From January Investment Outlook by Bill Gross of Janus Capital
Beware the Ides of March, or the Ides of any month in 2015 for that matter. When the year is done, there will be minus signs in front of returns for many asset classes. The good times are over.
Timing the end of an asset bull market is nearly always an impossible task, and that is one reason why most market observers don’t do it. The other reason is that most investors are optimists by historical experience or simply human nature, and it never serves their business interests to forecast a decline in the price of the product that they sell.
Nevertheless, there comes a time when common sense must recognize that the king
has no clothes, or at least that he is down to his Fruit of the Loom briefs, when it
comes to future expectations for asset returns. Now is that time and hopefully the next
12 monthly “Ides” will provide some air cover for me in terms of an inflection point.
And so that is why – at some future date – at some future Ides of March or May
or November 2015, asset returns in many categories may turn negative. What to
consider in such a strange new world? High-quality assets with stable cash flows.
Those would include Treasury and high-quality corporate bonds, as well as equities
of lightly levered corporations with attractive dividends and diversified revenues both
operationally and geographically. With moments of liquidity having already been
experienced in recent months, 2015 may see a continuing round of musical chairs as
riskier asset categories become less and less desirable.
Debt supercycles in the process of reversal are not favorable events for future
investment returns. Father Time in 2015 is not the babe with a top hat in our opening
cartoon. He is the grumpy old codger looking forward to his almost inevitable “Ides”
sometime during the next 12 months. Be cautious and content with low positive
returns in 2015. The time for risk taking has passed. 
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