Advice: Get out of bonds and into equities and bullion in 2013

Posted on January 2, 2013 by Madsen Pirie

There’s a real corker of a New Year prophecy by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the first Daily Telegraph of 2013. It is basically about the consequences of nominal GDP targeting by so many countries, and the effects their policies have on each other and the rest of the world.

He predicts strong rallies in the US and China, that gold will pass $2,000 an ounce, and the euro at $1.44. He thinks investors will get out of corporate bonds and into equities and bullion. The bad news is for France, Italy, Spain and the eurozone countries in general. Euroland growth will lag 3 points behind that of the US, continuing into 2014, with unemployment rising in many of its member states. His biggest sting comes at the end:

“This is the year when it will become clear to many that Europe is in far deeper trouble than supposed; that it risks tipping into irretrievable decline; that it is wasting its precious youth at the worst moment, as the aging crunch nears, when it should have none to spare; that it is resorting to ever more coercive measures and autocratic methods; and all to save a currency that is the elemental cause of the disaster in the first place, and should morally be broken into its democratically-controlled parts.”