Bulls, bears and BS
There will always be bulls and bears who can swing the market with thought-provoking claims. It can pay to listen — as long you do your own work, and make up your own mind.
For a market to exist, there needs to be both buyers and sellers. The thing about covering financial markets from a media perspective is that there are plenty of smart people with loud voices willing to play the buyer (bull) and seller (bear) roles.
We had some fantastic examples of this in action today. The prominent investor and co-founder of GMO Jeremy Grantham spoke via video link at an investment conference in Sydney hosted by Livewire and attended by our markets and finance reporter Jack Derwin.
Grantham has built a reputation as one of the most quotable permabears and today he lived up to his billing. “I think we have less than a 50/50 chance of us coming through this with the kind of civilisation we’ve enjoyed so far,” Grantham warned, noting the risks he is concerned about include growing inequality and climate change, the latter of which he thinks will dominate portfolios for the rest of our lives.
At the other end of the spectrum, we had another example of borderline irrational exuberance from one of the more bullish analysts in the US equity market overnight. Morgan Stanley’s Adam Jonas, a long time Tesla über bull, released a 66-page research note in which he sharply upgraded his forecasts for the company.
