Tighten your seatbelts and prepare for the greatest boom in history: from 1998 to 2008!
— Harry S. Dent, The Roaring 2000s
Whenever you get stock picks or investing advice from a guru that has never managed money professionally, make sure to "check your thesis." There’s a big difference between writing about stocks and and actually putting peoples money on the line. What "should" work in the markets often doesn’t work when actually implemented. This rule goes for the likes of George Gilder, Louis Rukeyser and, especially, Harry S. Dent.
During 1998 and 1999, Harry Dent’s "The Roaring 2000s" was practically required reading at the investment firm where I worked. In it, Dent used a demographic concept he called the spending wave to predict the future of the economy and stock market. Dent’s vision was very compelling and was only enhanced by the fact that he had been exactly right about predicting a stock bull market in 1992 with "The Great Boom Ahead". Unfortunately, "The Roaring 2000s" will go down in history as one of the great contrarian signals of all time – the fact that it reached the top of the best seller lists was a classic sign that Dent was going to be wrong. In fact, Harry Dent’s own "Demographic Trends Fund" proved how wrong he was – he started the fund in 1999 and by 2003, it had lost over 50%. So, technically, Dent did manage money professionally – he just did it very, very poorly.
Well, Dent is still around and is still talking about the next Great Boom. And he makes the same compelling and deceptively simple arguments to back up his case. He expects a bull market going into 2009 as money rotates out of real estate and back into growth stocks. A recent article from Stocks, Futures and Options Magazine outlines his bullish views:
Many analysts and economists view the recent long trading range as a sign of limited potential for the economy and stocks in the coming years. We believe this view could not be more wrong. True, stocks have not significantly risen in nearly two years, but given the magnitude of the crises of the past year, it is a major sign of strength that they have managed to hold their position.
Furthermore, the solid growth in earnings in a period of flat equity prices clearly builds fundamental strength. In addition, every stock market bubble in the last century – 1915 to 1919, 1925 to 1929, 1935 to 1937, 1985 to 1987, and 1995 to 1999 – was preceded by pattern of a major correction or crash, a strong initial recovery rally, and then a one- to two-year trading range sideways.
The Case for Dramatic Equity Gains Ahead
When new technologies first accelerate their market penetration into the mainstream economy, they bring strongly rising productivity rates and new growth industries that generally develop into two bubbles before they peak, not one. We believe the greatest bubble very likely will occur from mid- to late 2005 into mid- to late 2010 on an 81-year lag to the last technology boom and rising demographic cycle of spending into the Roaring ‘20s, pointing to a Dow of around 40,000 into 2010. Our bullish view stems from an understanding of demographics, best illustrated by the spending wave.Our spending wave, based on consumption data provided by the U.S. government, simply lags domestic births, adjusted for immigration, for the peak age of consumer spending – around age 48 today. That model, heavily skewed by the massive baby boom generation, has continued to point strongly up into around 2010 towards a Dow around 40,000 and explains the broad, unprecedented nature of this boom. Despite the crash of 2000- 2002, we are predicting a Dow of 35,000 to 40,000 around the end of this decade.
The greater insight, however, comes from our long-term technology cycles. Every other generation, approximately every 80 years, we usher in radical new technologies – like electricity, autos, phones and radios – that create long-term growth in productivity. The current radical technology trend centers around personal computers, wireless technologies, the Internet and broadband communications. These new technologies change business models and create accelerating productivity as they move in an S-Curve cycle into our mainstream economy – as occurred from 1914 to 1929 and 1995 to 2010.
In October of 2002 we gave our strongest buy signal in the history of our newsletter (which began in 1989) right at the bottom and demonstrated how the 2000s “tech wreck” was directly comparable to the auto industry and tech crash of the 1920s – the last major technology cycle on an 80- to 81-year lag – and would lead to one more great bubble boom ahead from late 2002 into 2010. We forecast the boom to continue until the technology cycle and demographic-induced spending trends peak between late 2009 and mid-2010. In early October of 2005 we have our last major buy signal ahead of the next strong advance in the stock market.
How could we be forecasting a Dow of 40,000 by 2010 in an era of growing federal deficits, hurricanes, terrorism and seemingly the never-ending war in Iraq? Consider other examples. We faced a similar environment in the early 1990s, and the Dow hit highs that previously were unimaginable – until you consider demographics and technology cycles.
Sectors to Watch
In the last several years, bonds, real estate investment trusts, homebuilding stocks and energy stocks have led the market in a lackluster period overall. We see a dramatic reversal in trends with small-cap and large-cap growth taking over leadership from value, and with the strongest performance in technology, biotech, health care, financials, Asia, durable goods and consumer discretionary. We are predicting that the Dow will rise from 14,000 to 15,000 by August of 2006, similar to the strong advance we predicted in March of 2003, with much greater gains in technology and small caps. The next year and next five years should be very exciting and profitable for stocks and the growth sectors! But leading sectors of the past like bonds, energy, commodities, REITs and homebuilders will lag. Energy and commodity sectors may see a final bubble and resurgence from 2007 into 2010.
The problem I have with Dent’s view isn’t that it’s completely off base – the problem is that I actually agree with it. And since one of my cardinal rules is to ‘check my thesis’ when I agree with a bad stock picking guru, I’ll have to go back and question my outlook. However, until I find compelling evidence that Dent is wrong, I’ll have to admit that I believe in what Dent is pushing – a productivity-lead bull market.