저자: JeremyGrantham · 외국인
요약 보기
그랜섬은 현재 시장을 '에픽 버블'로 규정하고, 버블은 반드시 꺼지지만 시점은 예측하지 않는다고 말한다. 버블의 특징은 사람들이 가격이 절대 하락하지 않는다고 믿는 강한 매수 심리다. 2005~2006년 미국 주택 버블, 1929년, 2000년 기술주 버블, 1989년 일본 버블이 같은 패턴이었으며, 지금은 과거보다 '가격은 결코 하락하지 않는다'는 믿음이 더 크다고 본다. 그는 2000년 기술주 버블 때 미리 빠져나왔지만 다른 사람들이 계속 돈을 버는 동안 손해를 봤다고 회고한다. 버블이 길어질수록 붕괴 후 수익 기회도 커질 수 있으나, 공매도를 감당할 수 있어야 한다고 조언한다. 버블의 주된 원인으로 연준이 공급한 막대한 유동성을 지목한다. 미국 소비자물가가 연율 6% 수준으로 오른 상황에서 연준이 급격히 긴축하면 시장이 정점을 찍을 수 있다고 경고한다. 그의 모형(1925년부터)에 따르면 강세장과 약세장을 설명하는 가장 강력한 변수는 인플레이션인데, 작년 6월 이후 시장이 이를 무시하고 있다는 점이 이례적이라고 말한다. 현재의 시장 수준을 설명하려면 상승하는 인플레이션을 100% 무시해야 한다는 것이다. 연준에 대한 신뢰가 지나치게 커서 연준이 '일시적'이라고 말하면 시장이 그대로 믿는 상황이며, 볼커 이후 연준은 위험한 자산 버블을 연쇄적으로 만들었다고 비판한다. 코로나 이후 과잉 유동성이 밈 주식 같은 광기를 낳았고, 아비스(Avis)가 하루 만에 세 배 오른 사례를 들며 1929년보다 극단적이라고 말한다.
다듬은 글
이 영상의 원문은 영어 자막이므로, 영어 그대로 다듬어 정리합니다.
I'm going to speak more broadly. You said we're in what I think you call an epic bubble right now. You've been very careful not to predict when it ends. I'm just going to say that it does end. What's going to bring it to an end?
The thing about the great bubbles, 1929, Japan, is that nobody knows, even after all these years, exactly why the bubble peaked. You can say with hindsight that it peaked at the point of maximum euphoria. There was no hint of darkness at the end of the tunnel. Everything looked absolutely splendid as the market peaked, and as long as it looks splendid, everybody is happy.
The thing about the great bubbles is how intensely people buy into the idea that it can never break, that prices will never decline. The housing bubble of 2005 and 2006 in America was a brilliant example. People went out and bought a second house to rent because house prices never declined. Ben Bernanke said U.S. house prices had never declined. Of course, they promptly did, but that is par for the course for the Federal Reserve.
In 1929 there was a terrific buy-in. You could read articles in the Ladies' Home Journal saying all you had to do to get rich was buy stocks and hold on to them. The same thing occurred in 2000 in the tech bubble, and in the biggest bubble of all, Japan in 1989, when the Japanese market went to 65 times earnings. But in U.S. history, I would say there's a bigger buy-in this time to the idea that prices never decline and that all you have to do is buy. That suggests that when the decline comes, it may be bigger than anything previously in U.S. history.
You've talked about the tech bubble in 2000, which you famously did anticipate, but you paid a price for getting out of the market at that point, because other people continued to make money. Value investors switched over, and you stuck with it. At the same time, the longer the bubble goes, the bigger it gets. Does that represent the possibility for you to make more money when it bursts, if you can handle going short and getting out of the way?
Yes, you can make a lot of money. This bubble, if it is a bubble as you describe, must in part be because of the amazing liquidity pumped into the world market, frankly. The Fed certainly participated in that fully. We now have some pretty staggering numbers this week: consumer prices up over six percent annualized in the United States right now.
To what extent will the pricking of this bubble come if the Fed needs to respond and really step on the brake, maybe even a little abruptly?
Markets peak when inflation is low and profit margins are high. It's not about growth. Investors like GDP to be very stable; they hate it bouncing around, because it makes portfolio managers nervous. Our model, which goes back to 1925, explains almost all the ebbing and flowing of bull and bear markets. Until June of last year, inflation, the number one predictor since 1925, was consistently borne out. Starting in June of last year, it is the first time it has been ignored.
If you want to explain today's market level, yes, you have handsome profit margins. Every bull market has a wonderful economy, and every bull market has a plentiful supply of liquidity. But every bull market before this one had low inflation. To explain today's market, you have to assume a hundred percent ignoring of rising inflation, which is quite remarkable. We've never seen anything like this. We've just hit six percent today. That would have been enough in any market since 1925, and for all I know, long before that, it would have been enough to crash the market. But this time, faith in the Fed is so complete that when they say it's temporary, we believe it.
The Fed, in my opinion, hasn't done a thing right since Paul Volcker, who was brilliant. All of the others have encouraged a chain of really dangerous asset bubbles. They rattle the economy and are incredibly disruptive. The 82 percent decline in the Nasdaq from 2000, and the decline of the housing market all the way back to trend and below, dragged the world with it, along with all the problems from bad mortgages and a 50 percent decline in the S&P. These have a terrible wealth effect: they make people feel poor and make them spend less. It's the last thing you want, and yet they have not learned.
They overstimulated to get to 2000. They overstimulated the housing market and got three or four percent more people to own houses in 2007 than had ever owned houses before, and the consequences were dire. Have they learned? Absolutely not. This time they stepped into COVID. Of course you needed to stimulate, but did you need to throw this much money all over the world so that it flowed into the stock market and created these meme stocks and this craziness? Avis tripled in one day in the last week. Why did it triple? In response to Tesla, and herds, and Tom Brady, Avis said, "Hey dudes, we're going to buy some electric cars too," and wham, it tripled. This is more extreme in scale and market cap than anything that occurred in 1929, even adjusted for the size of the economy.
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