares and attempt to control a company for the purposes of making an ethical change such as environmentalism or removing child labor from the supply chain. Activist investors also fight among themselves, as Carl Ichan and Bill Ackman have been for years. Ichan likes Herbalife, while Ackman thinks it’s a scam (paraphrasing for him). Ackman even put up a site, Facts About Herbalife along with a 300+ slide presentation as to why they’re a ripoff. Ichan keeps buying the stock while Ackman was the biggest shortseller. When activists attack it will either make or break your company. These guys are serious about what they do. Starboard Value published a 294+ slide presentation on what needs to change at Darden Restaurants, especially at Olive Garden.

As you can guess, a lot of their activities are focused on cutting costs and increasing revenue. The latter is always great, but what happens to your Infosec or sustainability program when the Wall Street pole axe meets your budget? You should read what happened to Timkin. No, seriously you need to read it to understand what an activist takeover and breakup looks like. Bill George of Harvard Business School gives a hint,

“Activists think long term is 12 months and the first thing that goes is the stuff that pays off in five or 10 years,”

Let’s pretend you had an infosec program at Timkin. This is what you would be dealing with (****emphasis mine****)

Buried in a November Timken investor presentation is a chart bound to please Wall Street. Titled “Yesterday and Tomorrow,” it sketches how capital was allocated before the split, and how it will be used now. Pension fund contributions drop from nearly a third of cash flow to near zero, ****while capital spending is roughly halved. And instead of using 12 percent of cash flow to buy back stock, share repurchases will consume nearly half of cash flow over the next 18 months. In other words, less cash is being invested in the business or earmarked for benefits to employees, and more money is going to investors.**** While TimkenSteel’s board has authorized a three million share buyback by the end of 2016, Timken has plans to repurchase 10 million shares by the end of next year.

For academic purposes let’s assume all budgets will be cut by 50%. Don’t think it won’t happen. I’ve been on the buying end where the acquirer says cut everything by half in 1 year and tell management they’ll need to figure out how to make things work with half. In terms of Infosec and Environmental programs you look at what was required by law or regulation and then make a list of what wasn’t a requirement and begin pricing out the synergies obtained by downsizing personnel and equipment. But on the bright side there will be a complete Compliance checkup as part of the Freddy Kruegar cutting. Don’t think Symantec will protect you from Dokken.

But enough of the scary Halloween stories. Did activist investors have something to do with the Sony hack? When we look at the Q3 2014 Third Point Investor Letter on page 9 we find this bit of information (****emphasis mine****)

In May of 2013, Third Point announced a significant stake in Sony and suggested to the company’s CEO, Kazuo Hirai, that he should seriously consider spinning out 15‐20% of the company’s undervalued, American‐based Entertainment business. At the time, we explained that partially listing the Entertainment segment would have three positive effects: 1) highlighting its profitability; 2) increasing investor transparency, thereby allowing the market to properly benchmark the company against its global media peers; and ****3) incentivizing Entertainment’s management to run the company more efficiently by engaging in cost cutting and laying out clear earnings targets****

While, regrettably, the Company rejected our partial spin‐out suggestion, they made some changes that were consistent with our goals. ****In the Entertainment business in particular, Sony has cut costs, improved its dialogue with investors, and undertaken key management changes. **** In Electronics, Mr. Hirai’s team deserves credit for transitioning away from personal computers this year and improving television profitability in 2015. They have also improved investor transparency. Still, they have a long way to go and we continue to believe that more urgency will be necessary to definitively turn around the company’s fortunes.

A key tenet for us in making constructivist investments is our margin of safety. While we are most focused on the potential upside available to shareholders if management undertakes changes, we are unlikely to make a significant investment in a situation where constructivist‐driven change is the chief catalyst unless we see minimal downside. Sony was exactly the type of investment where the risk/reward ratio was skewed in our favor. Thanks to this investment principle, despite enduring profit warnings nearly every quarter we were invested, incurring worse news about Electronics than we expected, and suffering from market disappointment at the pace of Japanese macroeconomic reforms, we still managed to generate nearly a 20% return on this investment before exiting.

By the way Third Point is the No. 3 most well-known activist firm according to the 2014 Activist Investing Annual Review.

If we read into the report we can see that Third Point wanted Spin off its entertainment division. Sony didn’t go along with the plan. They did engage in cost cutting, but not to the level that Third Point wanted. Still, they exited with a 20% gain. Now let’s step back and drink a dose of reality. We have heard terms such as clueless or incompetent used to describe the security program at Sony. There may have been some of that, but in reality they had an activist investor who was pressuring them into some serious cost cutting. We also have to stop and consider that management isn’t clueless either. They know exactly what they are being told to accomplish. Are the activists clueless MBA’s who just “don’t get it” when it comes to Infosec? That’s an irrelevant question because they make a ton of money doing what they do. They don’t need to get Infosec at all. We won’t know how much Sony Entertainment’s Infosec program was cut, but don’t expect a well funded Infosec program or any program if you have an activist in house. Based on Third Point’s opinion they didn’t cut their overall budget enough. I would have to agree with Third Point that management has a long way to go to make Sony an efficiently run shop.

Where are all the Infosec Activists?

If there are activist investors who attempt to stamp out child labor in shoe factories, or prevent the dumping of waste into rivers then where are the activist investors who buy companies and make them spend more money on Infosec? Children working in sweatshops and oil covered birds are things that matter to the public. Data breaches, not so much. As an industry Infosec is still struggling to quantify what the ROI is on all those headcounts and equipment. In order for an Infosec activist fund manager to make change they would need to increase spending before a breach and demonstrate to the rest of the shareholders that was a good idea with real numbers.

One thing Wall Street has figured out is that nothing bad will happen if you don’t spend money on a JPMorgan sized Infosec program. While it’s likely every Infosec Professional’s fantasy to force management to spend money on a better security program it’s nothing but a fantasy out of touch with the financial reality of our world. There’s no money in spending on security, the preventative benefits are dubious at best, and consumers just don’t care. There’s a lot of money in cutting expenses and carving companies up like a roast. The hackers may not get you, but the activists will. Better call Dokken.

Following The Anthem Hack In The Market

The next company that is allegedly going out of business from hackers has been discovered. $ANTM supposedly had around 80M records taken. If only they were filming a movie about North Korea at the same time. We can see that amid all the panic that the professionals were moving into the stock.

The first observation is that the stock hits a high for the week on the news and stays above the current upward trend. The next day it rockets straight up at market open. Lets also take a look at Time & Sales on the right side of the screen. Lots of red means than there are sellers. But buried among the haystack are two interesting needles. Someone bought 30,000 shares of $ANTM. You’re not going to plow $4,110,527 into a stock that is going out of business. But wait! There’s more!

At market close someone bought 59,894 shares. You’re not going to plow $8,219,253.62 into a stock that is going out of business. Anytime you see a big buyer move in you know there’s some confidence in the underlying.

We can see that the options market is hot on the news. IV is around 27%, which is relatively low. The IV Percentile is around 44% which isn’t high enough to warrant shorting volatility. You would want to see that number above 50% to make it worth your while. When we look at the Puts there is a 31.59% chance that the stock will be below $130 at options expiration 35 days from now.

All signs are pointing to calculated buying and minor impact, unless the cold weather returns.

JPM Doubles Security Budget

Among more grandstanding, Only fall of global firm will shake up cyber security, we have found some interesting news about $JPM. They have doubled their information security budget. We will need to see what CEO Jamie Dimon has to say in his next letter to the shareholders, but this is an extremely useful tip. In his last letter to the shareholders that we reviewed in April 2014 he stated that $JPM has an annual cyber security budget of $250M and 1000 employees. Since the breach hit the news summer of 2014 this new revelation means that $JPM will be spending approximately half a billion dollars on cyber security. Central Bankers may not have been able to create the inflation they were desiring, but the hackers are creating inflation in security budgets. Does anyone have bets to place on who the first private sector CISO with a billion dollar budget will be?