Every trader knows that predicting financial markets can be a humbling experience. After offering some boldly bearish advice back in January, nobody knows this humility better than Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC (NYSE: RBS) analyst Andre Roberts.
On January 8, Roberts published a note urging investors to “sell everything” other than high-quality bonds. Of course, in the opening week of the year the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSE: SPY) plummeted 4.5 percent on market fears of an economic meltdown in China. To this point, said meltdown has failed to materialize, and the S&P 500 is poised to finish the year up roughly 10 percent.
In hindsight, Roberts probably wishes he had dialed back his language just a bit.
“We think investors should be afraid that the ominous outlook for the world in our Year Ahead has been borne out over the past six weeks,” he wrote.
“We have been warning in past weeklies that this all looks similar to 2008.”
Here’s a look at the returns investors have enjoyed since the “sell everything” call:
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SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSE: SPY) is up 16.4 percent.
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United States Oil Fund LP (ETF) (NYSE: USO) is up 19.1 percent.
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iShares iBoxx $ High Yid Corp Bond (ETF) (NYSE: HYG) is up 8.8 percent.
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SPDR Gold Trust (ETF) (NYSE: GLD) is up 3.8 percent.
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iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Indx (ETF) (NYSE: EEM) is up 18.7 percent.
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Vanguard REIT Index Fund (NYSE: VNQ) is up 6.3 percent.
Hopefully, even Roberts can find some humor in the unfortunate timing of his comments at this point.
And of course, the ultimate irony in the infamous “sell everything” call is that while “everything” is doing just fine these days, Royal Bank of Scotland’s stock is down 32.1 percent since January 8.
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