Legg Mason Value Trust Releases Letter to Shareholders

The equity sell-off on October 19 was precipitated by the market's reaction to the earnings of two stalwarts of the commodities cabal, Caterpillar and Schlumberger, both of which surprised their fans by issuing less than stellar guidance. Cat went so far as to opine that the US might be in recession already; its earnings gains were solely due to non-US growth.

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If credit is becoming harder to come by, if spreads are widening, if growth is slowing, then it seems to me the leadership is about to change. The same strategies that led when the global economy was emerging from fears of deflation and entering a period of accelerating growth and synchronized recovery are very low probability bets to lead if the global economy is peaking, the US is slowing appreciably, and credit spreads are widening, not narrowing.

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Where will the new leadership come from? The same place it usually does: the old laggards. I think the new leadership will be US, large-cap, dollar-based, and grow to encompass what no one wants to own today, especially financials and consumer. I also think so-called growth stocks will continue to do fine. When growth becomes scarcer and the discount rate becomes lower, growth becomes more valuable.

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More particularly, just as the right thing to do in 2002 was to buy what everyone was panicked about, I think the greatest gains over the next 5 years will be made in those securities people are panicked about today. For specific names, consult the 52-week new low list.

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Value Trust Comments

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One of the enduring features of the findings in behavioral psychology as it applies to finance, a subject I have discussed many times over the years, is the almost complete inability of those who are aware of them to actually apply them. You can attend Richard Zeckhauser's seminars at Harvard, read lots of articles and case studies, be reminded of how recency bias, or anchoring, or the representative fallacy, or myopic loss aversion impair clear thinking and skew decision making, and still fall prey to them and others of their ilk the moment you are confronted with real world situations.

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The recent precipitous decline in financial stocks, especially those related to housing, which sent Countrywide Financial (CFC) to $12 last week, and led to 20 to 30% drops in financial guarantors in a day or so -- after they had already dropped between 25 and 50% this year -- is a case in point. After falling 20% in a only a few days on no news, and this after being down 50% for the year, CFC rallied over 30% in one day once they reported their results and indicated they would be profitable for the 4th quarter and expect to earn a reasonable return on equity of 10-15% for all of 2008. The price action on both sides was driven by emotion -- first fear, then relief -- and was hardly the result of a careful analysis of Countrywide's long term business value. That, by the way, we think is in the $40's compared to its current price of about $14-15.

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This is not unusual. Warren Buffett has often noted how any knowledgeable analyst would have pegged the value of the Washington Post at about 5x what it traded at in the 1974 bear market, yet no one wanted it at that price. The 2002 bear market saw some similarly amazing prices. AES traded under $1. It will generate over $1 of free cash flow this year and is up 20 times from the lows of 2002. Yet fear set its price, as it did those of Nextel, Tyco, Corning, Amazon, and a host of other companies at that time.

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Today fear dominates the pricing of housing stocks, of mortgage related securities, of financials, and of many consumer stocks. Confidence and optimism underlay the pricing of energy, materials, industrials, and non-US stocks, especially those of emerging markets, and China in particular.

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I am reminded once again of the quote that sits in the front of Ben Graham's Security Analysis, from Horace's Ars Poetica: "Many shall be restored that now are fallen and many shall fall that now are in honor." (The quote does not say "all" by the way, just "many").

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In Value Trust, we have been taking advantage of the market's current turmoil to make adjustments as the market misprices some securities in relation to others. Here is what you can expect: the fund will become more of what it already is, large capitalization US, as we systematically reduce our mid-cap names in favor of those with larger market values. As I noted elsewhere, I think large-cap US is the cheapest part of the equity market and so we will have more of those names. We will also extend exposure into some sectors from which we were previously absent. Inter industry valuations are pretty homogeneous and so concentration pays less than it used to. In other words, we will own more stocks, and in new industries. We will still be quite concentrated compared to the average mutual fund, just less than we have been previously.

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We will likely reduce the weightings of many of our top 10 holdings. They will still be among our largest holdings, we will just have less of them. This is being done to reduce risk in the over-all portfolio, and to fund some of the new names we are buying.

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This is the first time since 1990 we have had two calendar years behind the S&P 500. Perhaps not surprisingly, that was also a time of panic due to a housing market recession, soaring oil prices, banks and financials collapsing. We were able to take advantage of the values then offered to begin a pretty good period of excess returns.

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While the past may not repeat itself, it does often rhyme, as Mark Twain once said. The chapters to come may be different, but the verses are likely to sound the same.