(Bloomberg) Scott Minerd, the chief investment officer of Guggenheim Investments, said gains in the S&P 500 are unsustainable and the stock benchmark could fall as low as 1,200 when it retreats.
“Investors who are sitting out there right now who rebalanced a few weeks ago and moved from fixed income to equities should probably think about rebalancing again,” he said Friday on a panel. “It could be 1,500, 1,600, 1,200.”
The S&P 500 stood at 2,843 at 12:17 p.m. Friday in New York, down about 12% this year. Minerd’s opinion diverges from the views at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and of Morgan Stanley Chief Executive Officer James Gorman.
Gorman said it’s unlikely that the market hits new lows. He sees the S&P 500 at 2,850 in the near term, then heading lower, he said on the panel hosted by the United Nations Office for Partnerships and the nonprofit Goal 17.
“The market at this level based upon where earnings are doesn’t represent any kind of intrinsic value,” Minerd said. “It is being entirely propped up by liquidity.”
The Guggenheim investor said there could be rolling shutdowns for the next two years, preventing a full-scale return to work, and that U.S. unemployment could reach as high as 17%. More than 20 million jobs have been lost in the last four weeks.
“It’s going to be a long haul to get back to the unemployment levels we saw prior to the downturn,” Minerd said. “That’s why I’m so concerned about a longer-term plan to encourage business to get people back to work.”
