Billionaire investor Ron Baron predicts that the stock market and economy will double in 13 years.
The 74-year-old founder of Baron Capital also told CNBC that interest rates and oil prices will stay lower for "a very long time."
As a result, he says, the economy is going to grow much faster.
"With lower interest rates and lower oil prices than we think, we think the economy is going to grow much faster than it would have otherwise," said Baron, whose company has $23 billion in assets under management.
Baron said he is optimistic about the stock market overall and said GDP is "significantly understated."
"What we do for the only part is research on companies and try to invest in them at good prices where we think we can double our money in five or six years. Over the long term, we've been able to accomplish that," he said.
He said he doesn't follow daily general news to foreshadow daily stock-market moves.
"Whether it's [Donald] Trump being the president, or whether it's Brexit, or whether it's interest rates or whether it's oil prices, there are things you can't predict, but that's what everyone spends their time trying to focus on and trying to predict," he said.
"And yet if they can predict it, they still wouldn't know if that's going to have an impact on what stock prices do shortly afterwards."
However, not all economic experts are as optimistic as Baron.
Bond investor Bill Gross warned on Tuesday that investors should reduce their risk appetite, given the U.S. growth rate is stunted by secular forces "which monetary and even future fiscal policies seem unable to reverse," Reuters reported.
In his June investment outlook letter, Gross of Janus Henderson said: "Strategies involving risk reduction should ultimately outperform 'faux' surefire winners generated by central bank printing of money.
"It’s the real economy that counts and global real economic growth is and should continue to be below par," said Gross, who runs the $2.1 billion Janus Henderson Global Unconstrained Bond Fund.
Gross has repeatedly said investors should not be tempted to buy high-flying equities and corporate bonds, given the possibility Trump may fail to enact policies to fuel growth of between 3 percent and 4 percent.
Last month, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told Reuters the U.S. economy would fall short of the Trump administration's goal of 3 percent growth this year and would only achieve that rate when its regulatory, tax, trade and energy policies were fully in place.
"Capitalism’s arteries are now clogged or even blocked by secular forces which when combined with low/negative yielding 'safe' assets promise to stunt U.S. and global growth far below historical norms," Gross said.
Gross said so-called zombie corporations that need bailouts to survive are being kept alive as opposed to destroyed and standard business models forming capitalism’s foundation - such as insurance companies, pension funds, and banking - are threatened by the low yields that have in turn, produced high asset prices.
(Newsmax wire services contributed to this report).
Related Stories:
© 2024 Newsmax Finance. All rights reserved.