David Rosenberg: My recession call has the haters out in force, but I've been here before

financialpost.com:

When I was at Merrill, all through 2007 I was asked: “Where is this recession you’ve been calling for, Rosenberg?”

The same salespeople on the equity desk who refused to take me to see clients that year became my best friends in 2008 (they know who they are).

I almost got fired twice for my calls in 2007, but my Institutional Investor All-Star rankings saved my skin. That summer, I had a CIO at a famed Houston-based mutual fund storm out of a meeting I gave and scold me as he exited the boardroom: “You have no clue about the housing market or the economy for that matter,” he said. I had the head of Merrill’s fixed-income sales physically throw my presentation package at me at an internal meeting and tell me in front of about 30 people that I was the worst Fed-watcher he ever saw.

One time, when I was walking around the trading floor, this guy called me over and handed me the phone and I thought it was a client, but it was his wife on the line and she said: “My husband asked me to ask you why it is you are so useless.”

So, you think I haven’t seen all this before?

Even today, we have an inbox for client queries and comments here at Rosenberg Research and let me tell you — much the same. I have one client, who shall remain nameless obviously, who hurls insults at me every single day.

Our bullish calls on Japan, Mexico, India and, more recently, Canada, have been overshadowed by our desire not to be involved with the most overvalued stock market on the planet. And while we had a tough year in 2022 on the bond call, since the yield peak last October, you have made money in Treasuries. And they do provide a ballast in the portfolio, but we are in a moment of time where risk-adjusted returns and capital preservation psychology