Jeremy Grantham: the rally isn’t over yet

This year's stockmarket ructions feel distinctly ordinary for investment guru Jeremy Grantham – and not the beginning of the end.

Andrew Van Sickle
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published
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Jeremy Grantham: not a major collapse

Jeremy Grantham has a good record when it comes to big calls. The co-founder of investment managers GMO not only warned that the housing bubble of the 2000s would burst, but also turned positive on US stocks just as they bottomed in March 2009. He has also said that he expects this central-bank-induced rally to "end badly". But he doesn't think this year's ructions mark the beginning of the end. This, he says, "feels at worst like an ordinary bear market lasting a few months, and not like a major collapse".

Why? The bears are underestimating the growth potential of America and global economies this year. The "slow-burning but huge positive of much-reduced resource prices in the US" means annual growth of 2.5% is "quite attainable" in 2016. Cheaper petrol and heating will be a particular boon to "the group that has been hurting for 30 years", the median wage earners. That implies healthy consumption. The boost from cheaper oil takes time to come through as households rebuild their savings first, but markets are underestimating this important tailwind. Solid US growth will bolster the pace globally.

In short, this is not the sort of backdrop usually associated with nasty collapses. But another reason to think that this is not the "Big One" is the absence of "a fully fledged blow-off". The last market peak in 2007 was marked by an overstretched economy and a frenzy amid individual investors. A real market top comes with "crazy speculative anecdotes for your grandchildren". This rally isn't over yet.

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Andrew Van Sickle
Andrew Van Sickle
Editor, MoneyWeek

Andrew is the editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He grew up in Vienna and studied at the University of St Andrews, where he gained a first-class MA in geography & international relations.

After graduating he began to contribute to the foreign page of The Week and soon afterwards joined MoneyWeek at its inception in October 2000. He helped Merryn Somerset Webb establish it as Britain’s best-selling financial magazine, contributing to every section of the publication and specialising in macroeconomics and stockmarkets, before going part-time.

His freelance projects have included a 2009 relaunch of The Pharma Letter, where he covered corporate news and political developments in the German pharmaceuticals market for two years, and a multiyear stint as deputy editor of the Barclays account at Redwood, a marketing agency.

Andrew has been editing MoneyWeek since 2018, and continues to specialise in investment and news in German-speaking countries owing to his fluent command of the language.

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