Thursday, April 4, 2013

Bill Gross "Man in the Mirror" - What if rates go up, prices go down?


Investors should be judged on their ability to adapt to different epochs, not cycles. An epoch may be 40-50 years in time, perhaps longer.

Bill Miller may in fact be a great investor, but he’ll need 5 or 6 more straight “heads” in a future epoch to confirm it. Peter Lynch is a “party pooper.” Warren is the Oracle, but if an epoch changes will he and others like him be around to adapt to it?

No matter how self-indulgent you think this IO is, I just looked in the mirror and saw at least a 7. You must be blind!

What if an epoch changes? What if perpetual credit expansion and its fertilization of asset prices and returns are substantially altered? What if zero-bound interest rates define the end of a total return epoch that began in the 1970s, accelerated in 1981 and has come to a mathematical dead-end for bonds in 2012/2013 and commonsensically for other conjoined asset classes as well?

http://www.pimco.com/EN/Insights/Pages/A-Man-In-The-Mirror.aspx