Global Investing

Mike Trudel, U.S.-based managing director and senior product specialist at BlackRock, has become convinced the economic recession really has arrived.

When he checked into London’s hip upmarket hotel Sanderson earlier this week, the staff uniform caught his eye.

Hotel staff were wearing black T-shirts, with RECESSION written in big letters in front. They highlighted SI in red – like this:

RECESSION

“It read as recession is on. If folks in Sanderson know about it, it’s no secret anywhere else. That’s how awful it is,” he told a group of journalists at BlackRock’s London office.

However, Trudel thinks it’s time to get back into stocks. BlackRock’s Global Funds in which he is involved are overweight on stocks at 63 percent of the portfolio, underweight bonds at 29 percent and overweight on cash at 8 percent.