http://www.cnbc.com/id/27165599 US To Face Poor Economy for 10-15 Years: Robertson Posted By: JeeYeon Park Multi-millionaire investor Julian Robertson told CNBC that the United States is "just getting into the recession," and that the poor economy will last as long as 10 to 15 years. Last year, Robertson had said that the U.S. economy was in for "a doozy of a recession." He said the reason was the credit situation was worse than anyone had thought. "Doozyâs a tough one and long one, I think thatâs what weâre headed for," said the chairman of Tiger Management. (Watch the accompanying video for the full interview with Julian Robertson...) "I donât mean to imply that this is going to last quite as long as whatâs been happening in Japan, but when they went into their decline in 1990, almost 20 years ago, their people were loaded with savingsâbut [Americans are] all broke," he said. "...If we leave out the home in the calculations, Iâd say that 80-85 percent of Americans are broke. So they have to cut back on their spending." Robertson said that his current favorite trade is the "curve steepener" trade. "Itâs a derivative which pays the movements in the difference between the two-year interest rate on government bonds and the 10-year and 30-yearâ¦I think the curve steepener is the best hedge against inflation and I think weâre going to have some inflation." Robertson was optimistic about "some excellent buys" that investors should consider. He likes Apple [AAPL 110.26 13.46 (+13.9%) ], Microsoft [MSFT 25.50 4.00 (+18.6%) ], Baidu [BIDU 266.05 52.30 (+24.47%) ], MasterCard [MA 173.60 21.89 (+14.43%) ] and Visa [V 58.87 6.87 (+13.21%) ]. "I have a pretty good bet on copper. I think that copper, which is selling so far below its cost of production, is a terrific short," he added.
80-85% of Americans are broke? Well considering the US government is broke it does make sense! Thanks for the link
The chief economist of Mitsubishi UFJ said he expects the US housing prices to bottom out in roughly 3 years from now. The Bush housing program initiative seems pretty fraudulent now - when he said "more than 2/3 of anglos have houses, but less than half of african and hispanics have houses in the US". That pretty much accelerated things - and Greenspan had orchestrated the financial asset inflation - with Clinton signing and celebrating the deregulation of security products in 1995.
I have no idea if Robertson is remotely sane in making that call. I just wanted to pass it along because I thought it was pretty interesting that he's so gloomy on the macro situation in the U.S. It also got me thinking as to whether equity markets can do well if the economy does go into a protracted downturn. Anyone care to share their thoughts on this question?
Just to show that the interview was from CNBC.com, and that there's a video interview of their interview with Robertson that accompanies the article. It wouldn't let me post the embedded video.
why would they? we are only just now reaching average trailing p/e valuations for the s&p 500. ...and if the "E" shrinks this quarter then we will be overvalued. let's not forget that before the whole credit bubble we had an s&p 500 p/e of 7 back in '82. just something to think about.