Forecasts and performance In the late 1980s, Dent forecast that the Japanese economy, then the darling of the world, would soon enter a slowdown that would last more than a decade. In the early 1990s, he predicted that the
DJIA would reach 10,000. Both of these predictions were met with much skepticism, and yet both eventually came to pass.
In Japan, Dent was using their peak of 45- to 50-year-olds (1990–1994) as the beginning of a long slowdown. In the US, he used, and continues to use, the peak year for 48-year-olds, 2009, as the top of a long term growth pattern.
In June 1999 AIM Dent Demographics Fund had significant first year gains, however it performed afterwards until it was ultimately merged into another AIM offering in July 2005 .
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In 2000, based on his forecast that economic growth would continue throughout the 2000s, Dent predicted that the DOW would reach 40,000, a prediction which was repeated in his 2004 book. In his book, he also predicted the
NASDAQ would reach 13,000 - 20,000. In late 2006 he revised his forecasts to much lower levels, estimating the Dow would reach 16,000 - 18,000 and the NASDAQ 3,000 - 4,000. In January 2006, he predicted that the DOW would reach 14,000 - 15,000 by the end of the year. It ended 2006 at 12,463, 11% below the lower end of his prediction. It ended 2007 at 13,264, again significantly lower than Dent's revised prediction of 15,000 by early 2008. Since then, the Dow crossed 14,000 in late 2007 before retreating.
His 2011 book goes on to suggest consumer spending will begin to plummet in 2012 with the Dow bottoming out somewhere between 3,000 and 5,600 in 2014. After hitting bottom, stocks will experience a mini-rally in 2015-2017 before falling into a final bottom during the 2019-2023 period, when the 45-50 age group troughs because the U.S. birth rate reached its own low in 1973.
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In 2012 the "Dent Tactical Advantage ETF," symbol DENT, was de-listed having consistently under-performed the market for three years while at the same time charging an egregiously high 1.65% management fee.
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In 2012 he began writing weekly articles for the free investment newsletter Survive & prosper, now known as:
Economy & Markets, which offers investment advice guided by his belief that a major economic crash is inevitable and that it will drop the DOW all the way to 3,300. As of early 2013, he has amended his predictions slightly to an expectation that the financial crash will begin between the end of 2013 and the first half of 2014.
In 2013 Dent predicted the market would crash again in the Summer of 2013 and would take a further year and a half to recover.
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In 2014, while promoting his book
The Demographic Cliff in Australia, he predicted a major Australian housing
market correction beginning in 2014 after an even bigger one in China.
[6] He also predicted that the price of
gold would fall to
USD$700 an ounce, and has since revised this prediction to 2015.