Almost exactly a year ago Bernanke unleashed what Zero Hedge first dubbed the Taper Tantrum [4]. Moments ago, the head of Appaloosa revealed what may be the catchphrase of mid-2014 with the "Tepper Tantrum", when during his presentation at the annual SALT conference in Las Vegas, the usually bubbly and cheerful billionaire (who last year made $400,000 per hour [5]or a total of $3.5 billion) spooked everyone and in what for someone who has traditionally been long everything on leverage can pass as sheer doom and gloom basically told his wide audience that he is "nervous, it's nervous time" and in this "dangerous market", it is "time to preserve money"; his advice to anyone listening: "don't be too freakin' long".
From Bloomberg:
- TEPPER MORE WORRIED ABOUT DEFLATION THAN INFLATION
- TEPPER SAYS U.S. ECONOMY SHOULD BE MOVING FASTER
- TEPPER SAYS THIS IS A ‘MIXED ENVIRONMENT’
- TEPPER SAYS THE MARKET IS KIND OF ‘DANGEROUS’
- TEPPER SAYS DON’T TO BE TOO ‘FREAKIN LONG’
- TEPPER SAYS THIS IS A ‘TOUGH MARKET’
- TEPPER SAYS ‘TIME TO PRESERVE MONEY’, HAVE CASH
- TEPPER SAYS IF ECB DOESN’T CUT IT’S NOT OK
- TEPPER SAYS I AM NERVOUS, IT’S NERVOUS TIME
- TEPPER SAYS HE’S NOT RECOMMENDING SHORT, JUST NOT TOO LONG
The punchline: "We have this term called coordinated complacency to describe the world’s central banks right now. The market’s kind of dangerous in a way."
And showing just what is important in today's market, stocks may have completely ignored the ridiculous Japanese pre-tax hike GDP print (which incidentally means no BOJ boost to QE in July or any time soon for that matter), but they certainly did not like what Tepper had to say.
[6]
Something tells us this Gloomy and Doomy Tepper will not be as welcome on CNBC as the cheery one from years gone by, who could lift the S&P by 1% with merely a smirk.