Very slow growth 2012 then long bear to 2020

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) — “Top advisers see very slow growth in 2012.” That headline is screaming at Americans in “InvestmentNews: The Leading News Source for Financial Advisers” and most trusted.

Get it? Not just “slow growth,” but “very slow growth in 2012.” Another even predicted “very slow, measured growth for two, three years.” Actually it’s far worse. Folks, this is not some worried bull hyping naïve investors, not a Wall Street bank analyst, a Washington politician covering his butt, nor one of Mad Money’s market mavericks.

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Global economic outlook

A survey of the economic landscape, and the prospects for growth over the next three to five years. Kelly Evans interviews Glenn Hubbard, Economic Advisor to Mitt Romney, Lawrence H. Summers, former Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, and Zhu Min, Deputy Managing Director International Monetary Fund.

No, this comes from the most respected news source reporting to America’s financial advisers. These are the 100,000 professional Registered Investment Advisers who are advising Americans on managing trillions of retirement assets.

Get it? Main Street America, you should “expect very slow growth” in 2012. That was the response when asked what “scenarios are you painting for your clients?” The panelist at a recent InvestmentNews Round Table then added: “It’s going to be ugly and violent.” Why? Because the politicians “are driving things” and they are “capricious, which leads to volatility.” And clients are “not really happy,” but “they lived through ‘08 and ’09,” so 2012 will be “just a little bump in the road.”

Yes folks, “slow growth” is another very big bump. Let’s put this is context: Wall Street’s a big fat loser. In fact, during the 2000-2010 decade, their stock market casino actually lost (yes, lost) an inflation-adjusted 20%. On a high-risk roller-coaster ride. Remember? In 2000 the DJIA was 11,722, rose and peaked at 14,164 in 2007. And today, after all the volatility, the market’s back where it was in 2000, Wall Street “flat-lined.”

But the house always wins at Wall Street’s casino, gets rich. While America loses. Jack Bogle called Wall Street a croupier skimming a third of Main Street profits off the top. In both bull and bear markets. Not once but twice during the decade the Wall Street casino lost over 45% of your money, trillions of your retirement assets: through the dot-com crash, a 30-month recession, the credit meltdown of 2008, a recent recession, and now today a national economic disaster caused by self-destructive partisan political wars.

So don’t kid yourself folks, recent economic and market “ugliness and violence” not only won’t end soon, it’ll get meaner and meaner for years after 2012 elections … no matter who wins. Only a fool would believe that a new bull market will take off in 2013. Ain’t going to happen. That’s a Wall Street fantasy. Fall for that, and you’re delusional.

In fact, you better plan on a very long secular bear the next decade through 2020. With the European banks, credit and currency on the edge of a global financial meltdown, there’s a high probability that a black swan virus, a contagion will sweep the world, making all investing “uglier” and more “violent” for Americans in 2013, indeed for the rest of the decade.

Let’s set 20`2 in the broader historical context, seen trough the lens of one of America’s most respected economists, long-time Forbes columnist Gary Shilling’s analysis of the poor performance of stocks during Wall Street’s bull/bear cycles the past 60 years, then, projecting the trend line forward till 2020.

What’s coming? Much tougher times are dead ahead, possibly even a sequel to the painful sideways bear of 1968-1982. Bottom line, don’t expect much out of stocks.

Bonds beat stocks by factor of 11-times since 1981

Listen closely to Shilling’s analysis of the past three decades. In an Insight newsletter a couple years ago he compared the performance of the S&P 500 stock index to the bond market. First he focused on his “all-time favorite graph” comparing “the results from investing $100 in a 25-year zero-coupon Treasury bond at its yield high (and price low) in October 1981, and rolling it into another 25-year Treasury annually to maintain that 25-year maturity.”

His bottom line: “On March 31, 2009, that $100 was worth $16,656 with a compound annual return of 20.4%. In contrast, $100 invested in the S&P 500 at its low in July 1982 was worth $1,502” in early 2009, “for a 10.7% annual return including dividend reinvestment. So Treasurys outperformed stocks by 11.1 times.”

But of course, Wall Street’s not going to push this “boring bonds” alternative. Why? Wall Street can’t make big bucks in commissions. So instead, during this same three decades, Wall Street was using sales gimmicks to sell its losers to America’s 95 million vulnerable investors.

Imagine: If you were in your twenties and just out of college back in 1981, and you started adding a hundred more bucks each and every month using Shilling’s zero-coupon strategy, you’d be enjoying early retirement today, instead of crying because your retirement stocks lost so much of your money.

Stocks lost over two-thirds in the last decade

We’ve been writing about the absurdity of trading stocks for a long time. Back in mid-2008 when the DJIA fell below its 2000 high of 11,722, it was obvious to investors that their portfolios had flat-lined for eight years. Yes, zero return on your portfolio for eight years. Actually it’s far worse when you deduct fees, commissions, taxes and account for inflation: Many portfolios lost over 65% of their value since 2000.

And if that stock market performance isn’t scary enough, listen to what Shilling sees for the next decade, based on our financial history from 1949 to 2009. Sixty years of bull/bear cycles will project forward into a secular bear for the next decade, to about 2020, with occasional short-term cyclical bull markets and dead-cat bounces.

In short, expect a very rough decade for the economy, the market, and the taxpaying public. Here’s Shilling’s history of past cycles that run 15- to 20-year log bull and bear cycles the past 60 years:

1949-1968: 19-year secular bull market

The great Post-WWII expansion: “The 1949-1968 secular bull market was driven by postwar economic growth, fading deflation fears, low inflation, the institutionalization of equity and the resulting leap in P/Es.” For me a great time: high school, Marines, Korea, plus a great education on the GI Bill.

1968-1982: 14-year secular bear market

Shilling says “inflation caused by huge Vietnam and Great Society spending dominated the 1968-1982 secular bear market as it pushed interest rates up and P/Es and productivity down.” Remember the oil crisis, recession and a long sideways stock market for over a decade. I was on Wall Street with Morgan Stanley working on troubled banks, corporate and developer restructurings. Evaluated the collapse of the Federal New Towns Development Program for HUD. Long recession. No fun for most investors

1982-2000: 18-year secular bull market

With Reaganomics: “The unwinding of inflation generated the 1982-2000 secular bull market, aided by the consumer spending spree and, finally, dot-com speculation,” says Shilling. And oh how we loved stocks with 30%-plus returns, some even posting 300% annual returns. We went crazy. “This time it was different.” Barbers offered investment advice and neighborhood barbecues were abuzz with early retirement plans.

2000-2020: Yes, a 20-year secular bear market till 2020

Shilling says “the speculative investment climate spawned by the dot-com nonsense survived. It simply shifted from stocks.” Our retirement, “pension and endowment funds have been increasing their exposure to alternative investments such as commodities, foreign currencies, hedge funds, private equity, emerging-market equity and debt and real estate” in recent years. Yes, the ‘90s insanity did survive, like Frankenstein, transplanted in a new body by the White House, Treasury, the Fed, Wall Street, and our dogmatic, self-destructive conservative politicians obsessed about tax-cuts-for-the-very-rich.

Shilling sees “a secular bear market really started in 2000 and may persist for a decade as a result of slower GDP growth,” yes, persist till 2020 “with 2% to 3% deflation.” He warns: “Nominal GDP might not gain at all,” like recent flat-lining. Which coincides with the expectations of America’s professional financial advisers.

So where do you put your money for a decade-long risky secular bear market? Expect our “faltering economy will put more pressure on profits and stocks, and initiate chronic deflation, supporting current low Treasury yields … the dollar is rallying as economic weakness spreads abroad.”

Unfavorable investments include: major bank stocks, consumers and other lenders, domestic stocks, conventional home builders, consumer-spending sectors and risky, speculative investments. Challenges to all sectors.

And on the plus side: The U.S. dollar, and for the long-term, dividend-paying stocks, asset managers, Treasurys, North American energy, apartment REITs and factory-built homes.

One final piece of advice, stop listening to Wall Street’s self-serving ship of fools.