Profiles on contrarian economic analysts and other links

Link of the Day Time to Slip into Something Less Comfortable? – BusinessWeek The Usual Fare England 1-1 USA | World Cup Group C match report | Football | guardian.co.uk FDIC: Press Releases – East West Bank, Pasadena, California, Assumes All of the Deposits of Washington First International Bank, Seattle, Washington ‘Double dip’ decline seen

Playing with Fire

It’s spring, and this spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of speculation. The Fed’s promises look good and, as long as you’re not a small business, you can borrow to invest or speculate at no cost. The market has had a near record rally, sprinting far past our estimated fair value of

Jeremy Grantham: The market is 25% overvalued; 15% correction coming

Jeremy Grantham is out with his much anticipated Quarterly Letter and it’s a good one. “Just Deserts and Markets Being Silly Again” is a cutting, snarling, and sarcastic rejection of the prevailing V-shaped recovery bull market view.  But Grantham is far from ultra-bearish, giving a more nuanced and realistic assessment for the medium and longer-term.

Getting bearish again

You have probably noticed a change in tone at Credit Writedowns since about June, but a lot more in the past month or so. Once mildly bullish due to the deeply oversold levels this Spring, I have become increasingly alarmed at the unjustified strength of the recent market rally. My most recent post explaining my

Jeremy Grantham: Overheating in China, speculative rallies and fair value

Jeremy Grantham is out again with a very important investment strategy piece entitled “Boring Fair Price!”  He leads off by talking about how markets went from extremely overvalued a year ago to cheap back to a state which he considers fair value.  But, he sees the recent rally as a speculative rally which is a

Rosenberg: Market rally is just multiple expansion

David Rosenberg is out with a bearish piece on equities today (I hop that doesn’t surprise you).  He sees the market as still overvalued at these levels. The key, he say is that most of the rally has been built on multiple expansion and not earnings growth. Here is what he says (emphasis added) We

The Mega Jeremy Grantham Interview

This is an interview in five parts via Morningstar on May 28th with the one-time reputed perma-bear Jeremy Grantham who has been sounding much more bullish of late (in a bear-market rally kind of way). Definitely worth a look. The five parts run just over 20 minutes. Part 1: On dipping a toe back into

Grantham: go with high quality and hedge against inflation

Jeremy Grantham is out with his quarterly update. And he has a number of investment themes worth mentioning.  First, I should mention that his global outlook is fairly downbeat: We are experiencing the most severe synchronized global downturn in several generations. While governments have been quick to react, there are limits to what policy can

More bullishness from Jeremy Grantham

Jeremy Grantham, who is chief investment strategist of Grantham Mayo Van Otterloo & Co and manages over $85 billion is telling clients to get out of cash.  His March newsletter had this to say: Every decline will enhance the beauty of cash until, as some of us experienced in 1974, ‘terminal paralysis’ sets in. Those

Jeremy Grantham: “Pull the trigger”

In a Fortune article about how the market is hitting new lows, Jeremy Grantham predicted we will see a material new low. He’s talking about 600, or mind you, 450 on the S&P 500. Now, that’s low.

Nevertheless, he’s fairly bullish here

Jeremy Grantham: In-depth television interview with Consuelo Mack

The renowned money manager Jeremy Grantham has had his first television interview ever with Consuelo Mack on Mack’s program WealthTrack. Below is the video from that interview. Mack has promised to make a longer video available to those who subscribe to her podcast. Please find the podcast audio link here and the podcast video link here

Jeremy Grantham: “Keep telling yourself… you’re a long-term investor”

Jeremy Grantham has seen this crash coming for quite some time. Nevertheless, he is not selling everything and waiting out the market in Kruggerrands and cash. has kept a good long-term perspective about investing that bears repeating here. Keep telling yourself every night that you’re a long-term investor and don’t look at daily stock prices.