The party will continue, a mutual fund industry leader said on Wednesday in Manhattan.
“No, it’s not over,” says Chairman and Founder Neil Hennessy of the bull market party, which he says has lots of time to go.
The annual Hennessy Funds market outlook, which over the last six years or so seems to be more enthusiastic every year, continued on Wednesday.
Hennessy has been whooping it for the market for years. He said in 2013 the 16,000 market would go to 20,000 in five years. In 2017, he said the market was on “its way to 30,000.” He notes it is now close to that number and should reach it soon.
Then what happens?
“Once the DJIA reaches 30,000,” he said, “it will start heading for 35,000.”
Why does Hennessy keep preaching that happy days will continue on Wall Street? He says it is because economic and market conditions are excellent. In the case of the latest bull market, it is similar to what he calls the greatest bull market of his lifetime, the bull market of 1982-2000. During that bullfest there was only one down year.
This bull market, Hennessy says, began in 2009 and now had one down year in 2018 and that was only five percent in 2018. That down year and a few corrections and pullbacks “don’t constitute a bear market,” he says.
What is a down market? A three-year period at the beginning of the century when the market was down some 35 percent.
“That was a bear market,” according to Hennessy.