There may be some sectors that are fundamentally challenged but the bull market is still in place — and will be going strong for quite some time, BMO Capital Markets chief investment strategist Brian Belski told CNBC on Thursday.
Stocks closed lower on Thursday after a major Asian chipmaker delivered a disappointing forecast that dragged the technology sector lower. Investors were also concerned about rising interest rates.
Belski said the market wants to be defensive.
“The majority of people have this infatuation with trying to call the end of the bull market. The naysayers have been as loud the last three months as they’ve been the last 10 years,” he said on “Closing Bell.”
However, he said that overall the fundamentals are “great.” In fact, he thinks 2018 could be the year investors begin to transition into accepting the bull market, which turned nine years old in March.
“The first 10 years of the bull were really doubting it, it’s terrible,” he said. “This is big and real. We’re not anywhere near euphoria.”
In fact, according to his predictions, the bull market is only halfway through. Back in 2009, he said it would last 20 to 25 years.
However, Morgan Stanley recently warned the end could be near for the bull market. In a 31-page research paper, the firm said the boosts from fiscal policy are largely priced into the markets and unlikely to last much longer.
“The feelgood aspects of said policy appear at or nearly in the price of US markets, whereas the downsides are less accounted for,” the paper said. “While there’s a fair amount of debate about how much this fiscal expansion extended the economic cycle, for markets our analysis suggests we’re closer to the end of the day than the beginning.”
— CNBC’s Fred Imbert and Jeff Cox contributed to this report.
