Bull won’t end in 2018, fund execs assert

Don’t count out the Wall Street bull — which hit fresh highs Tuesday and turns

9 in March — in 2018, say top investment pros at two mutual fund firms.

Neil Hennessy, chief investment officer at Hennessy Funds, says he has heard the doom-and-gloom talk: The bull’s getting old. Stocks are pricey. A big drop is coming. But he isn’t buying into the negativity. “Everyone keeps saying we’ve been in a bull market for nine years, it has to end,” he says. “No. It doesn’t have to end.”

The current bull reminds him of the bull market that ran from 1982 to 2000. A healthy consumer, strong corporate profitability, steady economic growth and lots of money on the sidelines that could find its way into stocks support higher prices, Hennessy argues.

Another reason he thinks the rally will continue is a lack of “euphoria” — such as everyone, everywhere talking about the stock market. That’s not to say Hennessy isn’t warning investors to prepare for a correction, or a decline of

10% or more. Such a drop could occur, he says, if the market suddenly suffers a number of steep drops in succession that causes investors to get fearful, causing a “psychological shock” that makes people feel they “gotta get out.”

Krishna Memani, chief investment officer at Oppenheimer Funds, says stocks will rise for two reasons: a continuation of the “synchronized global recovery and lack of inflation.”

“That’s it in a nutshell,” he says, adding that he doesn’t see the Federal Reserve hiking rates so aggressively that it derails the economy or stock market.