Druckemiller: “My first mentor and boss used to tell me it takes hundreds of millions of dollars to manipulate a stock up, but the minute this phony buying stop, it can go down on no volume and it can just reprice immediatedly”

Three Investing Billionaires Have Recently Come Out With Cautious Statements On The Stock Market

JOE WEISENTHAL SEP. 22, 2013, 8:59 PM 9,196 10

Here’s an interesting observation from Mike O’Rourke of JonesTrading. In unusual timing, we’ve recently heard from three investing billionaires (Warren Buffett, Carl Icahn, and Stanley Druckenmiller) suggesting that the stock market is getting rich and fully valued. From O’Rourke:

[Buffett]  noted that the equity market was fairly valued and stocks were not overvalued.  Specifically, Buffett said “They were very cheap five years ago, ridiculously cheap,” and “That’s been corrected.”  He also noted, “We’re having a hard time finding things to buy.” One has to take note when the world’s most high profile investor (a long investor), cannot find stocks to buy although he reports his business is improving.  Buffett was not the only Billionaire to weigh in last week.  Carl Icahn responded candidly when asked his view on the market.  “Right now, the market is giving you a false picture.

The market tells you that you are doing well, but I don’t think a lot of companies are doing that well.  They are taking advantage of very low interest rates.  So, obviously, you don’t have to be a financial genius to understand if I can borrow at 3% or 4% and buy assets maybe my own stock that is yielding 9%, 10% or 11%, I am going to make a lot of money. In one sense or another that is what is going on….I do think at 17x that you have to be pretty well hedged.”  These comments come a little more than a week after Stanley Druckenmiller opined that, “But if you tell me QE is going to be removed over nine or 12 months, that’s a big deal because when it’s my belief that QE has subsidized all asset prices.  And you remove that subsidization, the market will go down.

Druckemiller elaborated “My first mentor and boss, Dr. Ellis in Pittsburgh, used to tell me it takes hundreds of millions of dollars to manipulate a stock up, but the minute you have this phony buying stop, it can go down on no volume and it can just reprice immediately. I personally think as long as this game goes on, assets will stay elevated. But when you remove that prop – and let’s face it, the Fed has said they’re targeting those asset prices – those prices can adjust immediately.”

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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