Harry Dent Jr., aka “the Contrarian’s Contrarian,” never beats around the bush.
“Get out…!” is his message to both stock market investors and President Joe Biden, as he tells ThinkAdvisor in an interview.
Investment-wise, “there’s nowhere to hide but in the best high-quality 10- and 30-year U.S. Treasury bonds,” he argues.
As for Biden, he recommends bluntly: “Get out of the way…If not, [you’re] going to regret it.”
Dent, whose HSD Publishing produces monthly newsletters that he and partner Rodney Johnson write, correctly predicted Japan’s 1989 bubble bust and recession and the populist surge that put Donald Trump in the White House in 2016.
Many of Dent’s predictions, however, have simply fizzled.
For a number of years now, he has predicted the biggest crash ever, when the stock market’s “monster bubble,” as he calls it, will finally collapse, and “the crash of a lifetime” will ensue.
“We’re getting very close,” he says in the interview.
He argues that the crash will be a time to make money and details a scenario for selling stocks and making the best investments right now.
He also opines on the likelihood of a recession and gives his assessment of artificial intelligence, which he dubs “the screaming new baby. It’s the future.”
Prior to subscribing to the HS Dent Forecast, folks are offered free newsletters, each of which, he points out, include a few of his trademark “Harry’s Rants.”
Here are excerpts from our conversation, which took place July 5:
THINKADVISOR: Do you still think the stock market’s crash of a lifetime will happen this year?
HARRY DENT: Yes, I do. But I don’t know exactly, although we’re getting very close. It’s already starting to burst now, but it could really start bursting six, eight or ten months from now.
It’s difficult to predict [timing] because of the distorted economy as a result of the huge government stimulus.
Please elaborate.
The stimulus from 2009-2024 has caused an artificial giant monster everything-bubble. It’s the biggest bubble in history and will have the biggest burst in history.
It will happen fast and hard. We’ve never had this much extra money injected into the economy — $27 trillion in stimulus — and such growing deficits.
That money basically ends up in the financial markets. [Thus], this bubble. We haven’t had a meaningful long-term downturn since the 1970s.
The bubble is the price of putting all that money into the economy. It distorts it, and it particularly distorts the market.
What should financial advisors be telling their clients, then?
Get out of the market. All you can do is get out of the way, give up your gains for now — whatever you’re making, 10%, 12%, 5%, 7% — and let this thing work itself out.
Then get back in when the market goes down to fair value, which would be 2009 lows: down 86%-87% on the S&P 500 and 92%-93% on Nasdaq.
If you get out of the stock market, what’s best to invest in?
The safest thing to be in is cash and T-bills. There’s nowhere to hide but in the best high-quality U.S. Treasury bonds.
This downturn and the deepest recession to [follow] are about making money. You make money by going into the safest long-term investments on earth: 10- and 30-year U.S. Treasury bonds, the [global] king of bonds.
Why buy those?