We’re not there yet, but veteran investor Jim Rogers says the next bear market we see is going to be a doozy.
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, -3.75% and Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -4.15% 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.