Leon Cooperman Talks Emerging Markets, 2014 Market Prediction

Leon Cooperman is one of the legendary hedge-fund voices that investors listen to for guidance about the markets and stocks. As the head of Omega Advisors, Cooperman has been at this fedge-fund game for a lot of years and has become one of the icons in the investing business.

And of course, when the opportunity arises, some of the business and financial media  love to ask the world’s top money managers their predictions and prognostications for the upcoming year. CNBC had that opportunity this week when it sat down and asked Cooperman about his strategy for finding value stocks in 2014, and asked him to comment about emerging markets and how they might affect the world economy as a whole and the markets in more specifics.

With the news being occupied by reported upheaval in emerging markets in terms of economics, Cooper man was asked his thoughts about the impact of the emerging markets and what they are dealing with in their economies.

“If you look at the emerging market issue, while not insignificant, it’s not major,” Cooperman said. “Seventy-five percent of the world’s GDP is either stable or expanding. The U.S. economic growth is accelerating a bit. Europe is turning up. Japan is expanding. China is growing somewhere in the area of 6 to 7 percent.

“Emerging market economies maybe account for 10 percent of S&P 500 earnings.  If you throw in China, maybe it’s close to 15 (percent),” Cooperman continued. “It’s not an issue that they coudl dramatically affect the big picture.”

See the clip with Cooperman below: