Over the last four weeks, the tech bubble of the last decade has been deflating before our very eyes. But the solution for investors seeking to protect their portfolios is strikingly simple, according to Richard Bernstein, proprietor of the eponymous asset management firm, Richard Bernstein Associates (RBA).
“You don’t have to be overly creative; you don’t have to real sexy,” he said. “You just have to be there.”
RBA views the investment landscape as “a seesaw,” with long-duration assets like tech stocks, venture capital and cryptocurrencies on one side and everything else on the other side. As of January 27, the Nasdaq 100 was down 14.7%, making it the worst January for that index on record.
Bernstein believes that the shift to non-sexy assets “is only in the first inning.”
Those mundane assets investors are underweighting include gold, industrials, energy, materials stocks as well as commodities. As of January 27, the one-year return on the S&P 500 Energy index was 66.1%.
Despite that run-up, energy stocks still sport the highest dividend yield of any sector in the S&P 500, including utilities and REITs. Investors don’t “want any ‘stinking’ dividends,” the strategist said.
Bernstein’s views on markets are widely followed because of his stellar long-term track record. Before he launched RBA in 2009, he was the chief equity strategist at Merrill Lynch, where he was named Institutional Investor’s top strategist 18 times. In 2011, when many investors were focused on emerging markets, Bernstein said that U.S. equities were in the early stages of a bull market that could well surpass that of the 1980s and 1990s.
Bernstein isn’t calling for an end to the bull market that began in 2009, but he thinks long-duration assets are in serious trouble. “Cryptocurrencies are the biggest financial bubble in history,” he said.
There are now more than 7,000 cryptocurrencies. Bernstein noted that the Kardashians, usually famous for new clothing lines or their personal lives, are now the target of a lawsuit alleging a crypto pump-and-dump scheme. He didn’t say it, but there are many who suspect the entire crypto market is nothing but one giant pump-and-dump scheme.
Bubbles are far more damaging to the economy than speculation, which Bernstein sees as more of a risky form of investments. “Bubbles go outside markets and pervade every aspect of the economy. They misallocate capital,” he said.