Monday, November 1, 2010

Rick Rule: Courage of Conviction

The Energy Report: I attended your speech at the recent Casey Conference, wherein you professed a love of bear markets because everything is cheap. Can you explain further?

Rick Rule: People draw psychological comfort from increasing share prices; but, if trying to increase wealth, they also have to augment their assets. Assets are cheap during bear markets and expensive during bull markets. The virtues of bear markets are fairly obvious—assets are cheap and customers (the consumers of assets and providers of capital, if you will) are afraid. Companies are more willing to offer inducements for you to buy financings, such as long warrants. Another bear-market advantage is that asset markets become more and more constrained, which go to stronger players with established management teams.

TER: Do you think we're in a bear market? Investors have had some pretty nice returns this year.

RR: No. I think we're in a raging bull market in the resource sector. It's arguable that some sectors of the general securities market are in a bear market; but even that market has been very generous relative to what I think the economy would sustain. (more)

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