Bridgewater, het grootste hedge fund ter wereld, staat al jaren bekend voor zijn negatieve kijk op de markten. En niet zonder succes overigens! Hoofd van investeringen bij Bridgewater, Robert Prince, ziet voorlopig weinig redenen om het berenkamp te verlaten. Meer nog, hij voorspelt dat de huidige deleveraging cyclus 15 tot 20 jaar kan duren… we hebben net het vierde jaar achter de rug. Dat betekent dat we tot 2028 in woelig vaarwater zullen verkeren, aldus Bridgewater. Via WSJ:

“What you have is a picture of broken economic systems that are operating on life support,” Mr. Prince says. “We’re in a secular deleveraging that will probably take 15 to 20 years to work through and we’re just four years in.” In Europe, “the debt crisis is [a] long ways from over,” he says. The economic and financial morass will mean interest rates in the U.S. and Europe will essentially be locked at zero for years.

Bridgewater, met 125 miljard dollar onder beheer, blijft bij zijn succesformule:

Currently, the fund is positioned for higher gold prices, stronger Asian emerging-market currencies and lower yields across high-quality government bond markets, Mr. Prince says.

De asset allocatie sluit naadloos aan bij de visie van de beheerders:

“The most likely environment is moderate growth with wiggles up and down and this is one of those wiggles up,” he says. Against this backdrop, the Federal Reserve will need to do more quantitative easing—buying of government bonds—but Mr. Prince says the purchases will probably be sporadic. Europe, meanwhile, is headed into a potentially deep recession, with policy makers boxed in by an interconnected banking and sovereign-debt crisis. “You’ve got insolvent banks supporting insolvent sovereigns and insolvent sovereigns supporting insolvent banks,” he says. In the U.S., leveraged investors who can borrow money at rates near zero could find a good deal in Treasurys, Mr. Prince says. Mr. Prince points to the example of Japanese government bonds. An investor who was leveraged three-to-one and bought Japan’s bonds at a 2.5% yield in the mid 1990s would have earned a compound average annual return of 12% a year for 15 years, he says. Meanwhile, gold prices should resume a rally amid continued printing of money by the Fed and other central banks, Mr. Prince says. Those efforts effectively devalue those countries’ currencies compared with gold.

Opmerkelijk: Bridgewater niet vies van aandelen. Het strategiefonds ziet zelfs kansen op de beurs!

Mr. Prince also thinks stocks are attractive from a long-term perspective, especially compared with bonds or cash. Broadly, discounted earnings-growth rates, which reflect the expectations about future earnings implied by current prices, are negative, he says. A moribund economic outlook “is pretty priced in right now,” he says. “If we have a long, drawn out deleveraging process without substantial air pockets, chances are equities are a pretty good bet, ironically.”

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