Provident Financial: Today’s Best Nearby Local Bank Cap-Gain Prospect (NYSE:PFS)

The primary focus of this article is Provident Financial Services, Inc. (NYSE:PFS).

Investment Thesis

21st Century paces of change in technology and rational behavior (not of emotional reactions) seriously disrupts the commonly accepted productive investment strategy of the 20th century.

One required change is the shortening of forecast horizons, with a shift from the multi-year passive approach of buy&hold to the active strategy of specific price-change target achievement or time-limit actions, with reinvestment set to new nearer-term targets.

That change avoids the irretrievable loss of invested time spent destructively by failure to recognize shifting evolutions like the cases of IBM, Kodak, GM, Xerox, GE and many earlier others.

It recognizes the progress in medical, communication and information technologies and enjoys their operational benefits already present in extended lifetimes, trade-commission-free investments, and coming benefits in transportation utilizations and energy usage.

But it requires the ability to make valid direct comparisons of value between investment reward prospects and risk exposures in the uncertain future. Since uncertainty expands as the future dimension increases, shorter forecast horizons are a means of improving the reward-to-risk comparison.

That shortening is now best attended at the investment entry point by knowing Market-Maker expectations for coming prices. When reached, their update limits are then reintroduced as the exit/reinvestment point and the term of expectations for the required next coming comparisons are recognized as the decision entry point to move forward.

We employ arbitrage science to determine the MM community’s near-term price expectations limits as a continuing measure of the balance between market-price prospective risk and reward. Then we monitor prior subsequent actual market performance to choose between opportunities.

For investments guided by this article or by others, target sell prices will always be found here as the high price in the MM forecast range.

Description of Equity Subject Company

Provident Financial Services, Inc. operates as the bank holding company for Provident Bank that provides various banking products and services to individuals, families, and businesses in the United States. The company’s loan portfolio comprises commercial real estate loans that are secured by properties; commercial business loans; fixed-rate and adjustable-rate mortgage loans collateralized by one- to four-family residential real estate properties; commercial construction loans; and consumer loans consisting of home equity loans, and auto and recreational vehicle loans. In addition, it provides wealth management services comprising investment management, trust and estate administration, financial planning, tax compliance and planning, and private banking. Further, the company sells insurance and investment products, including annuities; operates as a real estate investment trust for acquiring mortgage loans and other real estate related assets. The company was founded in 1839 and is headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey.”

Source: Yahoo Finance

These growth estimates have been made by and are collected from Wall Street analysts to suggest what conventional methodology currently produces. The typical variations across forecast horizons of different time periods illustrate the difficulty of making value comparisons when the forecast horizon is not clearly defined.

Risk~Reward Balances of Financial Services Competitors

Figure 1

The risk dimension is of actual price drawdowns at their most extreme point while being held in previous pursuit of upside rewards similar to the ones currently being seen. They are measured on the red vertical scale. Reward expectations are measured on the green horizontal scale.

Both scales are of percent change from zero to 25%. Any stock or ETF whose present risk exposure exceeds its reward prospect will be above the dotted diagonal line. Capital-gain-attractive to-buy issues are in the directions down and to the right.

Our principal interest is in PFS at location [9], close above the right-hand edge of the green 5 to 1 reward~risk area. A “market index” norm of reward~risk tradeoffs is offered by SPY at [11]. Most appealing by this Figure 1 view for wealth-building investors appears to be PFSI.

Comparable features of Financial Services Competitors

The Figure 1 map provides a good visual comparison of the two most important aspects of every equity investment in the short term. There are other aspects of comparison which this map sometimes does not communicate well, particularly when general market perspectives like those of SPY are involved. Where questions of “how likely’ are present other comparative tables, like Figure 2, may be useful.

Yellow highlighting of the table’s cells emphasize factors important to securities valuations and the security PFS, most promising of near capital gain as ranked in column [R].

Figure 2

Why do All This Math?

Figure 2’s purpose is to attempt universally comparable answers, stock by stock, of a) How BIG the prospective price gain payoff may be, b) how LIKELY the payoff will be a profitable experience, c) how SOON it may happen, and d) what price-drawdown RISK may be encountered during its active holding period.

Readers familiar with our analysis methods after quick examination of Figure 2 may wish to skip to the next section viewing price range forecast trends for PFS.

Column headers for Figure 2 define investment-choice preference elements for each row stock whose symbol appears at the left in column [A]. The elements are derived or calculated separately for each stock, based on the specifics of its situation and current-day MM price-range forecasts. Data in red numerals are negative, usually undesirable to “long” holding positions. Table cells with yellow fills are of data for the stocks of principal interest and of all issues at the ranking column, [R].

The price-range forecast limits of columns [B] and [C] get defined by MM hedging actions to protect firm capital required to be put at risk of price changes from volume trade orders placed by big-$ “institutional” clients.

[E] measures potential upside risks for MM short positions created to fill such orders, and reward potentials for the buy-side positions so created. Prior forecasts like the present provide a history of relevant price draw-down risks for buyers. The most severe ones actually encountered are in [F], during holding periods in effort to reach [E] gains. Those are where buyers are emotionally most likely to accept losses.

The Range Index [G] tells where today’s price lies relative to the MM community’s forecast of upper and lower limits of coming prices. Its numeric for PFS of 34 is the percentage proportion of the full low to high forecast occurring below the current market price. The remaining 66% to the upside is almost twice that to the downside. The RI of similar symbol PFSI is 26, with about three times as much upside as down.

[H] tells what proportion of the [L] sample of prior like-balance forecasts have earned gains by either having price reach its [B] target or be above its [D] entry cost at the end of a 3-month max-patience holding period limit. [ I ] gives the net gains-losses of those [L] experiences.

What makes PFS most attractive in the group at this point in time rather than PFSI is its ability to produce capital gains most consistently at its present operating balance between share price risk and reward at the Range Index [G]. Column [N] relates the [ I ] realized net gains averaging +14.7% for PFS with its expected upside [E] of only +7%, more than twice as much. The same measure for PFSI pits actual gains of +6.2 against forecasts of +16.4, less than half what was expected from a sample of over 200 forecasts.

These are not our expectations, but those of Market-Makers acting in support of Institutional Investment organization clients acting to build the values of their typical multi-billion-$ portfolios. Sometimes best estimates are wrong, even among the best evaluators. To consider such “slippage” we odds-weight prior similar RI reward~risk balances by the history of their outcomes.

Further Reward~Risk tradeoffs involve using the [H] odds for gains with the 100 – H loss odds as weights for N-conditioned [E] and for [F], for a combined-return score [Q]. The typical position holding period [J] on [Q] provides a figure of merit [fom] ranking measure [R] useful in portfolio position preferencing. Figure 2 is row-ranked on [R] among alternative candidate securities, with PFS in top rank.

Along with the candidate-specific stocks these selection considerations are provided for the averages of some 3,000 stocks for which MM price-range forecasts are available today, and 20 of the best-ranked (by fom) of those forecasts, as well as the forecast for S&P 500 Index ETF (SPY) as an equity-market proxy.

Current-market index SPY is only moderately competitive as an investment alternative. Its Range Index of 40 indicates under two-thirds of its forecast range is to the upside, while about two-thirds of previous SPY forecasts at this range index produced profitable outcomes.

As shown in column [T] of figure 2, the reward to risk levels vary significantly between stocks. What matters is that net gain between investment gains and losses which was actually achieved following the forecasts, shown in column [I]. The Win Odds of [H] tells what proportion of the Sample RIs of each stock were profitable. Odds below 80% often have proven to lack reliability. All but 2 of PFS’s 21 RIs at 34 in the past 5 years have been profitable under our standard risk-management discipline.

Recent Forecast Trends of the Primary Subject

Figure 3

Many investors confuse any time-repeating picture of stock prices with typical “technical analysis charts” of past stock price history. These are quite different in their content. Instead, here Figure 3’s vertical lines are a daily-updated visual record of price range forecast limits expected in the coming few weeks and months. The heavy dot in each vertical is the stock’s closing price on the day the forecast was made.

That market price point makes an explicit definition of the price reward (upside) and risk (downside) exposure, expectations which were held by market participants at the time. This is a visual display of their vertical balance between risk and reward.

The measure of that balance is the Range Index (RI).

With today’s RI of 34, PFS has 7.0% upside price change in prospect. Of the prior 21 forecasts like today’s RI, most (19) have been profitable. The market’s actions of prior forecasts became accomplishments of +8.3% gains in 48 market days, or 10 weeks. So history’s advantage could be repeated five times or more in a 252 market-day year, which compounds into a CAGR of +68%.

Also please note the smaller low picture in Figure 3. It shows the past 5 year distribution of Range Indexes with the current level visually marked. For PFS the largest proportion of recent past forecasts have been of higher prices and Range Indexes. The 90 (of 100) profitable “Win” odds suggests a good probability that market prices are likely in the next two months to reach or exceed price-range high targets.

Conclusion

Based on direct comparisons with PFS and other Financial Services competitors, there are strong wealth-building reasons to prefer a capital-gain seeking buy in Provident Financial Services, Inc. over other best-positioned examined alternatives measured by committed capital of risk-motivated professionals).