Due to valuations, easy money, and stalling momentum, Bill Martin — chairman and chief investment officer of Raging Capital Management — thinks the current economic environment is primed for short selling.Click here for more BI Prime stories.
If you've been short stocks in the last 10 years, your timing has been comparable to as a bear that hibernates all summer, and comes out of its den on the first day of winter. You were quite a ways off. Easy money — bestowed upon markets by global central banks and largely responsible for boosting corporate earnings growth — has helped lift equities to a series of all-time highs. All the while, shorts were crushed.
But as global growth starts to slow down, earnings shrink, and optimism fades, a new era seems to be on the horizon — one that could be ripe wagers against stocks. And one chief investment officer thinks now is the time to seize the opportunity. "I think we've had such an extended period of easy money that you've got, very frothy valuations, a lot of retail participation in the market, a lot of momentum participation in the market," said Bill Martin, chairman and CIO of