Contrarian investors’ philosophy is that the market always
overreacts to bad news. Therefore to them, the best time to invest is when the
market has experienced a series of negative events which ultimately lead to
falling of stock prices. This can be illustrated by Warren Buffet’s proverbial
quote: “Be fearful when others are greedy
and greedy while others are fearful.” Contrarian investing can be applied in
the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE). The NSE has been negatively affected by
a series of bad news and events and many investors have responded to it in a
herd mentality. This has been elaborated further below in this article.
Over the last half of the year 2015, the stock market has been
hard hit by the negative economic outlook that the country and by extension the
global economy has had to grapple with. 2015 has been one of the hardest years
for the country’s economy with numerous challenges the economy has had to
surmount. Among these challenges have been terrorism, insecurity, runaway inflation, weak shilling
and chronic levels of corruption in the government. These challenges have
negatively affected the country’s economy which has led to a lot of offloading
by foreign investors from the stock market. This has sent the stock indices
tumbling down.
The prolonged bear market has further been worsened by a
record high number profit warnings issued by public companies. The issuing of a
profit warning is a requirement by the Capital Markets Authority (CMA) that a
public company expecting a decline of more than 25% of its annual net profit
must make that information public prior to the reporting date. A record 16
companies issued profit warnings in 2015 which are: Pan Africa Insurance,
Britam, UAP, Standard Chartered, Mumias, Uchumi, Standard Group, TPS Eastern
Africa, East African Cables, ARM Cement, BOC Gases, Car & General, Sameer
Africa, Crown Berger, Express Kenya, Atlas Development. This has tainted the
outlook of NSE which has led to even more investors exiting the stock market.
The high interest rates experienced over the last quarter of
2015 has also worsened the stock market. This is because the high interest rates
have seen investors switch from the stock market to the more attractive bonds
market as well as the treasury bills market. A good year for bonds is always a bad year for stocks.
All these factors have led to a massive selloff of stocks. This
has seen the stock market lose over 21% in value over the year 2015. This is
equivalent of a loss of Kes 270 billion of investors’ wealth. To put this into context,
this tremendous loss of wealth has been amplified by loss of investor confidence
in the stock market. This means that this loss may not be reflective of
intrinsic values.
For a contrarian investor, this is rare opportunity to dive
into the stock market and make substantial gains. This is because the negative
events experienced are cyclical and are bound to reverse in future. Different analysts agree that stock prices will rebound in 2016. This is the
time to stop moving with the current and make a bold decision to walk the lone
path. This will of course earn you the tag of a ‘stupid investor’, but you can
guess who will have the last laugh.
