Notorious market contrarian Marc Faber has a message for Wall Street: We are almost in a recession.
Monday on CNBC’s “Fast Money,” the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report publisher reiterated his bold call that stocks could see a sudden and detrimental crash, similar to what was witnessed in 1987.
“[The market] will remain very volatile because interventions with fiscal and monetary policies, instead of lowering volatility they postpone it, and then it explodes,” he said. The S&P 500 has fallen more than 8 percent since the Federal Reserve raised interest rates last month, and the U.S. markets saw their worst start to a year in history.
Recent volatility aside, Faber has been calling for a catastrophic market event for some time. In July 2015 he said stocks could fall up to 40 percent and in April 2014 he said he expected to see a 1987-type crashin the next 12 months. Since his April 2014 call the S&P 500 has returned more than 3 percent.
“The average stock in the U.S. is already down 26 percent from its 52-week high and there are a lot of stocks that are down 50 percent or more,” he said. “The indices have hidden the weakness beneath the surface and basically the market has been weak the whole time.”
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As of Tuesday, more than 53 percent of the stocks in the S&P 500 were in a bear market, or 20 percent lower than their 52-week highs, according to FactSet.
“Markets all over the world are down meaningfully since 2011,” Faber said. “The U.S. market has been holding up much better than other markets and now it’s just adjusting to the reality, and the reality is we are almost in a recession.”
The S&P 500 was up more than 1 percent midday Tuesday.
[“source -pcworld”]
