07 Jun 2010 Video: Robert Hagstrom on Bloomberg
Robert Hagstrom of Legg Mason Growth Trust likes Transocean and views US large caps as being cheap...

16 Mar 2010 Video: Robert Hagstrom on Bloomberg
Robert Hagstrom of Legg Mason Capital Management, talks with Bloomberg. He recommends high quality large cap multinationals - likes PepsiCo Inc., Microsoft Inc., and Allergan Inc...

01 Feb 2010 Who’s Afraid of a Sideways Market?
In his highly acclaimed book, Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin, Gould talked about the importance of distinguishing between the trends of a system from the trends in the system. “The old Platonic strategy of abstracting the full house as a single figure (an average)…and then tracing the pathway of this single figure through time, usually leads to error and confusion.” Putting it in Gould’s terms, investors who observed the stock market between 1975 and 1982 and focused on the “full house” (the market average) came to the wrong conclusion. They wrongly assumed that the direction of the market was sideways, when in fact the variation within the market was dramatic and lead to plenty of opportunities to earn high excess returns.

20 Nov 2009 Video: Robert Hagstrom of Legg Mason on Bloomberg
Legg Mason's Hagstrom Recommends Technology Stocks, EMC...

30 Oct 2009 Legg Mason Growth Trust - Robert Hagstrom - Q3 2009 Commentary
With the U.S. equity market having shown such remarkable resilience, it is logical to wonder who has been stepping in to stem market declines. This is a difficult question to answer, but one thing is crystal clear from the data we’ve seen: It hasn’t been the general public. Their main contribution to the advance is that they’ve stopped selling stocks, but their activity on the buy side has been anemic given that the S&P 500 is up nearly 20% year to date, and over 55% from its March low. Despite the powerful move off the bottom, investors are still sitting on $3.5 trillion in money market funds, assets which are yielding them a return somewhere in the range of five to 10 basis points, annualized. In comparison, investors have purchased only $6 billion of U.S. equity funds through mid-September and this comparatively modest sum speaks to the continuing skepticism with which the general public views stocks. The reason, says Pamela Hess, director of retirement research at Hewitt Associates, is that people are still too traumatized by last year’s losses to summon the courage to increase their exposure to equities.

12 May 2009 Video: Legg Mason's Hagstrom Recommends Microsoft, Nokia, Cisco
Robert Hagstrom, a senior vice president at Legg Mason Funds Management Inc. and author of "The Warren Buffett Way," talks with Bloomberg's Pimm Fox about investment strategy...

12 Feb 2009 Legg Mason Growth Trust - Q4 2008 commentary
It is important for investors to keep the historical analogies in context. Too often the media rushes to simple comparisons to make dramatic points. Remember, the Great Depression was a period of domestic policy inaction and harmful international trade barriers. Unemployment reached 25%. One out of two mortgaged homes went into default while the GDP of the country collapsed 14 percentage points. Earnings of the broader S&P 500 Index collapsed 70%. Comparisons of what is going on today to what happened during the Great Depression are truly without merit. Don’t let the media scare you into thinking our next step down is repeating what happened during the Depression.

The most frequently cited analogy to what has happened today is Japan and what is called its “lost decade.” Here again the analogy is a big stretch. The problems in Japan were far worse than what we have experienced here and furthermore the speed and magnitude at which Japanese monetary authorities attacked the problem was but a snail’s pace compared to what has happened here in the U.S. over the past year..

In my opinion, the most apt description of what we are undergoing is a very severe economic recession. It began in December 2007 and has now lasted 14 months. The market understands this. The market also understands that the fourth quarter of 2008 will likely show a significant decline in GDP. The market also understands economic growth will likely decline in the first and second quarter of 2008. The market also understands employment will likely worsen. The unemployment rate, today at 7.2%, will very likely push through 8% in 2009 heading toward a possible 9% unemployment level. The market knows this and has priced stocks accordingly. In other words, if the economic landscape in 2009 resembles what I have outlined above, stocks have likely bottomed. Of course, if the economics worsen, stocks could go lower. However, if the economic landscape begins to improve, we believe there will be substantial upside opportunities in stocks.

The general view of most well-respected economists, including the Federal Reserve, is the economy will begin to demonstrate a modest recovery in GDP growth rates in the second half of 2009 with unemployment leveling off. If that is the odds on bet, then stocks should begin to move six months in anticipation of the recovery. All eyes will be on the economic releases this year. When the evidence begins to show the deterioration in our economy is slowing, I would expect an upward burst in the stock market. When the evidence tells us we have moved out of the recession and are moving into a recovery, it is likely half of the bull market return will be already behind us. Waiting until you are absolutely sure the economic recovery is upon us before investing is the major reason so many investors have difficulty making back the money they lost in a bear market.