Should we sell everything because Andrew Roberts (not the historian but an analyst at RBS) tells us to in the expectation of crash? Before you press the ‘sell’ button, it might just be worth reflecting on the fact that there has always been a time when some analyst somewhere has been handing out the same advice.
Quite often that somebody has been Andrew Roberts himself. In June 2010, for example, he said: ‘We cannot stress enough how strongly we believe that a cliff-edge may be around the corner, for the global banking system (particularly in Europe) and for the global economy. Think the unthinkable,’ he said. The unthinkable in that case turned out to be that, contrary to the Cassandras’ warning of a double dip recession, it didn’t happen. The global banking system survived and stock markets grew strongly.
Mr Roberts was at it again in July 2012 when he said: ‘People talk about recovery, but to me we are in a much worse shape than the Great Depression… Even the Congressional Budget Office, probably the most bullish forecaster in the world, is forecasting a US recession in the first half of next year.
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