While some investors are shying away from financial service and housing stocks in the wake of the financial crisis, renowned mutual fund manager Bill Miller, who now runs Legg Mason Opportunity Trust, is running toward them.
He has allocated 33 percent of the fund's portfolio to financial companies and 14 percent to housing companies. The fund's largest holding as of March 31 was Genworth Financial.
Miller is seeking to exploit "blindingly obvious" trends, he tells
The Wall Street Journal. Miller is obviously doing something right, as his fund has outperformed 99 percent of other mid-cap value funds during the last three years, according to Morningstar.
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His bullishness on financials and housing stocks stems from his view that economic growth is strengthening, that housing demand is buoyant and from the fact that interest rates are low, The Journal reports.
Not everyone shares Miller's bullishness on housing, including BlackRock CEO Laurence Fink and DoubleLine Capital CEO Jeffrey Gundlach.
"They're just wrong," Miller proclaims.
And some experts at least lean toward his view on housing.
"We're still seeing somewhat of a rebound from the exceptionally bad weather in the first quarter," Russell Price, senior economist at Ameriprise Financial, tells
Bloomberg.
"I'd definitely expect to continue to see long-term improvement trends. It will still take some time for the labor market to influence people's decisions of what they will do with their housing, but we're getting there."
Existing home sales soared 6.1 percent in May, the biggest gain in four years.
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