The stock market sell-off is far from over, hedge-fund veteran Mark Yusko told CNBC on Tuesday.
In fact, he sees a “long path” down between now and 2020.
“This year is going to continue to melt slowly, like a melting ice cube. I think next year, with the economic slowdown, it gets worse — probably double-digit drawdown. The big year is 2020, when the credit bubble starts to blow up,” he said on “Fast Money.”
Yusko is the founder, CEO and chief investment officer of Morgan Creek Capital. The firm is a privately owned investment advisor that provides services to institutional clients as well as pension plans, endowments, foundations and family offices.
“Every company has binged on cheap debt. They’ve over-levered,” Yusko added. “We are going to see a lot of defaults, just like 2002 with Enron and Worldcom. I think it’s going to get ugly.”
U.S. equities are heading to the end of the year with the possibility of ending in negative territory. The S&P 500 is up just 0.32 percent for the year, as of Tuesday’s close.
The volatile market has seen indexes hit lows not seen in years. Stocks had their worst Thanksgiving week since 2011, and in October the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended down 5.1 percent for the month, its biggest one-month fall since January 2016.
During the October sell-off, Yusko said the downward momentum has started. “You’re seeing all the sectors start to roll over one by one,” he said at the time. “It is really hard to make a bullish case at this point.”
However, there are places to hide, he said Tuesday. One place is emerging markets, which are “really, really cheap.” Another is master limited partnerships, or MLPs. They have “great cash flows, rising volumes, great yields,” Yusko said.
He also loves bitcoin long-term. Morgan Creek rolled out a cryptocurrency fund in August.