Merrill’s Rosenberg Inspired by Farrell in Foreseeing Crash

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By Carlos Torres

Dec. 30 (Bloomberg) -- David Rosenberg drew on inspiration from market-rules theorist Robert Farrell and asset-bubble historian Charles Kindleberger to predict the economy’s demise this year.

Rosenberg, the chief North American economist at Merrill Lynch & Co. in New York, by January had already called the recession that this month was officially declared to have started in December 2007. He also said the Federal Reserve would lower its main interest rate to 1 percent by year-end, one-third of the median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News; by October, policy makers brought the rate to that level.

Rosenberg, 48, refused to trust his computer models, sensing that the end of the credit and housing-market booms would cause a deeper rout than most analysts thought. Now, he predicts the carnage will cause a 2.5 percent contraction in gross domestic product in 2009, and sees historians calling the current era “GDII,” a reference to the Great Depression.

“You have to have your models, but you have to question the results,” Rosenberg said. “You have to ask yourself: Where could the model be wrong this time? Bubbles go further than you think, but they do not correct by going sideways,” he said, quoting the fourth of “10 Market Rules to Remember,” by former Merrill analyst Farrell.

Farrell’s Rules

Farrell developed his “10 Market Rules” during a 25-year stint as chief strategist at Merrill until 1992. He won Institutional Investor magazine’s award for overall stock market direction in 16 of 17 years, according to a Dec. 19, 1992, New York Times article.

Rules one through four, which include the belief that markets always return to long-run averages and excesses in one direction are invariably followed by excesses in the opposite direction, are applicable to this decade’s housing cycle, Rosenberg said.

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Rosenberg was also among the few predicting a rally in U.S. Treasuries, which have posted their best year since 1995. The average forecast in a Bloomberg survey of 61 analysts at the start of the year was for benchmark 10-year yields to rise to 4.32 percent for the end of December. Rosenberg’s call was 3.70 percent; the lowest projection was 3.5 percent.

Zlato dobro za vse valute... Mogoče bi mi razmislil o kakih minerjih?

For his part, Rosenberg sees gold as “an important hedge against policy missteps” in the global recession of 2009. “The chart looks good against a vast majority of currencies,” he wrote in a Dec. 22 research note.

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