Jim Rogers and Jeremy Gratham: Bonds are a Terrible Investment

Jim Rogers recently told Fox Business Network that he plans to short US bonds in the future and to buy them now would be a “terrible mistake”.

"I am not short bonds yet but I plan to be short bonds," he said. "If the world economy gets better, you are going to make money in commodities because that is where the shortages are. If the economy does not get better, they are going to print money and when it does get better, you better own commodities, such as silver and rice."

Rogers warned it would be dangerous to own US T-bills now but admitted he had been burned a few times recently when he attempted to short the asset class.

Yesterday, GMO (Jeremy Grantham) released their 7-year forecast, and all bonds (except Emerging Debt) are expected to provide negative returns every year (on aggregate) over the next 7 year.

Here are GMO forecasts:

• US Bonds: -1% per year
• International Bonds: -2.1% per year
• Emerging Debt: 1.5% per year
  
• Index Linked Bonds: -1% per year
  
• Cash: -0.7% per year

The best 2 investments over this 7 years would be international large caps (6.4%) and emerging markets (6.5%).