Economic guru Sam Zell warns savvy investors that today’s current volatile stock-market isn’t for the faint of heart, and he’s “not ready to party” despite record highs seemingly being set on a daily basis.
The Equity Group Investments chairman told CNBC he has seen a “very significant” positive change for business under President Donald Trump
Corporate America is willing to invest money on a longer-term basis under Trump, the real-estate mogul said. Trump’s pro-business environment is the polar opposite to the "anti-business administration" of Barack Obama. "Just think that all of a sudden there are no industries that are pinata[s] of the president," Zell said
Zell urged investors to focus on the president’s accomplishments and not his words or Tweets.
"Bluntly, the only way I can square anything is I focus on what gets done, not what's said," the billionaire said. "On a measure of what's gotten done, I believe there's been very significant change since Trump was elected in November, and change that is positive."
Zell said Trump’s deregulation and promises of tax cuts and massive infrastructure spending have been big boosts for businesses.
Zell also said continued improvement in underlying economic growth is a pleasant, unexpected "surprise."
But he said the current bull market is "long in the tooth."
However, he confessed to curbing his own enthusiasm.
"I'm more optimistic than I was six months ago. But I'm not ready to party.”
“There's never a scenario that there aren't things happening that will alter your view. There are times where you feel like you could buy anything and you would do fine. This is not one of them,” he said.
U.S. stocks have surged this year, despite turmoil in the White House, doubts about President Donald Trump’s ability to push through his pro-business reforms, uncertainty over the timing of interest rate hikes, and lately, tensions over Pyongyang’s missile tests, Reuters explained.
Zell isn't alone in his optimism about Trump and the stock market.
Investing guru Byron Wien urges savvy investors to ignore any doom-and-gloom predictions because he sees only clear sailing for the next year or so.
"My belief is that we're not going to see a bear market or a recession until at least 2019," the vice chairman of Blackstone's private-wealth-solutions group told Business Insider.
“In my opinion, we have a couple more years before the next bear market sets in, and earnings are coming through at double the rate they were projected to at the beginning of the year," he said.
Investing guru Jeremy Siegel predicts that stocks could rally 10 percent into year's end thanks to the Trump effect.
"I would say corporate tax reform could add another 10 percent to the market even this year," Siegel told CNBC.
Meanwhile, uncertainty about how the United States will cope with growing tumult in the world has not dampened Warren Buffett's optimism for the country's prospects over the long term, even 100 years into the future.
"Whenever I hear people talk pessimistically about this country, I think they're out of their mind," Buffett, the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc, said last week.
Buffett said he expects the Dow Jones Industrial Average to be "over 1 million" in 100 years, up from Tuesday's close of 22,370.80. He said that's not unreasonable, given how the index was roughly 81 a century ago, Reuters reported.
(Newsmax wires services contributed to this report).
Related Stories:
© 2024 Newsmax Finance. All rights reserved.