Well, no one ever accused Jeremy Siegel of being bearish, but now he is at least less bullish after witnessing one of the worst Januarys for stocks in history.
“I was far too bullish last December,” Siegel told CNBC on Monday, on the way to asking if central banks had the firepower to “counteract all of the deflationary forces.”
“That’s clearly spooking the markets right now,” the vaunted Wharton school professor said of the deflationary boogeyman the world just can’t seem to shake despite trillions in global QE.
To be sure, Siegel didn’t say anything new. It’s all about the yuan and plunging commodity prices.
Oh, and the fact that the entire US O&G sector is about to go belly up and banks aren’t even close to being adequately provisioned.
“Those deflationary forces … from China, from commodities are really, in the presence of debt that so many of these energy and other companies have, … causing the market turmoil right now,” he says.
And while Siegel admits that he may have been foolish to predict that “valuations can stay on the high side” in the near-term, he’s sticking with the idea that equities are where you want to be over the long haul. “In the long-run, you’re going to be rewarded [in stocks],” he concludes.
To borrow a phrase from Bill Gross, we’d ask Siegel this with regard to his infamous Dow 20,000 call: “Hows that workin’ out for ya?”
via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1PLdZob Tyler Durden