Steve Cohen ‘Pretty Bullish’ on Markets Because of AI

Billionaire hedge fund manager and New York Mets owner Steve Cohen thinks investors are too worried about a market downturn, Bloomberg reports.

If investors continue to obsess over the odds of a recession, they could miss out on the market’s next big opportunity: the “big wave” of opportunities that artificial intelligence will present, Cohen says.

“I’m making a prognostication—we’re going up,” Cohen, founder of Point72 Asset Management, was overheard saying at a SALT iConnections New York conference Tuesday at Citi Field. “I’m actually pretty bullish.”

Cohen thinks that while AI may displace some jobs, at the same time, it will create plenty of new careers—and markedly improve profit margins.

As this happens, the Federal Reserve will be under less pressure to reduce inflation by increasing the fed funds rate further—all pointing to higher stock market prices, Cohen says.

In the first quarter, two other notable hedge fund managers, Duquesne Family Office’s Stan Druckenmiller and Maverick Capital’s Lee Ainslie, gave their thumbs up by taking sizeable positions in Nvidia Corp., a beneficiary of the AI boom.

“AI is very, very real and could be every bit as impactful as the internet,” Druckenmiller said at last week’s 2023 Sohn Investment Conference.