These good times could blind advisors and investors to coming dangers. The economy and the stock market are often not what they seem to be.
That was the message from a First Eagle Investment Management money manager on Tuesday in Manhattan. Matthew McLennan, portfolio manager and head of the company’s global management team, described an anomaly of investing.
It “is that sometimes when things feel good, it is actually a risky moment,” he said. Looking beyond the latest GDP and jobless numbers, the risks are there, according to McLennan.
The investment fundamentals are now not as good as they were recently because of continuing debt and geopolitical problems, including oil prices recently doubling, McLennan noted. Another warning sign, he added, is that P/E ratios are above historical norms.
After a decade of boom times on Wall Street, it has become a “risky” time for investors because underlying economic problems remain, he noted.
“The record of debt and imbalance in the world economy have not gone away,” he said.
“This is a period replete with confidence despite a lot of questions.” He added that the end of this business cycle could lead to something “very different.”
As the strong market and Lehman Brothers crashed, the nation in 2008 was plunged into a recession, but now it has strong growth rates.
“The economy has recovered. This is not a story of a recovery; the recovery is behind us,” he said. “The stimulus is behind us.”
However, McLennan noted that unemployment rates dropped dramatically over the last decade and the growth rate averaged some 2 percent a year. This year, thanks to tax cuts, it is in the 3 to 4 percent range. This raises the question, he asked, of what the sustainable long-term rate of growth is.