Buy Gold, ‘Get Out Of The Stock Market’ Warns Druckenmiller

Buy gold and ‘get out of the stock market,’ legendary billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller, advised investors this week at an investment conference in New York.

Druckenmiller, who has one of the best long-term track records in money management, said the stock market bull market has “exhausted itself” and that gold “remains our largest currency allocation.”

Stan Druckenmiller. Photographer: Scott Eells/Bloomberg

He told the Sohn Investment Conference attendees to sell their equity holdings:

“The conference wants a specific recommendation from me. I guess ‘Get out of the stock market’ isn’t clear enough …”

He has been very critical of Federal Reserve and central bank monetary policies in recent years while correctly anticipating at that time that it would lead to higher asset prices.

“I now feel the weight of the evidence has shifted the other way; higher valuations, three more years of unproductive corporate behavior, limits to further easing and excessive borrowing from the future suggest that the bull market is exhausting itself,” said Druckenmiller, who averaged annual returns of 30 percent from 1986 through 2010 at his Duquesne Capital Management. He’s up 8 percent this year, according to a person familiar with the matter.

As bankers experiment with “the absurd notion of negative interest rates,” Druckenmiller said, he is investing in gold.

“Some regard it as a metal, we regard it as a currency and it remains our largest currency allocation,” he said.

On the Fed, Druckenmiller said the central bank has borrowed more “from future consumption than ever before.”

“By most objective measures, we are deep into the longest period ever of excessively easy monetary policies,” he said. “Despite finally ending QE, the Fed’s radical dovishness continues today. By most objective measures, we are deep into the longest period ever of excessively easy monetary policies. In other words, and quite ironically, this is the least ‘data dependent’ Fed we have had in history.”

Druckenmiller said “volatility in global equity markets over the past year, which often precedes a major trend change, suggests that their risk/reward is negative without substantially lower prices and/or structural reform. Don’t hold your breath for the latter.”

Read full article on Bloomberg here