Replies to post #112638 on Biotech Values

[DewDiligence]

Barron’s Roundtable, Part 1

[This is the economic- and market-overview portion of the roundtable, excluding the specific stock picks of the panelists. I’ll take my chances on being sued by Righthaven for posting this.]

http://online.barrons.com/article/SB50001424052970204555504576075983972474462.html

›JANUARY 15, 2011
By LAUREN R. RUBLIN

The big picture might look scary, but the stock market is heading higher, say the members of the 2011 Barron's Roundtable. In the first of three installments, our panelists share their big-picture views.

From the halls of Congress to the malls of California, we've been kicking the can down the road. Postponing our troubles, inflating our bubbles. Putting off, for tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, the crushing problems that cry out to be dealt with today. Is this any way to run a country? Based on the stock market's stellar performance in the past two years, you bet it is.

The members of the Barron's Roundtable homed in on this paradox almost as soon as our annual confab got under way last Monday at the Harvard Club of New York. America's structural problems, including a gargantuan deficit, and the policies that perpetuate them, just might bring the country to ruin—but not before the stock market rallies another 5% or 10% or 20%, our panelists predict. That's because constructive cyclical or short-term forces, including a reviving industrial economy and rising corporate profits, could influence the direction of stocks for at least the next year or so.

In the pages ahead we've distilled these 10 market mavens' big-picture views, which include a preference for equities and hard assets at a time when the Federal Reserve is printing money like mad. We call your attention, in particular, to Bill Gross' well-reasoned explanation of why negative real interest rates—the intended result of all this money creation—are a default by another name.

After the macro comes the micro, namely Scott Black's and Abby Joseph Cohen's stock picks for the new year. Founder and boss of Boston's Delphi Management, Scott brings his considerable analytical skills to bear on eight mostly small- and mid-cap companies that generate lots of cash and impressive returns on equity, but sell for underwhelming valuations.

Abby, an estimable investment strategist and head of Goldman Sachs' Global Markets Institute, favors several big-cap blue chips recommended by Goldman's analysts that will benefit from a more robust economy. Most pay nice dividends, as well, and afford exposure to growing markets overseas.

Want the names and numbers? Please read on.

Barron's: How does the new year look to all of you? Let's start with Meryl.

Witmer: We see the economy perking up in the U.S. According to ISI Group, state income-tax and sales-tax receipts are up, so people are getting jobs and spending money. Companies are willing to spend again, and in certain industries they are adding to capacity. But that doesn't mean stocks are cheap, because stocks have moved up a lot. The market looks pretty fully valued, and may have little upside from here in the near term.

Scott, what's your view?

Black: We see a conundrum. On the one hand, the economy will do well because Congress passed an $858 billion stimulus bill. Real GDP [gross domestic product] will grow around 3.5% this year. Corporate profits as a percentage of GDP are at an all-time high, but could rise another 8.8%, as measured by S&P [Standard & Poor's 500] earnings. My concern is that the deficit is out of control. To keep the economy going, we need more fiscal stimulus. The accumulated deficit is equal to 94% of GDP. That's the highest percentage since 1946. To use a phrase that has become popular lately, we've been kicking the can down the road for too long.

Which can are we kicking?

Black: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid—how to deal with all the entitlements. We've got to get our house in order. With this kind of debt-to-GDP ratio, the U.S. is starting to resemble a banana republic. Yet the economy will be healthy this year. Unemployment is still a problem, and people who don't have jobs tend to cut back on consumption. But the industrial economy is good. Whether you look at capacity utilization, rotary-rig counts or factory shipments, all the numbers on the industrial side are pointing up by 5%, 10%, 15%.

The S&P closed Friday [Jan. 7]. at 1271.50. I am estimating corporate earnings of about $91 for this year, up from $83.67 in 2010. The market is trading for 14 times expected earnings, below the postwar median multiple of about 16 times. It is slightly undervalued. With a dividend yield of 1.8%, the S&P could deliver a total return of between 10% and 15% for the year.

Do you agree, Oscar?

Schafer: I agree that we're kicking the can down the road, although there is a real chance President Obama will give some specifics on reducing the deficit in his State of the Union address [scheduled for Jan. 25]. The only way to get out of this situation is to grow out of it. The White House needs to deal with the deficit in a constructive way, and reach out to the business community. The companies we speak with are doing well. As for stocks, in contrast to 2008-09, when all you needed were guts and capital, this year will be a stockpicker's market. The averages will go up 5% to 10%.

Felix, what do you think?

Zulauf: There are two worlds—the industrialized world and the emerging world. The industrialized world continues to live in a fiction: that it can afford its current lifestyle by going further and further into debt. At some point, the bond markets will riot against that. The private-household sector, not only in the U.S. but in several industrialized countries, remains stretched financially and will continue to deleverage. The public sector is leveraging up, and thus will support the economy. The U.S. economy will muddle along, probably growing by 2.5% to 3% this year. Inflation isn't a problem yet in the industrialized world.

The emerging world has experienced high levels of growth, but it is entering a period of rising inflation. How emerging economies handle that inflation will be the decisive factor for the industrialized world. If they decide to fight inflation with really restrictive monetary policies, we're in trouble. If they hike interest rates only a little to restrain growth, the cycle can be extended. But that means later on, perhaps in a year or two, they will have much higher inflation and will have to crunch it. The choice is between more growth in the short term and then a crunch, or a more serious bear market now.

Which path will they choose?

Zulauf: Emerging economies will go the shallow way. They don't want to crunch it here.

Hickey: But we're looking at 8% inflation in India and Russia, and 5% in China. Will they be able to hold off much longer?

Zulauf: The decisive factor is China, which is reporting inflation of just over 5%. In reality, it's probably twice that. The Chinese aren't interested in crunching their economy. They have a mandate to create jobs. But maybe they'll hike rates two or three times this year, and U.S. stocks will have a few selloffs of 10% or more.

Let's get Bill's opinion.

Gross: The developed world is coping with the excesses of the past 20 to 30 years. The deleveraging cycle isn't just a one-to-two-year thing. The proportions of the excess, and now the attempts to deal with it, have a number of consequences. For one, growth will be slower, and inflation will be lower. In the U.S., we're seeing unacceptably high levels of unemployment—not just the published 9.4%, but 16% to 17%. The question is, can a debt crisis be solved with more debt?

In Portugal, Greece, Ireland and Spain, which lack the ability to devalue their currencies, a debt crisis can't be solved with more debt. Japan appears to have done a good job so far, because its debt is 200% to 250% of GDP, much higher than here. The U.S. has the advantage of being a reserve currency, which means it can print its way out of this situation. But that requires a willing acceptance on the part of creditors that the money it is printing is of decent value. Current interest rates, including a federal-funds rate of only 0.25%, are unacceptably low. Real [inflation-adjusted] interest rates are negative. Printing your way out of this, or kicking the can, is possible for some countries, but the solution isn't to create paper. It is to create goods and services the rest of the world wants to have.

And what are the prospects for that?

Gross: The Obama administration has failed miserably in that regard. It has focused on consumption and fiscal stimulation that will give us 4% real GDP growth in 2011. But it gives us nothing more than that. It is a sugar high that disappears quickly in 2012.

We need to focus on employment and investment in manufacturing goods and services. You don't do that by incenting businesses with tax breaks and accelerated depreciation, because they fail to observe the final demand for their products and the ability to earn an acceptable return. Cash sits on their balance sheets. You do it with massive infrastructure programs such as the construction of high-speed rail lines. China has several hundred. We need infrastructure repaired in the U.S., as well, but so far the administration doesn't seem to want to go there. It wants to placate business with tax advantages and higher after-tax profits.

It's not just the administration, but across the political spectrum. Where does that leave us?

Zulauf: All other industrialized countries, almost without exception, have focused on cutting deficits. The U.S. alone hasn't addressed the problem. If you eliminate public-sector tax revenue and spending, the U.S. economy would have grown in only two of the past 10 years. Public deficits have been supporting this economy for the past decade. The country has been suffering from under-saving and under-investment. Markets would cooperate fully if the government decided to pursue large, multiyear investment programs financed by debt. That would create a future return, and jobs.

And it would create a larger deficit.

Zulauf: Yes, but it is a different type of debt.

Hickey: It isn't debt that finances consumption.

Gabelli: When Obama became president, his No. 1 job should have been to create jobs. Today, his job No. 1 is to get himself re-elected. The Republican victories in the midterm elections in November gave clarity and confidence to a lot of business executives. They will build on that. But how does the U.S. compete when our jobs are being exported? When our education is not ranked in the top 20 in the world? The avionics industry in the U.S. dates back to the 1950s. As a country, we have to keep spending on R&D [research and development], but where should we focus our R&D spending for the next 20 years? On electric vehicles? Alternative energy? That's what the Chinese are doing.

What is your outlook for this year, Mario?

Gabelli: Beijing will engineer a soft landing, because China has structural unemployment issues and a recession would create political havoc. Europe will suck it up and continue to bail out the European Union's weaker members. In the U.S., [Federal Reserve Chairman Ben] Bernanke's quantitative easing has stimulated the stock market. When is that over, and what happens next? I don't know. Barack has moved toward the political center, which has improved confidence among executives and investors. The U.S. is OK, and Europe will muddle along. China grows 7%, 8%, 9%. That gets us to 2012, which looks better.

Gabelli: Housing is going to recover because we produced roughly 500,000 new homes last year, and demand is about 1.2 million. The price of the average new house is the same today as 20 years ago. Incrementally, the housing market shouldn't decline anymore, and the rate of change should be positive and increase. In 2011, new-car sales will be up by a million units in the U.S., to 11.5 million units. From 2010 to 2015, global production should increase by 20 million. Of that, seven million new cars will be produced in China, five million in the U.S. and the balance in the rest of the world. If Boeing [ticker: BA] ever gets its Dreamliner to fly, you'll have four years of increased production. In the industrialized world, the 100% depreciation allowance will create strong demand.

Of course, all this is postulated on things that haven't happened yet, and might not. Abby?

Cohen: We are having two sets of discussions here. One is cyclical, or short term. The general perception is that 2011 will be a good year for the U.S. economy, probably the best since 2004-05. Real GDP will grow about 3.5%, even with significant headwinds. But the tailwinds are significant, too. The strength in the corporate sector started even before the recession ended. Business investment in equipment, including IT [information technology], has been robust. We have seen vigor in U.S. exports.

They were the fastest-growing segment of the economy before the financial crisis, averaging 8% to 10% per annum, and are back there now. We are selling business equipment and other high-value-added goods and services across the world.

Gabelli: Don't forget corn, wheat and beans.

Cohen: Also, the consumer is coming back. Working people are seeing their incomes grow. The savings rate has moved up to 5%-6%, and even so, consumption growth has been good. But then there's the second discussion, about structural or long-term issues. Much of the unemployment problem in the U.S. is structural, and started well before the financial crisis. You could see the educational deficit building more than 10 years ago.

How do you account, then, for the U.S. winning so many Nobel prizes in science?

Cohen: We have the best university and postgraduate system in the world. But many of our average workers are not participating in it. The percentage of the U.S. population with a four-year college degree hasn't increased in a decade. We used to be ranked No. 1. Now many countries have jumped ahead of us. When you dig a little deeper, the likelihood of a young woman having a four-year college degree has increased in the past 10 years. The likelihood of a young man having one has declined. Beginning 10 years ago, a lot of young men went directly into construction and manufacturing employment. When the recession hit, we saw a significant difference in the unemployment rate between men and women. Right now the unemployment rate for men is two percentage points higher than it is for women. There is also an enormous gap by educational level. Unemployment has skyrocketed for those who have only a high-school degree.

In the U.S., it's not just the percentage of those graduating but what they're studying. The number of students getting degrees in STEM—science, technology, engineering and math—has fallen dramatically in the past 10 to 15 years. Also, in the 10 years ended before the financial crisis, median family income in the U.S. declined 4%. Among blue-collar workers, it was down 8%.

You can't force someone to study math.

MacAllaster: The U.S. has made great scientific progress. Look at the electronic gadgets all of you have here—all but me, that is.

Hickey: But technology companies can't find enough qualified Americans to hire because the schools aren't graduating enough in science and engineering.

MacAllaster: Once again, it's a product of money. Students come to Wall Street because they can make more money here.

Cohen: Seventy percent of the students in our Ph.D. programs, which are the world's best in science, applied science, mathematics and engineering, are non-U.S. citizens. For a long time, this was a form of foreign aid and good-friendship creation, but these students now have employment opportunities back in India, China and elsewhere.

Schafer: Let me throw a few numbers out. In the 1970s, the U.S. had 20 million manufacturing jobs, with a population of 220 million. Now we are down to less than 12 million manufacturing jobs with a population of 320 million. Manufacturing is a little different from science, but the point is it's much cheaper to manufacture stuff in China and India. That's not going to change, and that's why unemployment will stay high.

Archie, what else do you think?

MacAllaster: We have some negatives, including Europe, unemployment and the deficit. On the other side, corporations are doing well. They are loaded with cash. I was just sitting here making a list of such companies in the Dow: Intel [INTC], General Electric [GE], ExxonMobil [XOM], Procter & Gamble [PG], Johnson & Johnson [JNJ]. All probably will earn more money this year, and all probably will raise their dividends. The market [as measured by the Dow Jones Industrial Average] has been as high as 14,000 and it is now around 11,600. Stocks still have room to rise. The economy will grow between 3% and 4% this year, probably closer to 4%. Companies will raise their dividends. Importantly, we have had two years of pretty fair markets and a very anti-business administration in Washington. That is going to improve. The economy isn't falling apart.

Gross: Of course it's falling apart! You are taking the corporate side. What about the side of Main Street? Of those who are unemployed and can't find a job?

MacAllaster: I'm talking about stocks.

Gross: Corporations are probably at the peak of their domination. They dominate versus labor in terms of their ability to export jobs and production overseas. They dominate now in terms of Washington, given the Republican electoral victory and the Obama administration's moving toward the center.

They even dominate with regard to the Supreme Court, as evidenced by the recent ruling removing limits on corporate donations to election campaigns. This is all good for the market, but not for Main Street in the long run.

Zulauf: You also have a tremendous social division. In the U.S., the top 20% of the population owns 93% of the financial assets. That tells you the average guy is in bad shape. He spends what he makes, and, at the end of the month, he's even.

MacAllaster: You don't go to movies like I do, and ordinary restaurants like McDonald's. It seems to me the little guy isn't doing so badly, and the government is helping him. In the end, the stock market will do just fine. It isn't so expensive.

Black: It should concern us that we had a $1.4 trillion deficit last year and only added a net 500,000 jobs. We got no bang for our buck whatsoever on fiscal policy. Also, 10.5 million people have negative equity in their homes. The S&P Case-Schiller Indices continues to go down, and Karl Case, who teaches at Wellesley, has said he thinks prices will drop more. I don't see how we get out from under this problem, given the overhang in homes.

Marc, you have been very quiet. What are you worrying about?

Faber: Have you got an hour? You are all wrong. You say you would do this or that if you were policymakers, but nobody says "I wouldn't do a thing. I would let the market correct itself." The crisis in the U.S. happened largely because of government intervention that began 25 years ago. The government continuously implemented policies to boost consumption, when everyone should know that an economy will grow in a sustainable way through the implementation of policies that foster capital formation—that is, spending on infrastructure, R&D, education and the acquisition of plant and equipment. By fostering more baseball games, more TV shows, more talk shows, you aren't going to create a vibrant, growing economy.

The government didn't create more baseball games.

Faber: But it created policies to borrow more money. Through artificially low interest rates, it created a huge credit bubble, which led to a bubble in consumption, a symptom of which was the growth in the trade and current-account deficit from $150 billion in 1997 to more than $800 billion in 2006. Now it is around $600 billion, but if these policies continue it will remain at this level or grow.

So you're really saying it's the Fed's fault.

Faber: What I am saying is that Archie lives in a dream world. I admire you all but you are all dreamers. The Federal Reserve was founded in 1913. Before that, throughout the 19th century, the U.S. had strong per capita income growth in a deflationary environment.

It also had huge financial panics.

Faber: That refreshes the system. Worldwide, we have two economies. Rich people and resource producers are doing incredibly well. The ordinary people aren't doing all that well. In 1970 the U.S. controlled 28% of world manufacturing output and China had 4%. In 1990 the U.S. still had 22%, but Japan had come up in the ranks and China still had only 4%. Now the U.S. says it has 20%, and China, by its own account, has 19%. In the U.S., not much happened in the past 20 years. But in China, India, Vietnam, Russia and Brazil you can see huge progress. That said, I agree with Archie that U.S. stocks might outperform other stock markets—once in a century.

MacAllaster: At my four-score-plus, I don't have to wait too much longer.

Faber: History has shown that giant countries on the way down are very dangerous because they are desperate. But this year the U.S. has stabilized and is going to grow modestly.

One more thing: Janet Yellen, vice chair of the Federal Reserve, said about a year ago that if it were possible to push interest rates into negative territory, she would vote for that. This is a very important statement because it implies that the Fed will keep real interest rates negative as far as the eye can see. Negative real rates amount to expropriation and destroy one function of money: to be a store of value and a unit of account. If you measure the stock market not in dollars but gold, it is down 80% since 1999. I no longer regard the U.S. dollar as a valid unit of account. People shouldn't value their wealth in dollars because one day, in dollars, everyone will be a billionaire.

Gross: I agree with Marc on many things, though not everything. I don't know if the U.S. has reached a desperate point, but it is employing instruments and vehicles and policies that smack of desperation. We are not looking at a default here, but at years of accelerating inflation, which basically robs investors and labor of their real wages and earnings. We are looking at a currency that almost certainly will depreciate relative to other, stronger currencies in developing countries that have lower levels of debt and higher growth potential. And, on the short end of the yield curve, we are looking at creditors receiving negative real interest rates for a long, long time. That, in effect, is a default. Ultimately creditors and investors are at the behest of a central bank and policymakers that will rob them of their money.

Faber: It is much easier for a government to print money and default in the way Bill just explained than to come out and say "we aren't going to pay half our debts." Also, one of the big debates these days is between the deflationists and the inflationists. The deflationists claim the Dow will drop to 1,000 or less and the economy will contract sharply, and therefore you should be in government bonds, not commodities, equities or real estate. But if China and India continue to grow and car makers do better, as Mario said, commodities will do OK.

In a deflationary environment, tax revenues go down and fiscal policy remains expansionary. Deficits stay high, and even increase. Interest rates on government debt go up, and the quality of that debt declines. In a disaster scenario, I would rather own equities than government bonds. Since I am ultra-bearish, my preferred assets are equities and hard assets: real estate, commodities, precious metals and collectibles.

Zulauf: In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Paul Volcker [then the chairman of the Federal Reserve] crunched inflation by applying very high real interest rates for several years. Now we are getting the same process, just in reverse. Just as it took several years for the market to see that Volcker's policies would lead to declines in inflation and interest rates, it will take several years for the market to realize the Fed's current policies are highly inflationary. They will lead to a debasing of the currency, which is happening to varying degrees in most of the industrialized countries.

Fred, speak up and give us your view.

Hickey: Last August, things weren't looking so well. Then Ben Bernanke gave a speech in Jackson Hole that implied the Fed would engage in quantitative easing, and from that point forward, the Dow added 1,400 points. Gasoline prices went from $2.65 a gallon to well over $3.00—a $50 billion hit to consumers. Food prices rose to record levels. It caused a major imbalance in the economy. If you own financial assets, you're doing quite well. If you don't, you're getting hit by higher food prices, higher insurance costs, higher everything, and you're not getting any interest on your savings. Target's [TGT] numbers were no good at Christmas. Saks' [SKS] numbers were fantastic. That's a big problem.

We continue to print money. In 2000 easy money led to gross imbalances. In the mid-2000s, 1% interest rates led to a housing bubble and then a credit crisis, and now rates are at zero. To get a response from the economy, the Fed must print ever more money. It did, and everything looks great right now. But as of June, when the $110 billion they are printing per month ends, things might not look so rosy. A year ago people were talking about an exit strategy. I knew there wasn't going to be one, ever. The economy has structural problems and we aren't dealing with them. Money-printing won't work, yet that's the prescription we continue to give the patient. If the Fed keeps printing after June, we'll have higher gasoline and food prices and more imbalances until this ends. And at some point it will end, because the dollar will fall apart. What we are doing now makes everything appear rosy. But it is a devastatingly terrible policy for the long term.

Cohen: All of us, except for Marc, tend to focus on the developed markets. But the right policies for developed economies might be 180 degrees apart from those followed by developing economies. China has been tightening credit and India has discussed it. This divergence in policies confuses the outlook for various markets and currencies. The dollar may go up or down, but relative to what? It may be reasonably priced relative to some currencies, but underpriced relative to others.

Gross: Americans are amazingly unsophisticated when it comes to currency. Europeans have always been more sophisticated, because they have had to deal across borders. The currency is becoming the critical question for 2011 in terms of where to invest. As Abby suggests, the dollar may do OK against some currencies, but a currency is a function of future earning power. Developing countries have real interest rates that are much higher than zero. In Brazil, rates are 5% to 6%. In other emerging markets they average 2%, 3%, 4%. From the standpoint of currencies, an investor has to look for growth and high real interest rates. The lack of sophistication among American investors has to change if they expect to be competitive on a global basis.

Schafer: No one has mentioned that four-letter word yet: gold.

Hickey: I've had more than 50% of my assets in gold for the past seven years. Institutional ownership of gold is ridiculously low. It is less than 1%.

Zulauf: At its 1980 peak of $850 an ounce, gold represented 3% of the market capitalization of global equities, bonds and money-market assets. Today it is 0.6%. The price has a long way to go.

Hickey: We have seen tremendous speculation and exuberance in the stock market, as evidenced by Investors Intelligence and other sentiment indicators. Not so in gold; the Hulbert Gold Newsletter Sentiment Index is down. But the gold-stock rally has entered its speculative phase. The GDXJ [ Market Vectors Junior Gold Miners exchange-traded fund] was up twice as much as the GDX [ Market Vectors Gold Miners] last year. Mining stocks are undervalued.

Let's switch to the market. Where will it close this year?

Hickey: If the Fed continues printing, the market will go higher. It will continue printing, because the economy probably would collapse if it didn't. The stock market could go up 10% this year.

Bill, what do you think?

Gross: As I said, corporations are in a good position. With real GDP growth of 4%, the market could go up 5% to 10%. But if bond yields move higher, as they gradually might do, corporate bonds could pose some competition to stocks. High-yield bonds are less volatile than the stock market has been, and they provide similar returns. Stocks aren't in a position to generate double-digit returns, given the expected growth rate of the U.S. and other developed economies.

Abby?

Cohen: Fair value for the S&P 500 is about 1500, which implies a return this year of about 20%. Some of that gain will come in the form of higher dividends. Many companies have built up enormous cash positions in the past two-three years, and will return some of that cash to shareholders. Companies in the S&P 500 are well positioned. These are large companies with access to the public markets. They can borrow money when they need it. There will be ongoing pressure for small and midsize companies that are dependent on small and midsize banks, which aren't particularly robust. Roughly 40% of S&P profits comes from outside the U.S., which is also a benefit. Volatility has declined, which is good for investors. Correlations among assets and among sectors also have declined. That suggests good security selection will generate better results this year.

Are you concerned that so many people around this table are bullish on stocks?

Cohen: Yes, but there are different ways to look at sentiment. There is a lot of cash not just at corporations but in investment portfolios, and that is positive. There is a substantial amount of money in short-term fixed-income assets. In the past couple of months there has been some reallocation of assets out of fixed income into equities. Among portfolio managers, we have also seen increased enthusiasm for some of the developed markets, as opposed to developing markets, although that is primarily a short-term valuation call. Opportunities also exist in Europe and Japan, but they will probably be more trading-oriented than in the U.S.

Meryl, are you any more bullish after this morning's discussion?

Witmer: The market doesn't look cheap to us. Three of my five stock picks emerged from bankruptcy protection. We really have had to hunt to find values. I don't see the market going up a lot this year. Unless it is a special situation, it is best to wait for a downdraft.

Schafer: I agree with Abby about diminishing correlations. If the trend continues, it will be a really good year for stockpickers, long and short. The market will end the year higher, but right now there is too much bullishness.

MacAllaster: I see another 1,000 points on the Dow and 90 points on the S&P 500, so that's a gain of about 8%.

Felix, what do you see?

Zulauf: The market will range between 10% up and 10% down. I don't know where it will end the year. The U.S. central bank will be forced to quit quantitative easing by the middle of the year as political pressure increases, but it won't shrink its balance sheet. The ending of QE will take some excitement out of the stock market. Then there is room for unpleasant surprises. From time to time, the Chinese could shock the markets by acting more serious about tightening. I don't like the widespread optimism right now, and I can't join the bandwagon. The crisis in Europe is continuing. We don't know where it will lead and how it will affect the U.S. Corporate profit margins can't stay at such high levels. They will probably revert to the mean, which historically was 5.5% or so, not today's 7%.

Gabelli: Earnings of the companies we follow are going to remain quite vibrant, even with rising input costs. It is a good market from a flow-of-funds point of view. Also, consultants have been advising corporate and pension and endowment funds to shift money out of domestic equities and into emerging markets, and away from active managers and into index and hedge funds. These funds have shifted so far away from domestic equities that an air pocket has been created in valuations of high-quality U.S. stocks. There are significant bargains. By the end of the year, the market will be up 5% to 10%. There will also be more deals.

Small stocks did extremely well last year. The Russell 2000 was up 26%. Do you expect that to continue?

Black: I use the Russell 2000 Value and Russell 2500 Value [a small- and mid-cap index] as benchmarks for some of our accounts. Their performance was skewed by REITs [real-estate investment trusts], which were up sensationally and are the largest weighting among financials in both indexes.

Hickey: Small-cap tech also did well.

Was it yields that attracted investors to REITs?

Black: REITs are way overpriced, but people were chasing yields. Similarly, master limited partnerships tied to oil and gas pipelines had huge yields at the start of 2010. Some are still above 7%, but most have fallen to 5%-6%. The run-ups in REITs and MLPs won't be repeated this year.

Hickey: Small-caps are less liquid than large-caps. When liquidity is pumped back into the economy, they do well. When it comes out of the system, small-caps and real estate collapse. If the Fed stops reliquefying the system after June, that isn't good for small-caps.

Cohen: Another factor also drove small-caps last year, and in some cases it was the same thing driving developing markets: a reversion to risk. As the economic data improved, and it wasn't only after Bernanke's speech, investors grew more comfortable adding beta [assets that move with the market] to their portfolios. In a strictly domestic portfolio, you tend to do that through small-caps. In a global portfolio, you do it through smaller emerging markets.

MacAllaster: The fact is small-caps tend to go up much more in a bull market, and fall by a greater percentage in a bear market.

How do all of you factor in financial reform? There was a bill. It passed. Now what?

Cohen: We don't have all the answers yet because the legislation said specifically that the regulators will work it out. In some ways, Basel III, which mandated changes in the capitalization requirements of financial institutions, may have a more significant impact on the financial-services industry. According to our research team, large-cap U.S. financial-services companies are in much better shape than European banks. We had tough-love regulations before Europe did. U.S. banks were stress-tested in the spring of 2009, and those needing more capital were able to raise it. There was a great deal of equity issuance at that time. The European banks had what some might call less rigorous stress tests.

Zulauf: It was a joke. Basel III also was too soft. The regulators have missed the chance to require the banking industry to put up enough equity capital. It is also a joke to implement these requirements by 2019. By then there will have been another major crisis. The regulators adjusted to what the banking industry could do, not what had to be done.

Gross: To the extent that Elizabeth Warren couldn't even get appointed permanently, by a Democratic Congress and a Democratic administration, to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, that's evidence of the negative aspects of not implementing Dodd-Frank [financial-reform legislation].

Marc, much as we dread to hear it, what are you thinking?

Faber: When you have short-term rates at zero, it is difficult to value anything. The market could be a lot more volatile in the next five years than has been suggested here. I expect to see the market move up and down at least 20% this year, as it did in 2010. The S&P was at 1219 on April 23. It dropped to 1010, and now we're at 1270. Daily trading hasn't been volatile lately, but there has been a lot of volatility in individual stocks.

The Dhaka Stock Exchange in Bangladesh dropped by 16% in two days. They closed it down and now they have riots. I guarantee you that emerging economies aren't going to tighten. Everywhere in the world, once markets drop by 10% or 15%, QE3, QE4 and QE5 will come.

Gross: How can you compare Bangladesh to tightening in Brazil or China or India?

Faber: The central bankers of the world are hostage to asset markets. They will not let asset markets drop significantly. They would rather let their currencies go. Worldwide, they will print money. In such an environment, I look to corporate bonds, equities, global real estate and precious metals and commodities. I don't want to be in cash and government bonds in the long run.

But where will the market go this year?

Faber: The U.S. market has almost doubled since March 6, 2009. Some emerging markets have gone up much more than that. A correction is overdue. Then we'll have the second leg of the bull market. In the third year of the presidential cycle, you want to be in the most speculative stocks. As we approach the 2012 election, the Fed is going to print like hell. I am bearish about everything, but in my bearishness I'll be better off in stocks than government bonds.

So you're bearish, but you're not.

Faber: I'm very bearish about the ultimate outcome.‹

[zipjet]

Dew, Barron's Roundtable Article today is very interesting. Basically, 10 financial people state that basically our economy is going to hell in a handbasket, but that's not enough reason that the markets won't scream ahead 10% to 30% this year.

It is quite a problem.

The the federal fiscal authorities (Congress and President) have no coherent plan to restore full employment and balance the deficits (spending, trade and current accounts).

The monetary authorities can use their limited tools or allow financial sector and GDP to collapse.

Who wants the Fed Chair job in that situation? And who, understanding the situation would fiddle while DC burns? :-)

Republicans largely want governmental budgets balanced by cuts, but they are not willing to do the necessary cutting. The Democrats favor balancing budgets largely, if not exclusively by tax increases, but are unwilling to raise taxes on enough of the population or by enough to balance the budget.

So if the fiscal authorities will not balance the budget, the FED is left in this catch 22 situation.

ij