David Rosenberg

David Rosenberg appeared in the Globe and Mail's Market View segment with a bite-sized, 2 minute segment explaining why he is bullish on the USD (not a big fan of the EUR, and with good reason), and why he continues to be bullish on bonds (although admits that at 2.3% the 10 Year was expensive). A great bullet-point presentation for new to Rosenberg (later today, we will present Jim Caron's latest attempt at redemption, explaining why he sees bond fund flows as indicative of a selloff in bonds. He better get the direction right this year.)

Confused by how what's left of the stock market is levitating with the reckless abandon of a manic-depressive teenager high on ecstasy and shrooms, even as it hits a fresh record bullish sentiment levels? Don't be: after all it happened, virtually tick by tick, at precisely the same time last year. David Rosenberg reminds us of everything that happened, together with the end of 2009 resurgent economic optimism, which proved being hollow and a re-recession (now that the ECRI made the word double dip no longer fashionable) was certain, only to be prevented by the last course monetary stimulus intervention in the form of QE Lite and QE 2. He also goes on to show what the key challenges for Brian Sack's trading desk will be in the coming year.

We have already broadly discussed the recent euphoria in the market which especially in the Nasdaq has hit 5 year+ extremes. And as always in times of such irrational exuberance, the disconnect between perception and reality is truly astounding. David Rosenberg presents his views on the latest developments in the market's ongoing fight with manic-depressive disorder.

With everybody presenting their ideas and themes for 2011, most of which are replete with crayon drawing of rainbows, koolaid and unicorns, here is David Rosenberg's list of 10 thoughts for what to look for in 2011.

David Rosenberg summarizes his latest views on Europe, the EURUSD, risk, volatility, bond curves, gold, geopolitics, oil, a subsidized shopping season courtesy of no mortgage payments, and two years of home inventories.

Rosie's latest letter looks at yesterday's events in the market and calls it the 'watershed' event. Alas, where Rosenberg sees a deflationary-driven event precipitating the move in gold lower, we see merely exchange intervention. Aside from that, Rosie's skepticism is of course justified. More importantly, the Gluskin Sheff strategist focuses on the topic we pointed out a few days ago, namely that Dick Fisher has now opened up the door to Bernanke's impeachment by confirming that the Fed is doing precisely what the Chairman swore under oath he would never do, i.e., monetize.

Who says Canadians lack a sense of humor... And are ever wrong about the ECRI.

Daniel Gross, who while at Newsweek saw the end of the recession even as the depression was merely stretching its wings, and generally drank Kool Aid by the supertanker, only to see his media venue blow up (some recovery) and by forced to move to that other bastion of creative thought Yahoo!, gets pummeled in today's letter by David Rosenberg for his most recent lunatic ramblings which not at all surprisingly made it into Paul Krugman's New York Times. Frankly, it was about time someone explained to Mr. Gross that reality is actually quite visible, if only one puts down the mild hallucinogens for at least a minute.

Recently, there has been much euphoria to define all those who believe that gold will outperform as goldbugs. We in turn are fairly confident that pretty soon all those who have faith that the central banks will somehow get it right this time, instead of causing all out war again, will be labeled as "paper bugs." What however, surprises us is that all the so called "gold bugs" continue to be invested in the best performing asset class over the past day, 5 days, 1 month, 6 months, 5 years, and 10 years: on a relative basis gold has outperformed stocks in all these time categories, yet it continues to be more hated than even Ben Bernanke, whose stealthy destruction of middle class purchasing power is in fact cheered by the "paper bugs" - we will not bore you with the chart that shows how the dollar has lost almost 100% of its purchasing power since the creation of the Fed. Anyway, here is David Rosenberg, who several months ago joined the gold bandwagon, and presents one of the better defenses to all those who blame gold bugs for not catching the "bungee jump" in the most manipulated stock market in history. "We continue to field criticism that we “missed the call” on the equity market. Well, no doubt we did not see the 1930-style bungee jump last year, but: (i) it’s over, and (ii) there were many other asset classes we liked that did very well: what has done better than gold, which is up more than 30% in the last 12 months." We obviously agree both now, and about 50% back, at the time of the creation of this blog, when we said that the only natural response to Fed insanity is the otherwise useless shiny metal.

If the way to classify the September stock move as "a confounding ramp on disappointing economic news" gets you stumped, here is Rosenberg to provide some insight. Just call is "deflationary growth or something like that." And as for the NBER's pronouncement of the recession being over, Rosie has a few words for that as well: "this recovery, with its sub 1% pace of real final sales, goes down as the weakest on record."

At times like this, I find the opening lines to Rudyard Kipling’s “If” inspirational and soothing. That and a tall glass of Dalwhinnie, 15 years old, on ice. - David Rosenberg

We like Erin Burnett: after all she is ranked 33 on the Fortune 40 under 40. Who can not like someone who has managed to get that high in the rankings on pure talent, although some recent CNBC appearances did seem to indicate a slight, shall we say, bias, when her guests tend not to disagree with Ms. Burnett's misperception of the world. Indeed, in a recent appearance on Meet The Press, the youngish CNBC anchor made some statements that go straight to errorchecking and bias validation. At 47 minutes into the  interview (extracted) Ms. Burnett says: "I think the problem is you have the fastest job creation in this recovery than you have in any recession in 25 years... Technically speaking this recovery has not been tepid." Alas, we are not sure who fed the CNBC employee these "facts" and figures, but they are patently false.

...And proud of it. He also provides his latest investment basket recommendation: "So, while I continue to advocate underweight positions in equities, a bar bell between basic materials and defensive dividend stocks is a prudent strategy, with the overall emphasis in the asset mix tilted towards bonds, especially the BB sliver or that part of the higher quality non-investment grade space that currently has the greatest unexploited potential for spread compression and capital gains."

It appears those truly concerned with the proper functioning of the market can never truly sit still (especially when, as today confirms, it merely keeps on breaking little by little until it goes poof once again as not even one quadrillion of fake stuffed quotes can keep the market up any longer). Case in point: David Rosenberg, who should be on vacation, yet posted this typically delightful breakdown of the bullshit action in stocks when juxtaposed with the ever deteriorating reality.

From David Rosenberg's Wednesday letter: "The primary purpose of this comment is to suggest what things may look like when the Great Bull Market in Bonds, which began in 1981 with 30-year Treasury Bonds yielding 15.25%, finally comes to its glorious end. For starters, I think it is safe to say that the bull market in bonds will end reasonably close to the point in time that inflation (or deflation) bottoms. This is because we have determined that by far the major economic factor that correlates consistently with the direction of market-determined interest rates, at least for long term Treasury Bonds, is CPI Inflation (headline and core)...So what will be the cause of the next secular uptrend in inflation or hyperinflationary shock? It pays to look back at history. Prior to the inflation of the 1970s-early 1980s, periods of very high inflation were primarily associated with war. Increased credit demands to fund the war effort combined with the drop in productivity that goes along with blowing everything up is an inflationary stew." Alas, never before in the history of US society have we been at the point when noted economists, financiers, and socialites so frequently and openly compare the fate of our society to that of the Roman empire in its last days, when the Roman emperors, oblivious of personal harm, would debase the currency on a daily basis, and hike taxes, with the end result being the collapse of the empire itself. As we will demonstrate shortly, we ourselves may be getting quite close. And in those uncharted waters of the global economy and, in fact, civilization as a whole, where the central bankers fight for the very survival of the status quo on a daily basis, we are confident that prudence on long bond and inflation rates will be first to be jettisoned as the kleptocratic oligarchy fights to avoid the pitchforks and guillotines for at least one more day.