2. Rising Long-term Bond Yields and Their Portfolio Implications
Belkin Report
Michael Belkin
Michael Belkin
Founder
Michael, could be described as an iconoclast, which is someone who “attacks cherished beliefs or traditional institutions, as being based on error or superstition.” Of course, there are plenty of other folks doing that in the investment field. What distinguishes Michael is that he backs up his declarations with data. Michael graduated from The Haas School of Business at the University of California Berkeley, where he conducted independent research sponsored by the legendary Mark Rubinstein. His innovative streak was apparent even then. “I developed my own models,” he says, “after studying what they taught us in econometrics— because I found mainstream models were not effective.” In 1986 he was recruited by Salomon Brothers as a market analyst and soon moved into proprietary trading, attaining the position of vice‐ president. There he made his first big splash in the investing community by accurately forecasting the collapse of the Nikkei Average - which subsequently dropped 37%. Among Michael’s other accurate predictions: the top in the U.S. tech bubble in 2000, the subsequent stock market low in 2002, the housing bubble top in 2007, the credit crisis stock crash low in 2009, the pre-Covid stock market top in early 2020, the Covid crash low in March 2020 and the recent AI bubble peak in early 2025. Besides producing The Belkin Report every week, Michael is a speaker at financial industry events and a guest commentator on TV business news networks.