Bernard Baruch - “I always buy too late, and sell too early”, or wrong forecasting by Wall Street analyst

Do you remember early 2014 when every Wall Street analyst and economist said that T-bonds would be the worst investment for the year and people should sell them?

As it turned out, for the 13 months ending January 31, 2015 T-bonds had the best performance of almost any investment sector. The Vanguard ETF investing in long-term T-bond zeroes, was up more than 51% for that time.

What do we have so far in 2015? GDP growth in the first quarter was below zero. And that is after the faulty inflation and seasonal adjustment. Using actual inflation, as calculated by economist John Williams, real GDP growth would have been deeply negative.

Of course, economists were quick to point out why they had been so wrong: It was the winter weather! Apparently, previous years didn’t have winter storms. I wrote that this was non-sense. Actually, the bad economic numbers were also found in the west coast states, where the weather was unseasonably warm.

What could cause a credit market event? How about a Greek exit from the EU, or an emerging country defaulting on its debt because the debt is denominated in U.S. dollars and thus has soared, or ISIS taking over Baghdad, or another terrorist attack in the U.S.

The legendary investor Bernard Baruch who came through the 1929 crash mostly in tact was asked what made him such a successful investor. He replied:  “I always buy ‘too late,’ and sell ‘too early.’” In other words, he is satisfied in leaving some money on the table. Stay tuned.