John Paulson: Distressed Opportunities

From Bloomberg News:

Distressed assets offer the best investment opportunities this year as the global recession deepens, billionaire hedge-fund manager John Paulson said.

“The decline in the market has created a very good buying opportunity,” Paulson, 53, whose New York-based Paulson & Co. oversees about $30 billion, said in a speech at a hedge-fund seminar hosted by Societe Generale and Lyxor Asset Management in Tokyo today. “Distressed opportunity in the U.S. is shaping up to be the best opportunity in a lifetime.”

Paulson said he’s focused on assets such as mortgages and debt from bankrupt companies, while in the equities markets he cited the utilities, consumer staples and pharmaceutical industries. Financial stocks remain risky, Paulson said.

In the 15 years since starting its first funds, Paulson & Co.’s one down year was 1998. All his funds were profitable in 2008, with the flagship fund returning about 38 percent, compared with a loss of 19 percent for hedge funds worldwide on average. The 2008 returns came after his funds made more than $3 billion for the firm in 2007 by anticipating the collapse of the U.S. housing market and subprime mortgages.

Investors are chasing distressed assets after more than $1.1 trillion in losses at financial firms globally and frozen credit markets helped drag the U.S., Europe and Japan into their first simultaneous recessions since World War II.

Deep Recession

“In 2009, we expect this recession is going to be deeper and longer than consensus estimates,” Paulson said. “We don’t think we’re through the banking crisis yet. We think that in many cases, losses the banks will experience will exceed their common equities.”

Hedge funds are private, largely unregulated pools of capital whose managers can buy or sell any assets, bet on falling as well as rising asset prices, and participate substantially in profits from money invested. Managers typically charge fees equal to 2 percent of client assets and 20 percent of investment profits.

“We’re bearish on the economy, but very bullish on opportunities in front of us,” Paulson said.

Jim Rogers: A Retrospective

After thinking this morning about commodities and inflationary prospects, I watched a Jim Rogers interview from 1995, which I have included below. You will have to fast forward a bit, because he appears toward the end. Here are a few of his predictions from 1995:

“Next year and the year after, I don’t think we’re going to have good times in the American stock market.”

“Inflation is coming.”

“Commodity prices are going through the roof.”

Best country to invest in right now: “Iran.”

“Everything in life comes down to timing.”

Well, it looks as if Jim's timing was profoundly wrong.

In fact, much of this flies in the face of what he said in Hot Commodities, published a decade later, which was to the effect of “if you went through the 1990s and didn't touch shares in technology companies then you missed out on massive gains," essentially meaning that it was a mistake caused by not being open to new things.

But, as you can see, he was saying the exact same stuff back then as he is today. And he certainly wasn't talking about technology.

Anyone who continues saying that inflation will come or commodities will rise is bound to be proven right at some point. This not to single out Rogers as being wrong, but to emphasize my stance on how difficult it is to predict macro events – unless, that is, you only have one perennial prediction.

What history shows is that, aside from short-term macro shocks, the best asset class to own, by far, is stocks. And if you can buy those stocks at depressed prices or in periods of intense fear, then your total return can be magnified significantly.

Land, labor, capital and commodities are combined to create businesses that increase productivity. And while any one of those factors may become relatively attractive during a boom, owning excellent businesses – or fractional interests, called stocks – is the best investment over the long haul.

Keynes predicted that the great financial fortunes – paper fortunes, such as the Rothschilds in his day – would be destroyed by long-run inflation. Clearly, this has not happened.

Quite the contrary: the countries with the most developed financial systems have always been the most prosperous, whether the Medicis in Renaissance Italy, the Rothschilds in 19th-century London, or today's commanding skyscraper in Lower Manhattan that reads, simply: "85".

Thus, while the gloom and doom is persuasive nowadays, I remain highly skeptical that the world – financial or otherwise – is coming to an end. I lean more towards John Paulson's prediction that massive returns will accrue to buyers of solid, yet beaten-down financial stocks, as the smoke clears and we emerge from this crisis.

Paulson Funds Annual Report

Paulson's merger arbitrage commentary is particularly interesting, in the sense that buying Anheuser-Busch stock would have been an incredibly risk-averse investment over anything but the short-term; and the upside was a 90% return when calculated on an annualized basis. This is a strategy that almost anyone could have implemented.

Also, Paulson explains the reasoning and analysis behind his historic bet against subprime and financials, which is extremely valuable reading. Paulson states that we are halfway through the crisis; yet he has liquidated his bets against subprime and is beginning to make select investments in distressed debt and other long positions within the credit and financial space.

Going forward, he makes it very clear that being a long investor in financials will generate immense returns when the markets rebound, throughout either 2009 or 2010.

Paulson Funds Annual Report

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