It has now been four months since RBS analyst Andrew Roberts shocked the world, or at least the gullible, with his recommendation to investors to “sell everything”. This nutty ‘forecast’ prompted me to offer Mr Roberts some skin in the game with a bet that he would be wrong. The bet was outlined here: https://thekouk.com/blog/sell-everything-my-challenge-to-andrew-roberts-of-rbs.html 

The scorecard after nearly four months is:

The Kouk 9
Roberts 2

Recall that to win, Roberts only has to get six out of 11 – ‘everything’ did not need to fall.

The two markets where Roberts is ahead are US house prices which are down 0.02 per cent and the Nikkei which is down 3.1 per cent. Some that he missed are quite extraordinary. The iron ore price is up 64 per cent, oil 46 per cent, Brazilian stocks are up 36 per cent and even US stocks are up ov er 7 per cent.

The weighted average gain on the 11 items is a fantastic 17.1 per cent. Here is the table.

                                                 Level at time         Latest           Difference %
                                                     of bet
US stocks S&P500                            1925                 2060             7.273
Brazil stocks Ibovespa                     39500               53910            36.481
China stocks Shenzhen                     1850                1960               5.946
Japan stocks Nikkei                         17200              16666              -3.105
US house prices Case-Shiller           182.83            182.79             -0.022
UK 20 city house prices Hometrack  228800            235800             3.059
Sydney house prices Corelogic          915.00             955.18            4.391
Iron ore US$ tonne                             40.50               66.24           63.556
Oil WTI US$ tonne                              31.50               45.92           45.778
Copper US$ tonne                               4325               5044            16.624
AUD/USD                                         0.7000             0.7595              8.500

Simple average                                                                             17.135

If it looks too stupid to be true, it probably is. And so it was for Mr Roberts.