There’s lots of angst and analysis concerning the potential impact a Donald Trump presidency will have on the U.S. investing landscape. Some money managers say the situation isn’t that difficult to parse.

“In terms of Trump, people are thinking about this too much,” said Richard Bernstein, CEO and chief investment officer of Richard Bernstein Advisors, who spoke Monday on an investment panel at the Inside ETFs conference in Hollywood, Fla. “We think this is more checkers than chess—it’s not that complicated.“

Bernstein’s premise is that the new administration wants to enact both a major fiscal stimulus package and tax cuts at a time when employment is strong. “The reality is we have a lot of people working, and now we’re going to put fiscal stimulus on top of that,” he said. “What’s not for the stock market to like with that backdrop? And what’s not for the bond market to hate? In sum, the president is talking about pro-growth policies. I guess most of your clients [he said to an audience that included many financial advisors] are pro-income, not pro-growth. Many investors are woefully misallocated for this environment.”

Dennis Gartman, editor and publisher of The Gartman Letter, was on board with Bernstein. “I’m with Richard: Don’t overthink this,” he said. “Mr. Trump said he intends to spend money on infrastructure and the military. Make it simple on yourself—invest in infrastructure and the military.”

Gartman added that he’s not concerned about the prospect of higher interest rates, which he believes will rise due to a stronger economy. “As rates go higher the whole yield curve might shift upward,” he said. “People might get bearish about stock prices because of that. Don’t. Things will be okay. It’s still a bull market.”

Gartman’s bullishness carries over to the currency market, where he dismissed worries about potential problems caused by the strong U.S. dollar.

“I hear too many people saying that a strong dollar will be deleterious to stock prices,” Gartman said, noting that back in the day the Japanese markets kept rising for nearly 10 years concurrent with an “inordinately” strong yen.

“You’ll see a period when the U.S. dollar gets exceptionally strong. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth by U.S. exporters that they can’t compete. But mark my words: they will learn how to compete just as the Japanese learned how to compete. They’ll have no choice but to do so, and they shall.

“There is a monster short position in the dollar of some $3 trillion, maybe even more—I’ve heard it’s as much as $20 trillion,” he continued. “That’s a monstrous short position that eventually will have to get covered. And if the dollar starts to move even slightly higher—if we start to get above 115 with the yen and if we start to take the euro under par, which we will, those shorts will become egregiously exposed and the dollar will get demonstrably stronger. That will happen even if share prices go higher. The point is that the correlation between a currency’s valuation and where that country’s stock market is . . . can at times be either positively or negatively correlated. But don’t let a strong dollar discourage you from owning infrastructure [stocks].”

Andrew Lapthorne, head of quantitative research at Societe Generale, had a less rosy view of U.S. equities. He’s concerned that the higher dollar and higher inflation could dog the economy and the markets. Plus, he’s not seeing enough corporate sales growth to sustain a bullish outlook.

First « 1 2 » Next