Oaktree Capital's Marks warns of late-in-cycle U.S. economy
Oaktree Capital co-chairman Howard Marks said the U.S. economy was in its 8th inning, indicating it is the final stages of economic expansion, at CNBC's Delivering Alpha conference in New York on Wednesday. But the baseball analogy only has so much to give, Marks said, because "this isn't baseball and we don't know how many innings there will be." The late-stage economy is leading investors to push out their growth horizons, Marks said. And while that was symptomatic of optimism in the prolonged growth cycle, it also has left investors unprepared for a sudden turnaround in the economy. "In the later stages of the cycles, people tend to come up with rationalization for why it won't end." With that sentiment in mind, the Dow Jones Industrial Average us up 1.9% year to date, while the S&P 500 index has advanced by 5.3% over the same period.
Market Pulse Stories are Rapid-fire, short news bursts on stocks and markets as they move. Visit MarketWatch.com for more information on this news.