Thursday, June 26, 2008

Société Générale: “We see a y-shaped global recession. We are going down before looping backwards”

From FT Alphaville:

"We had promised more on the latest missive from Societe Generale’s Albert Edwards - so here it is.

This is evidence, we think, that only Edwards can out-Edwards when it comes to alarmist market strategy report. It’s just marvellous".

First, some context:

The entrenched bias towards bullishness infects virtually all parts of our business and means investing on the basis of forecasts is a waste of time…

Yet there is no big conspiracy about this. It is simply that an equity/economic bear standing out from the crowd runs the risk of being very wrong (so too obviously do the bulls, but funnily enough no-one seems to mind that). Being bearish and being wrong attracts the derision of the salesforce (though not necessarily the clients) which pressurises management to remove the offender....MORE