The Peter Schiff Backlash Begins

I’ve been saying for some time that I’m not particularly impressed with Peter Schiff and his hyper-bearish calls. Fortune just had an article on how prescient Schiff has been: “As one of the few talking heads who loudly, relentlessly, and more or less accurately sounded the alarm about the mortgage bubble and its consequences – in the process becoming the latest bearish commentator to earn the moniker “Dr. Doom” – Schiff has suddenly emerged as a cult hero and something of a minor celebrity.”
Well, Dr. Doom has predicting disaster for several years now, and what we’re seeing now isn’t quite what Schiff predicted. Jonas Elmerraji of the Rhino Stock Report writes:

While Schiff has proved himself as an economist, his ability to parlay those predictions into profits for his clients was questionable for 2008. For the last few years, he’s been betting big on overseas investments and precious metals – two areas that got hit as hard or harder than the S&P last year.
According to Morningstar, the average international equity fund performed 7% worse than the average U.S. stock fund in the last year.
Just look at the iShares MSCI Belgium (EWK), the worst performing ETF last year according to SmartMoney.com, or the iShares FTSE/Xinhua China 25 ETF (FXI), which lost 49% in 2008.
Another of Schiff’s investment strategies has been to exit the U.S. dollar in favor of more fundamentally sound currencies. This too has proved untimely since anxious treasury investors have driven up the dollar in the last year.
And some, like Seeking Alpha contributor Todd Sullivan, are quick to remind investors that Peter Schiff has been bearish on the market since at least 2002, when the S&P was poised to move up 48% over the next five years.

Mish breaks it down in list form:

12 Ways Schiff Was Wrong in 2008
* Wrong about hyperinflation
* Wrong about the dollar
* Wrong about commodities except for gold
* Wrong about foreign currencies except for the Yen
* Wrong about foreign equities
* Wrong in timing
* Wrong in risk management
* Wrong in buy and hold thesis
* Wrong on decoupling
* Wrong on China
* Wrong on US treasuries
* Wrong on interest rates, both foreign and domestic
That’s a lot of things to be wrong about, especially given all the “Peter Schiff Was Right” videos floating around everywhere. The one thing he was right about was the collapse of US equities and no part of his investment strategy sought to make a gain from that prediction.
Peter Schiff concludes many of his articles, books, etc. with the claim he saw this coming and “positioned his clients accordingly”.

Posted by on January 26th, 2009 at 10:05 am


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