Laszlo Birinyi, a steadfast bull during the nine-year U.S. equity rally, is unfazed by the recent market turmoil.
While technology stocks led this week’s retreat amid Facebook Inc.’s privacy scandal and President Donald Trump’s threat to Amazon.com Inc., investors would be better off ignoring regulatory risk, according to the founder of Birinyi Associates Inc. He cited Google parent Alphabet Inc. as an example of shares rising despite a slew of probes that led to a record corporate penalty.
Consistent buying from big money managers is also bolstering his confidence. According to flows on block trades, transactions usually associated with institutional investors, money kept piling in to tech stocks even as the Nasdaq 100 Index has fallen in all but three days since March 12.
The faith in the market’s biggest industry is one reason Birinyi is reluctant to give up on the bull market yet. He’s sticking to his forecast for the S&P 500 Index to hit 2,860 by June, about an 8 percent gain from the current level.
“Over the course of not only this bull market but others, we have had any number of unsettling experiences and we dispute the conclusion that this is the beginning of the end,” Birinyi wrote in a newsletter co-authored by Jeff Rubin. “There is no change in our view that the bull market will continue.”
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