Seth Klarman Sees Another Lost Decade For Stocks
By Greenbackd
The incredible Zero Hedge has an article on Seth Klarman’s address to the CFA Institute:
Seth Klarman was speaking at the CFA Institute earlier, and in typical fashion cut to the chase: in summarizing the current market, the Baupost founder said he “sees few bargains in the current environment and predicted on Tuesday that the stock market could suffer another lost decade without any gains.” And the punchline: his description of market conditions which he compared to “a Hostess Twinkie snack cake because everything is being manipulated by the government and appears artificial.” Such facility with words, there is a reason the man runs a $22 billion fund and his book “Margin of Safety” has been out of print for years, and sells for a $1000 on ebay.
Sayeth Seth (via Reuters):
“Given the recent run-up, I’d be worried that we’ll have another 10 years of zero returns,” Klarman, who rarely speaks in public, said at the CFA Institute’s annual conference in Boston.
“I’m more worried about the world broadly than I’ve ever been in my whole career,” Klarman said.
Inflation is a risk that Klarman said he is particularly concerned with given the government’s high rate of borrowing to bail out the financial system. Baupost has purchased far out-of-the-money puts on bonds to hedge the risk, he said.
The puts, which Klarman said he viewed as “cheap insurance,” will expire worthless even if long-term interest rates rise to 6 or 7 percent. But if rates rise to 10 percent, Baupost would make large gains, and if rates exceed 20 percent the firm could make 50 or 100 times its outlay.
Typically, Baupost focuses on out-of-favor stocks and bonds. Klarman cleaned up in 2007 and 2008 buying distressed debt and mortgage securities that later recovered.
One area Klarman said he is currently scouring for potential investments is private commercial real estate below the top quality. Publicly traded real estate investment trusts, however, have “rallied enormously” and are “quite unattractive,” he said.
…
“We’d rather underperform a huge bull market than get clobbered in a bear market,” he said.
For those of you who don’t want to shell out $1,000 on eBay for Seth’s out-of-print Margin of Safety and have only recently become aware that the Internet is available on computers, the Zero Hedge article includes a link to a scanned copy of the book, available at a price even an anarcho-capitalist could embrace.