I think I can sum up most of what PIMCO’s Bill Gross says in his latest “Investment Outlook” in just one sentence: don’t confuse genius with a bull market.
To explain his remarks in slightly greater depth, imagine that we’re coming to the end of an era of easy economic growth and easy investment that has propelled the economy and built enormous fortunes over the last nearly 70 years. If that’s the case, then all of the experience and judgment and acumen of the Masters of the Universe, the Warren Buffetts, Bill Grosses, and George Soroses of the world, may have become meaningless, irrelevant.
What if the credit-fueled economy, whether the credit is personal, corporate, or governmental, is at an end and we’re entering “a new epoch”?
Ah, now, that would be a test of greatness: the ability to adapt to a new epoch. The problem with the Buffetts, the Fusses, the Granthams, the Marks, the Dalios, the Gabellis, the Coopermans, and the Grosses of the world is that they’ll likely never find out. Epochs can and likely will outlast them. But then one never knows what time has in store for each of us, or what any of us will do in the spans of time.
What I do know, is that, like Michael Jackson sang in his brilliant, but all too short lifetime, I am and will continue to look at the man in the mirror. PIMCO, Gross, El-Erian? – yes, we’re lookin’ good – in this epoch. If there’s a different one coming though, to make our and your world a better place, we might need to look in the mirror and make a Chaaaaaaaange … Depends on what we see, I suppose. We will keep you informed.
None of those guys will be hurt if we’ve begun that new epoch. They’re too rich and too old for it to make much difference to them. What about the rest of us?
Its an interesting and insightful take. As much as I am critical of Buffet, it is for other reasons. He knows value. And that, my friends, is what investing is all about.
And what do I mean by that? It means you either see value you can piggy-back on, or you see latent value you can direct if you have control. Its the latter that drives our firm.
I am in no way, shape or form distressed by this essay. Let’s get it on. If reality, this is a bonanza for us.
What’s the matter with credit?
It’s old-fashioned.
ice
(While I’m laughing) An amusing treatment, no doubt. But credit is serious business.
It really is.
Drew, it’s a joke to me. Billionaires worried about keeping their loot AND the reputations for genius. I could care less, but only if I put a bullet through my brain. (“No brains, no worries!” I should put that on a t-shirt and sell it to Spring Breakers.)