Money manager Eric Sprott says he’s bracing for a “long, deep” market slump, so he’s buying gold. Mr. Sprott told Bloomberg News in an interview that the slump that so far has driven down the S&P 500 by more than 10 per cent is the start of a major pullback that will take the index, sometime in the next year, below its weakest level of 2009. The $1-trillion bailout of the euro zone by the EU, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank has failed to calm investors’ nerves, while governments are running out of measures to continue pumping their economies.

“Our thesis is we’re in for a long, deep cycle, and we’ve thought that since 2000, but up to this point, governments and central banks have always tried to stave it off,” he told the news agency.

Mr. Sprott has boosted gold assets, and shares of gold companies, while betting against banks such as TD, Bank of Nova Scotia and National Bank of Canada through short sales.

Of course, Mr. Sprott is just one voice, though a prominent one in Canada. Mark Mobius of Templeton Asset Management Ltd. had a different view, also in an interview with Bloomberg.

Mr. Mobius has been buying stocks in the BRIC countries - Brazil, Russia, India and China - and “despite the fact that a lot of people that think that we entering a bear market, we don’t believe so. This is a correction in an ongoing bull market.”