We’re not there yet, but veteran investor Jim Rogers says the next bear market we see is going to be a doozy.
“When we have a bear market again, and we are going to have a bear market again, it will be the worst in our lifetime.”
That’s what the chairman of Rogers Holdings Inc. told Bloomberg News on Thursday.
“Debt is everywhere, and it’s much, much higher now,” he said, adding that he expects the current stock-market rout to continue, though he wouldn’t go so far as to say this was the start of a bear market, which is typically defined as a drop of 20% or more from a significant peak.
On Thursday, the S&P 500 SPX, -1.55% and Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -1.84% officially entered correction territory, down more than 10% from recent highs.
Now 75, Rogers founded the Quantum Fund in 1973 with George Soros. The hedge fund famously gained 4,200% by 1980, compared to the S&P 500’s 47% return. Rogers has seen his share of bear markets, including the crash of 1987 (a 36% decline), the bursting of the dot-com bubble of 2000-’02 (a 38% drop) and the Great Recession of 2007-’09 (a 54% fall).
Rogers said the market may sputter for the next several weeks, rallying only after the Fed raises interest rates in March, as is expected.
This isn’t the first bear-market warning from Rogers in recent months.
In November, Rogers told MarketWatch columnist Michael Brush that the U.S. was “overdue” for a bear market, and predicted market turmoil within the next two years. Rogers said at the time he was light on U.S. stocks because he thought a bubble was forming, and that Japan, China and Russia offered better investment opportunities. He also warned to stay away from bitcoin: “It looks and smells like all the bubbles I have seen throughout history.”
In September, Rogers said the next bear market will be “horrendous, the worst” in an interview with RealVision TV.
