The U.S. is approaching the end of a “superbubble” spanning across stocks, bonds, real estate and commodities following massive stimulus during the COVID pandemic, potentially leading to the largest markdown of wealth in its history once pessimism returns to rule markets, according to legendary investor Jeremy Grantham.
The Federal Reserve doesn’t seem to “get” asset bubbles, said Grantham, pointing to the “ineffably massive stimulus for COVID” that followed stimulus to recover from the bust of the 2006 housing bubble. “The only ‘lesson’ that the economic establishment appears to have learned from the rubble of 2009 is that we didn’t address it with enough stimulus,” he said.
“We are in what I think of as the vampire phase of the bull market, where you throw everything you have at it,” Grantham wrote. “You stab it with COVID, you shoot it with the end of QE and the promise of higher rates, and you poison it with unexpected inflation – which has always killed P/E ratios before, but quite uniquely, not this time yet – and still the creature flies.”
As for GMO’s investment recommendations, Grantham summarized them as avoiding U.S. equities while emphasizing value stocks in emerging markets and cheaper developed countries, “most notably Japan.” On a personal note, he said, “I also like some cash for flexibility, some resources for inflation protection, as well as a little gold GC00, -0.21% and silver.”
And then there’s the “incipient bubble in commodities,” he added. Oil CL00, -2.40% and most of the “important metals” are among commodities priced broadly “above trend,” while the “U.N.’s index of global food prices is around its all-time high,” according to his paper.