There are a handful of stocks we hold in our client portfolios that I consider to be cornerstone stocks. These are the bluest of blue-chip companies such as Microsoft, Amazon and Coca-Cola. Another name, less well-known here in Australia is JP Morgan Chase (JPM). We added it to our portfolio before the regional banking crisis in early 2023 and have continued accumulating shares in the stock for most clients in their international portfolios in that time. The performance has been outstanding, and we expect their market leadership to continue.

There are several important reasons I like this company.

Firstly, they have outstanding management. It starts with their CEO of the past 18 years, Jamie Dimon. He has guided the bank from strength to strength including navigating not just JP Morgan through the GFC but the entire banking industry. He is the definition of a great leader.

Under his guidance, he has balanced the need to perform in the short term while optimising for the long term. His leadership and foresight have set JP Morgan up to achieve long-term growth while creating a culture of prudence and discipline that has delivered consistent results and made JP Morgan a beacon of stability in an era of disruption and change.

This discipline and stability enable the bank to not only weather the most difficult of financial storms but also to take advantage of them and add value to shareholders in the toughest of times. As the GFC took hold and big-name banks collapsed, JP Morgan’s position of strength enabled it to be a buyer at a time when no one else could. They were able to buy Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual in the process for pennies in the dollar.

More recently, the regional banking crisis in 2023 highlighted how susceptible the smaller US banks are to failure when depositors withdraw their funds and create a run on a bank. This caused the downfall of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) because they were forced to sell assets at a loss. Once again, JP Morgan was able to capitalise on the situation by taking over SVB as well as First Republic.

More importantly though, it was their relative strength and stability that was able to help in heading off the crisis. Once JP Morgan stepped in, depositor concerns about their deposit dissipated. During that time, it became clear to me that going forward the banking world was going to change, consolidation was going to be inevitable, and the big will get bigger. Additionally, their global presence is growing and their investments in technology are paying off too. They will be a beneficiary in the advancement and integration of artificial intelligence technology.

But from a pure investment value perspective is what appeals to me most. Within our portfolios, we tend to buy Australian companies where the Australian market leader has similar attributes to their global peers. We prefer to buy exposure in international companies where you simply cannot invest in a theme domestically. For example, all things being equal on valuation, you might prefer Woolworths over Walmart, but you simply cannot find a domestic equivalent to Microsoft.

When you start comparing JPM to Australian banks, the difference in valuations is stark. Australia’s biggest and safest bank Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) trades at a 22 times price earning (PE) ratio while JPM trades at just 11 times. Comparing their valuations to their profit, CBA is twice as expensive as JPM. While JPM has a market capitalisation of AUD $895b approx. four times CBA’s AUD $220b, one is dominant globally while the other is dominant in a nation of only 25 million.

Obviously, Australian investors love CBA and will point out it has a higher dividend at 3.7% fully franked compared to 2.2% for JPM. But this is where its critical to look under the hood and really understand how the numbers work. CBA pay out almost 80% of their profit to maintain that dividend. JPM only pay out about 25% of their profit as dividend. JPM could pay a higher dividend yield than CBA if they chose to. But they retain their earning to reinvest massively in the future as they position for global opportunities.

It's important to remember that the issues that created the regional banking issue back in 2023 haven't really disappeared. With all the geopolitical and economic uncertainty around the world, its critical to invest in companies with a proven track record. But history has shown that whatever the problems or crises that arise in the decade ahead, JPM will be positioned, ready and waiting patiently to capitalise on any opportunity. Few companies have a better track record, market strength and leadership to confidently enter a more difficult phase. Few are better positioned on the global stage than JP Morgan. This is why investors need to consider the best companies across the world, not just at home.

General Disclaimer: This information is of a general nature only and may not be relevant to your particular circumstances. The circumstances of each investor are different, and you should seek advice from an investment adviser who can consider if the strategies and products are right for you. Historical performance is often not a reliable indicator of future performance. You should not rely solely on historical performance to make investment decisions.

There are dozens of different types of risks and biases that investors need to consider when making investment decisions. Some such as market risk, concentration risk, credit risk, liquidity risk and time horizon risk are easier to quantify and are well understood. Others such as recency bias, confirmation bias and herd mentality are more nuanced and require some self-reflection to mitigate or offset their impact.

Share markets have been kind to investors over the past several months, and our portfolios have enjoyed solid returns on the back of this. However, the recent buoyancy in share markets has not changed my underlying cautiousness regarding the risks that investors face. I still think the world is precariously placed, even though the share market doesn’t seem particularly concerned now. Wars can escalate, inflation may not be over, the list goes on.

Investors have become complacent and seem to ignore any potential for bad news. Rather than factor in risks more conservatively, the share market has taken an attitude that everything is great until it has been proven that it is not. This binary thinking isn’t very smart because it doesn’t account for the reality that there are indeed risks that exist with varying degrees of probability. These risks need to be factored in.

To make the math simple, let’s imagine there are 2 separate global events, event A and event B. Let’s further assume each event has a 50% probability of occurring in the next 12 months and would result in a 20% decline in the share market. Based on the probability of each of the 2 events happening, the following outlines the combination of possible outcomes and their probabilities of occurring:

1. 25% chance that neither event A nor event B occur.

2. 50% chance that either event A or event B occurs.

3. 25% chance that both event A and event B occur.

Unfortunately, investment markets often misprice event risk. Perhaps it is due to complacency or the intangible nature of assessing risk. Nevertheless, in the absence of an event occurring, the default assessment of these risks by investors in the current market seems to be to ignore it until it happens.

This might turn out to be ok in the 25% chance where neither of the 2 events occurred. But that results in a mispricing of risk until that point because there was a 75% chance of a negative outcome whereby at least one of the events occurs. If the events do occur markets need to adjust much more aggressively. In the basic scenario I outlined above, there is a 50% chance that one or the other event occurs, resulting in a 20% fall. While there is also a 25% chance that both events occur leading to a much larger fall in the share market.

In reality, there are many risks at play of varying probability and consequence. But in today’s complex geopolitical and global economic environment, where there are many more event risks than usual, the prudent assessment of risk is imperative. It’s critical to think differently and ensure you don’t get caught up in the herd mentality as markets throw caution to the wind. Consider the way various biases impact your thinking and assessment of risk.

So, while investment markets and many investors seem to have taken a head in the sand approach to considering these risks, I am happy to carefully consider them. It means that we continue to take profit from time to time as share markets go ever higher. We want to be prepared for the day when one or more of these events do occur because eventually, they will.

General Disclaimer: This information is of a general nature only and may not be relevant to your particular circumstances. The circumstances of each investor are different, and you should seek advice from an investment adviser who can consider if the strategies and products are right for you. Historical performance is often not a reliable indicator of future performance. You should not rely solely on historical performance to make investment decisions.