There is a distinct possibility that, if Peter Schiff has been so correct in his 'big-picture' analysis, and yet so many of the investment vehicles he has used to position for what he perceived would be a calamitous series of events, which indeed many of have transpired, have not behaved as he expected, and have lost value, as the pricing relationships have not 'gone according to plan', that this underlying dynamic may or will contiunue, (ie, pricing relationships in his investment vehicles not gone according to plan), and, for all his accuracy in his overall analysis, he may continue to lose investors money. One has to wonder, if he has been so accurate, and still lost money, what may happen if he 'starts to become wrong'? Will he also continue to lose, (or even more odd, will he make money if his investemnt thesis start to drift the other direction, if and as they have 'played themselves out'?) It may be that if he has lost money when he was correct, that if the markets now have a move, or countermove to his thesis, he may experience even deeper losses. I think that that scenario may hold the greater likelihood. Time will tell.
Another out-of-the-mainstream guy is Martin Armstrong. He concluded that all the government interventions would only increase volatility.
I'm thinking the same thing. BTW, he has no margin and he decided that based on it being too risky. He got a lot right, but this massive deleveraging / deflation he glosses over completely. He keeps repeating 'it doesn't matter' , 'what matters is the end game', etc. His solution all this time was that the dividends would make up for what he considers a temporary market loss. But, 1) Now how will those international earnings hold up? Will foreign domestic markets really hold their own? 2) Will the USD really tank anytime soon? I'm disappointed. His game is forecasting - he should have known about this and waited for some bottom fishing. To his credit, he's not that worried and calls this a buying opportunity. Fortunately, for the account I moved over to him, I did not put any money in the market, following my one view. Yes, his portfolio & his clients are WAY, WAY down. Every pick that was suggested to me was slaughtered. Bad.
Like any trader, forecasters need volatility. You can go on and on what WILL happen, but if it's a period of time like 1992-1997, nobody pays attention. Now, all the real wackos will show up with their over the edge stuff, because they have a forum. I think we'll deal witha ll this ok, because the governments of the world are sufficiently frightened of us enough to take a break from hosing the citizens. Then, business as usual. We get out of this mess, things calm down, think March 13 to the Lehman collapse, and then we collapse again and test these lows. Don't know if they have enough bullets the second time around. Don't care. I did what I could. Keep your fingers crossed, because this is the worst crisis I've seen since Cuban Missle Crisis. All so avoidable.
This might kinda sorta explain Schiff's problem (from article on Jeremy Grantham). It certainly is a reasonable explanation for the bank CEO's, Paulson, et al. He's talking about running a company, but I think it can apply to running a brokerage.
Mak you are clueless... When a guy's strategy makes money for 7 years in a row, and then falters in the 8th, is the guy wrong?? Peter has been almost 100% right about the economy and market selection - and while this blip in the radar brings out the folly in amateur investors who clearly have no idea - it will again prove correct and investors will be rewarded accordingly.
It does, in fact make him wrong- He was HARDLY the only one saying that lowered savings and unqualified home buyers ect. were dangerous. However, his central theme was that the way to protect yourself from the coming calamity was to invest in Europe and Asia (hence the EuroPacific fund that he's been shillling). With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that it was absolutely the wrong place to be under these very extreme circumstances. For someone who made such a prescient call, one would think that he'd be able to protect his customers' funds a little better than he did. Makes you think that the snake oil is about to go bad.....