Ability to Adapt to a New Epoch, Bill Gross

There is not a Bond King or a Stock King or an Investor Sovereign alive that can claim title to a throne. All of us, even the old guys like Buffett, Soros, Fuss, yeah – me too, have cut our teeth during perhaps a most advantageous period of time, the most attractive epoch, that an investor could experience. ...What if an epoch changes? What if perpetual credit expansion and its fertilization of asset prices and returns are substantially altered? What if zero-bound interest rates define the end of a total return epoch that began in the 1970s, accelerated in 1981 and has come to a mathematical dead-end for bonds in 2012/2013 and commonsensically for other conjoined asset classes as well? What if a future epoch favors lower than index carry or continual bouts of 2008 Lehmanesque volatility, or encompasses a period of global geopolitical confrontation with a quest for scarce and scarcer resources such as oil, water, or simply food as suggested by Jeremy Grantham? What if the effects of global "climate change or perhaps aging demographics," substantially alter the rather fertile petri dish of capitalistic expansion and endorsement? What if quantitative easing policies eventually collapse instead of elevate asset prices? What if there is a future that demands that an investor—a seemingly great investor—change course, or at least learn new tricks? Ah, now, that would be a test of greatness: the ability to adapt to a new epoch.

- Bill Gross (1944- )

Pimco's Bill Gross Looks at the Man in the Mirror (CNBC.com, 3 Apr 2013)
http://www.cnbc.com/id/100612898

http://finclip.blogspot.kr/2013/04/pimcos-bill-gross-looks-at-man-in-mirror.html