James Montier
Central bankers in the US have long fixated on the equilibrium real interest rate (ERIR) as their lodestar, an obsession that GMO’s James Montier, in The Idolatry of Interest Rates, bemoans as “a massive exercise in navel gazing.” According to Montier, the broad acceptance of the theoretically dubious ERIR — the real interest rate consistent with full employment of labor and capital resources—is not an example of the wisdom of crowds, but rather “groupthink extraordinaire.” Further, investors’ collective preoccupation with interest rates as an economic “cure-all” and their “deification of central bankers” are equally misguided, says Montier.
Up until last week’s wild ride for stocks, volatility had been largely absent from the market, but the cumulative effect of ongoing geopolitical chaos, spreading Ebola anxiety, and uninspiring economic data, combined with the rumored unwinding of some leveraged positions by hedge funds, at least temporarily jolted global equity markets. Complacency was quickly replaced with panic and we got a reminder of what happens when everyone heads for the exit at the same time.
Goldman Sachs recently released its “S&P 500 Beige Book,” a quarterly survey of corporate conference calls which similarly collects “anecdotal evidence of fundamental and thematic trends” from which they highlight major themes.
Since bottoming in 2009, corporate profits as a percentage of GDP have rebounded sharply and currently stand at about 11%, or approximately 70% above the long-term average. Warren Buffett once said, “You have to be wildly optimistic to believe that corporate profits as a percent of GDP can, for any sustained period, hold much above 6%.” And Jeremy Grantham has called profits margins “the most mean-reverting series in finance.”
Financial theorists, policymakers, and practitioners created the financial crisis with “bad models, bad policies, bad incentives, and bad behavior,” said James Montier of GMO UK Ltd.
James Montier discusses how bad models, bad behavior, bad incentives, and bad policies interact to create perfect storms for markets.
Does behavioral finance offer an explanation for abnormally high corporate profits? James Montier of GMO, who will be speaking at the Annual Conference in Chicago, explores the issue in his latest white paper.