Biggs Remains Bullish Stocks, Favours U.S. and Asian Equities – 60%-70% Net Long

Barton Biggs, managing partner and co-founder of Traxis Partners, talks about Europe’s debt crisis and the outlook for stocks.

Highlights:

• “I’m biased toward the long side,” he told Bloomberg Television’s “In the Loop” with Betty Liu today.
• “U.S. big-capitalization, U.S. stocks and Asian stocks are the best houses in a fairly tough, bad neighborhood.”
• Biggs said equities may surge or drop 20 percent because of concern about budget negotiations and Europe.
• while he doesn’t want to be fully invested in equities, “it’s hard to get really bearish.”
• The S&P 500 rose 0.9 percent since then through Dec. 9.
• His optimism on stocks has fluctuated along with the market.
• He reduced the net-long position, a gauge of bullish versus bearish investments, in the Traxis Global Equity Macro Fund to about 40 percent at the end of September before increasing it to 65 percent on Oct. 17 and 80 percent on Oct. 31, according to past visits on Bloomberg News.
• On Nov. 21, he said he cut the figure to less than 40 percent and might go even lower.
• On Dec. 2, he said he’d raised the level to about 60 percent.
• The S&P 500 (SPX) dropped five straight months through September before surging 11 percent in October and dropping 0.5 percent in November. The benchmark gauge for U.S. equities fell 1.5 percent to 1,236.47 at 4 p.m. New York time today.