OVERVIEW
Slouching Towards Stagflation?
The dramatic Page One stories this year were born in two cities lying worlds
apart:
A starving street vendor in Tunis set himself aflame, an immolation
which set deserts aflame all the way to the Persian Gulf;
An earthquake near Sendai spawned a tsunami, killing and
wounding thousands, and sending six nuclear reactors into
pre-meltdown mode, slashing electricity supplies across the nation
and forcing factory shutdowns, triggering supply chain shutdowns
worldwide; Japanese stocks plunged to new lows.
This month we chronicle these stories and suggest their important investment
implications. We also discuss two Page 16 stories—the problematic pension
situation in the US and the implications of a NASA-sponsored committee’s
recent prediction of the lowest-activity sunspot cycle in nearly two
centuries.
All these topics relate to an over-arching investment question: is the world
slouching erratically toward a revival of stagflation—a condition in which
commodities and commodity stocks become core investment priorities?
We are modifying our Recommended Asset Mixes and Recommended Sector
Weightings in Commodity Stocks to reflect the impacts on investment
strategies from these challenges.