Morgan Creek Capital CEO Mark Yusko, who has a bearish outlook for the year, told CNBC on Wednesday that the market is a rubber ball bouncing down the stairs toward a "bad place."
While each of the major U.S. indexes has gained about 10 percent year to date, the hedge-fund veteran foresees bad news on a number of fronts, including economic, earnings, revenue and corporate layoffs.
"I see lots of negative surprises," Yusko said on "Power Lunch." "I think there's a lot of negative that's gonna come over the next few months."
He argued that Wall Street has been in a "bear market rally" since the Christmas Eve bottom.
"Each bounce is higher. That's just kinetic energy," he said. "But the end of the trip's a bad place."
One reason for Yusko's pessimistic outlook is what he said are high stock valuations. He said equities are "84 percent on average overvalued" and that downward inflation signals "economic weakness, not strength." On top of that, earnings estimates — specifically in the tech sector — and housing have "absolutely collapsed," Yusko said. He acknowledged, however, that jobs growth is strong.
Yusko predicted in November that securities would see a "double-digit drawdown." He stuck with that sentiment on Wednesday by saying that stocks are as much as 50 percent away from "fair value."
"Nothing has changed for the better since then except maybe, just maybe, the Fed's not going to raise rates as quickly," Yusko said. "So everything else has fallen off a cliff."
There are still some opportunities Morgan Creek sees as worth investing in, such as master limited partnerships and what Yusko calls "CARBS" markets. Those include emerging markets in China, Argentina, Russia, Brazil and South Korea.
"So, there are lots of cheap places to put your capital. You don't have to put it in the U.S.," he said.
Earlier this week hedge-fund manager Paul Tudor Jones said he expects the S&P 500 will outperform foreign markets. The Tudor Investment Corporation founder correctly called the 1987 crash but missed on his call that the market would surge to end 2018 on a high note.
