JPMorgan’s Kolanovic Sticks to Stock Selloff Call Even as Market Defies Gloom

2023-07-25 04:16

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is pushing back toward its all-time high, technology shares have surged, sentiment among

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is pushing back toward its all-time high, technology shares have surged, sentiment among stock investors is soaring, and recession calls are being scaled back.

Yet to JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s Marko Kolanovic, who turned into one of Wall Street’s most noted bears this year, it’s all still a recipe for a rout.

The strategist on Monday warned that the delayed impact of aggressive interest-rate hikes by global central banks, dwindling consumer savings and a “deeply troubling” geopolitical backdrop are poised to spur fresh market declines and volatility.

“We acknowledge that we cannot time this inflection near term, but there are no data points that would prompt us to change our methodology or conclusions,” Kolanovic wrote.

Kolanovic is among market prognosticators caught flat-footed by a rally that’s pushed the S&P 500 Index up almost 19% this year as the economy shows surprising resilience and a slowdown in inflation bolsters bets that the Fed’s expected rate hike this week will be its last.

Kolanovic was one of Wall Street’s biggest optimists during 2022 market selloff but then reversed his view, cutting his equity allocation in mid-December, January, March and May due to a deteriorating economic outlook this year.

From his perspective, this year’s advance is the result of a “mechanical re-risking” amid low volatility and hype around artificial intelligence that’s stoked gains in big technology stocks. He said the extreme concentration in the S&P 500 “could be indicative of a bubble” and predicted that macroeconomic indicators will soon reflect the lagged impact of monetary tightening.

The gains have prodded some other Wall Street strategists to reconsider their outlooks for stocks, including Bank of America Corp.’s Savita Subramanian, Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s David Kostin, and Credit Suisse Group AG’s Jonathan Golub. But Kolanovic — like Morgan Stanley’s Mike Wilson — is among those who have stock to their bearish views.

Earlier on Monday, Wilson reiterated a prediction that disinflation will eat into corporate profits while admitting that he was wrong about where stocks would go in the first part of the year. Still, Wilson has stuck with his call that the S&P 500 could slide to 3,900 by the end of the year, implying a drop of some 14% from current levels.