Orange County investors are worried about the same things as investors around the country—whether the stock market is too high, says Merrill Lynch Chief Investment Officer Mary Ann Bartels.
“They are concerned about a major drop in the market or if they’re too late to get in,” she said in an interview.
“It’s absolutely not too late to get in.”
Bartels spoke before about 75 Merrill Lynch advisers and their customers last week at the Island Hotel in Newport Beach. She also appeared at a women’s networking event for employees of Merrill Lynch, a unit of Bank of America Corp.
Her expertise in markets was rewarded when Institutional Investor magazine named her to its prestigious All American Research team as a technical analyst for six consecutive years ending in 2011.
In a hotel ballroom last week, she held a graphic showing the performance of the Dow Jones during the past 117 years, pointing out four periods when it traded sideways, followed by decades of upward trends, such as 1984 to 2000.
In the latest 17-year period, the Dow peaked in 2000 and 2007, then began breaking upward past its prior peak in 2013, she said.
When she spoke to her audience of Merrill Lynch clients and advisers, she said she found that people are reading too many negative articles on the economy and the stock market, which has tripled since 2009.
She pointed out that earnings are increasing, inflation is low, investors are sitting on a lot of cash, Japan is growing, and Europe isn’t imploding despite Brexit. And while the yield curve is flattening, it hasn’t inverted, she said.
“The facts say there is nothing wrong. We don’t have any indication of a recession yet.”
