Fund guru: Shares will go on rising for the year

ONE of Britain’s most powerful investors has forecast that share prices will be ‘higher by the end of the year’.

David Cumming, chief investment officer for equities at Aviva Investors, declared that the bear market is over and said the FTSE100 will not collapse below the 5,000 mark again this year after a strong rally.

Cumming, who oversees the nest eggs of savers for insurer Aviva’s £346 billion asset management arm, told The Mail on Sunday: ‘I’m not one of these people who think we will re-test the lows.

‘The bear market is over. In my view we are not going back below 5,000.

‘There might be a little bit of a pause and there are still things that could go wrong...but I think the stock market will be higher by the end of the year.’

The FTSE100 has rallied almost 30 per cent since it crashed to just below 5,000 in mid-March.

Cumming said some banking shares, including Barclays and Standard Chartered, still look cheap.

He acknowledged that the rally could turn into another slump, especially if Donald Trump incites a trade war with China to gain popularity ahead of the US Presidential election, but he said he was optimistic about the prospects for UKlisted shares.

However, some hedge funds are betting that the stock market gains are a flash in the pan of a long bear market in which shares will keep falling.