Add billionaire hedge fund manager Steve Cohen to the growing list of experts predicting a bear market within the next two years, saying the U.S. economy can’t sustain its current growth. Cohen also said up to 2020, stock market returns will be “marginal” at best.
Per a recent interview with Bloomberg:
“We’re definitely late cycle, and so at some point we’re going to enter a bear market, and it’s going to happen in the next year and a half, maybe two,” Cohen said during a talk with MSD Capital’s Glenn Fuhrman at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan on Tuesday night.
“I don’t think the returns over the next two years are going to be very good,” he said. “If the market hangs in there, there’s just going to be marginal returns.”
The $3.3 trillion hedge industry is down 1.7 percent on the year after a 3 percent tumble during October’s stock market bloodbath.
Cohen returned to business this year after a government ban and record fine forced him out in 2013. Cohen founded SAC Capital Advisors in 1992, averaging annual returns of about 30 percent. He pleaded guilty to securities fraud after a crackdown on insider trading on Wall Street.
He started a new company this year, Point72, taking in $5 billion from outside clients. Cohen rarely speaks publicly about the markets, but in a recent talk he said the trend toward index investing isn’t going away.
“We see it on a daily basis where the liquidity in the markets are not what they used to be and that forces us to change what we do,” he said.
Cohen also shared his thoughts on cryptocurrencies, calling them “dicey.”
“At some point blockchain is really going to matter,” he said. “The question is, can you make money money from the blockchain? And I don’t know the answer to that.”
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