Bill Gross, co-founder and co-CIO of PIMCO, is to my mind one of the shrewdest money men around. His monthly newsletter, this month entitled “Alphabet Soup”, therefore always makes for thought-provoking reading.
Here are the first and last paragraphs:
“Global financial market returns stand at the threshold of mediocrity. With bonds priced not for recession but near depression, most major global bond indices now yield less than 3%, surely a forerunner of returns to come. Stocks, long the volatile vamp of investor optimism, have not yet adjusted to the New Normal of half-size economic growth induced by deleveraging, reregulation, and deglobalization and have low single digit prospects as well. Yet, what has seemed obvious to those of us collectively at PIMCO for several years now is less than standard fare in the trading rooms of institutional money managers. While the phrase “New Normal” has been welcomed into the lexicon of reporters and commentators alike, the willingness of investors to accept its realities is fog-ridden and whispered, or perhaps softly whistled, much like midnight passersby at a graveyard. Our “New Normal” two-word duality seems to resonate more on the “normal” than the “new” to economists whose last names aren’t Roubini, Reinhart, Rogoff, or Rosenberg. It’s as if “R” has been eliminated from the financial alphabet, and “new” from investors’ dictionaries worldwide.
“Consumption when brought forward must be financed, and that financing is a two-way bargain between borrower and creditor. When debt levels become too high, lenders balk and even lenders of last resort – the sovereigns, the central banks, the supranational agencies – approach limits beyond which private enterprise’s productivity itself is threatened. We have arrived at a New Normal where, despite the introduction of 3 billion new consumers over the past several decades in “Chindia” and beyond, there is a lack of global aggregate demand or perhaps an inability or unwillingness to finance it. Slow growth in the developed world, insufficiently high levels of consumption in the emerging world, and seemingly inexplicable low total returns on investment portfolios – bonds and stocks – lie ahead. Stop whispering (and start shouting) the words “New Normal” or perhaps begin to pronounce your last name with an RRRRRRRRRRRR. Our global economy, our use of debt, and our financial markets have changed – not our alphabet or dictionary.”
Bill also explained his thinking yesterday in the following CNBC interview:
Sources: Bill Gross, PIMCO – Investment Outlook, June 2010 and CNBC, June 30, 2010.
