Five Sure Things

Each quarter, the Forbes Investors Advisory Institute under President Wallace Forbes hosts a financial round-table discussion to sample the economic and investment outlooks of some of the best and brightest minds on Wall Street.

The most recent discussion was held on Jan. 8 at Forbes headquarters in New York City. Below are the transcribed and edited remarks of Henry Mercer, president of Mercer Capital Advisors.

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I'm getting older now, so I only invest in sure things. I don't invest in things that only "might" work out. So let me give you five sure things.

Gold is going to $1,000 an ounce probably this year. I forecast that it would go to $800 an ounce last year.

Oil is going to probably $125 a barrel. I forecast that it would go to $80 last year.

The dollar is going down for the reasons that I said because large holders of dollars are going to diversify into other assets and other currencies. And of course, if the dollar is weak, that's an inflationary phenomenon because the United States, having dismantled its manufacturing establishment, is dependent on foreign goods for our survival. This is something people aren't sufficiently worried about.

Cotton is going to be the commodity of choice because the world's standard of living is increasing, and the places where it's increasing fastest are warm, and they don't wear wool; they wear cotton. Cotton is something nobody wants to grow. They want to grow corn instead. So, while the demand for cotton is increasing, the acreage devoted to it is decreasing, and that's all you have to know.

Finally, I think the Chinese are going to revalue the renminbi (yuan) even more than the 7% that they did last year.

As far as stocks are concerned, I think that my investment ideas follow some of my thesis. Our portfolio is very heavily overseas, but we're in the agricultural area with Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan (nyse: POT - news - people ) and a lot of energy stocks--large caps such as Schlumberger (nyse: SLB - news - people ), smaller caps such as National Oilwell Varco (nyse: NOV - news - people ) and Ultra Petroleum (amex: UPL - news - people ). In technology, Qualcomm (nasdaq: QCOM - news - people ). Finally, in adult education we think that a lot of people will be laid off and they'll be trying to improve their skills so we would buy the Apollo Group (nasdaq: APOL - news - people ).