However, both UBS and Natixis officials hedged their 2020 predictions by warning that everything could be ruined if a trade war breaks out between China and the United States. Still, they said that it is unlikely that leaders in the two nations would let the disasters of a tariff war happen.

While tariffs talks continue between the representatives of the nations, UBS officials predicted moderate growth or small negative numbers in the United States next year. They also predicted a bear market in 2020. By the way, UBS officials also expect that, when the bear market does come, it will be an average one of about 20 to 25 percent.

Still, UBS officials along with their Natixis counterparts made the case that it makes sense to get the last benefits of this bull market. They said that historically bull markets, just before bear markets and recessions, often have generated one last great surge of growth. For instance, at the end of a bull market cycle in 1948, stocks rose over 20 percent in the six months before it ended.

 

UBS officials also said that, in the best-case scenario, stocks could rise 10 percent to 15 percent in 2019; in the worst-case scenario they could be down some 10 percent. Still, they argued that hanging around to the end of a bull market is an effective strategy.

“We think that staying invested will pay off, although investors should prepare for great volatility as the market begins to anticipate the end of the cycle,” UBS officials wrote. Big investors, a Natixis official noted, are getting the message.

Indeed, institutional investors are expected to stick with their stock allocations in 2019, according to David Lafferty, senior vice president and chief market strategist for Natixis Investment Managers. “They are either very happy where they are and they don’t know what to do,” he added.

Lafferty said a recession will happen, “but just not in the near term.” But in 2019, he said, that the global economy is “decelerating to some degree, but it is likely to stay in a positive range.”

This last bit of bull market trend, said the officials at the Natixis briefing, will work against index investing. That’s because a mature bull market will require investors to be nimble; and to look to different places to find value, another official said at the Natixis briefing.

“It will make the case for active management,” said Andrea DiCenso, a co-portfolio manager for Loomis Sayles.