Bernstein’s Bottom Line
The strategist has been bullish for about five years and remains so. He does say the bull market is in the sixth inning and will enter the seventh if the Federal Reserve raises interest rates. “The beauty of making a baseball analogy,” Bernstein notes, “is that there’s no clock—a late stage of a bull market cycle can go on for a while.”
While predicting the level of the S&P 500 is something Bernstein's happy not to have to do, he hazards one forecast. It stems from his belief that investors are taking on far more risk in fixed-income than they realize. “I’d bet that at the peak of the bull market, octogenarians will be seeking capital appreciation and not income," he says. "They’ll think it’s a safer bet.”