Kenneth Fisher says he’s expecting “delicious” returns for the stock market in 2013, though he is growing worried about the Federal Reserve’s loose monetary policies.
“The widespread skepticism is hiding a global Goldilocks economy — one that grows not too fast, not too slow and has little inflation,” Fisher writes in his latest Forbes column. “To me it’s a golden recipe for delicious returns in stocks for 2013.” Fisher says that most negatives are already priced into stocks. “If it’s widely known,” he says of the current negatives that have investors afraid, “it’s either wrong or will have little impact on stocks. Fear of Europe? We’ve fretted over it for three years while stocks rose. Another Obama term — fully four years of fretting under our belts! The debt crisis — we will be fretting about that forever.”
But Fisher says one fear he has that few are focusing on is quantitative easing. “I believe it’s actually contractionary and definitely nothing to be bullish about,” he says. “If you’ve taken Econ 101 you know that the quantity of money rises only when the banking system makes a net loan. So QE1 and all its successors have been neither stimulative nor inflationary. Bernanke is simply improving banks’ balance sheets and financing the Treasury. These, I believe, are his real, hidden goals.”
But all in all Fisher is bullish, and offers five large stocks that he thinks will lead the market going forward. Among them: Johnson & Johnson.