Cooperman may well be right about the leftward drift in the political climate. Then again, one hasn't heard President Trump or Sen.Bernie Sanders rail very loudly about "rip-off drug prices" in the last two months as a distressed planet waits anxiously for a vaccine or antiviral medicine.
Turning to the equity market, Cooperman called it expensive. Until the recent downturn, American corporations' profit margins were at or near record levels. At some point, they are likely to revert toward the mean.
Moreover, the stock buyback era is mostly over, he predicted. Buybacks should "absolutely" not be outlawed but management needs to execute them more intelligently, he said. All too often, companies find themselves with excess cash near the end of a cycle, as in 2007 or 2018, and buy back their shares at lofty prices.
Another factor that is likely to put downward pressure on stock prices is an expected surge in equity issuance, as companies seek to replenish lost capital, Cooperman predicted. Since late March, the boom in new convertible bond issues is evidence of this.
Cooperman describes the equity market as "a two-tier market" characterized by Big Tech on one level and then everything else on another level. Big tech is nearly 25% of the market, he said, and if you throw in other tech companies, it's close to 30%.
Put a price-to-earnings multiple of 30 on that and a multiple of 15 on everything else and it averages out to about 19 or 20. That's right where the S&P 500 sits today. Cooperman said recently that 17 is a more reasonable multiple but added that equities weren't dramatically overvalued.
Bonds remain a much higher-risk asset class in his opinion. President Trump has called for negative interest rates, a policy that Cooperman said would be a "disaster." He cited the economies of Japan and Europe as evidence.
President Trump, in his view, displays a high degree of contempt for free markets and their ability to allocate resources through price discovery. "Six months ago, he was calling for lower oil prices; now he is calling for higher prices."
Cooperman believes the price of oil will return to $50 a barrel in two years.
When asked why equity prices declined so sharply in mid-March, Cooperman cited the unwinding of risk parity funds. "They operate at 10 times leverage," he noted, and deleveraging that much margin debt can cause a lot of problems. It obviously did for a few days two months ago when the S&P 500 cratered to below 2300.
Cooperman also noted that Berkshire Hathaway's Warren Buffett is sitting on $137 billion in cash. "When the greatest investor of my generation is having trouble figuring it out," that should make the rest of us cautious.