Many economists, including President Donald Trump's own economic advisor, say 2019 will be a good year for the economy. GMO's James Montier disagrees — strongly.
The U.S. markets and economy are in trouble, at least according to Montier, strategist and member of Grantham Mayo Van Otterloo's asset allocation team, in his recent white paper. He sees the U.S. market "increasingly as the hapless Wile E. Coyote … running in thin air only to eventually look down, realize his error, and plunge earthbound."
Will this also be U.S. investors and advisors in 2019?
Excess optimism and overconfidence are two key problems, Montier says in the paper, "The Late Cycle Lament: The Dual Economy, Minsky Moments, and Other Concerns."
"They are particularly dangerous in the late stages of an economic cycle where these terrible twins result in investors overestimating return and underestimating risk — a potentially lethal combination of errors," he states. He notes that his research shows the U.S. economy is in its slowest and weakest recovery in postwar history.
He cites several reasons, including poor GDP growth, labor productivity and real wage growth. A "dual economy" is rising, in which productivity growth is "reasonable" in some sectors and nonexistent in others. Even those sectors with decent growth show lagging real wages. In fact, the only employment growth seen is from low-productivity sectors. Further, "the paltry gains in income that are being made are all going to the top 10%. This is not what a booming economy should feel like," he says.
Montier points out that those who believe U.S. equities will generate "normal" returns "have to believe some quite extraordinary things," he says. GMO does not see these highly unlikely things coming to pass, thus the firm owns "essentially zero [U.S. stocks] in our unconstrained portfolios, but then again we are used to career risk and would rather run it than allocate to such an expensive and risky asset."
Inside the Numbers
The excess optimism — especially from analysts — has caused long-term earnings expectations to rise to levels not seen since the late 1990s tech bubble, Montier notes. He instead reverse-engineered the numbers to arrive at "today's fair market value." Historical growth with inflation has been 6% per annum for the S&P 500, while the market today is closer to 9%.
He states, "The market believes inflation is going to be around 2% annually (based on the difference in yields between 10-year nominal bonds and 10-year inflation-protected bonds). Thus, the implied real growth rate is a jaw-dropping 7% [per annum] … more than three times the historical average," he states. This means investors would need to generate 5.7% in real returns.
