Activist Keith Meister Says This Year’s Market Rally and Last December’s Sell-Off Made Us Break Even

In a yesterdays’ CNBC “Squawk Box” program, Corvex Management’s Keith Meister was a guest and he shared his views on the current and the future market state. Corvex Management is an NYC-based activist hedge fund launched back in 2011 with $250 million of seed money from George Soros. The fund had activist successes at the very beginning doubling its assets in two years since its inception.  At the end of 2016, the fund managed around $7.4 billion in assets. Prior to founding his own firm, Keith Meister was billionaire Carl Ichan’s right hand. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a BS in Economics and from Harvard College with an AB Cum Laude in Government.

Yesterday, Keith Meister first explained that there was actually the perfect storm in December last year, because of many factors, such as toxic trade war with China and market perception that the Fed was going to hike into recession. As a consequence market sentiment was poor, capital markets were closed and some investors were actually selling ahead of redemption. As it turns out, according to Keith Meister, when counting Q1 2019 rally and the December 2018 sell-off, we should break even, or as he said:

 “We’re probably back to what is a relatively fairly valued market. There was a major pivot, which can’t be underestimated, which is where we went from having five or six rate hikes estimated to today, I think, one, and the rhetoric would imply maybe we cut before we raise.”

Keith Master holds the opinion that even though American businesses are far from being flawless, they are much better than they have ever been, and he feels that they are entitled to some credit because they are the ones who drive our earnings.

Take a look at the video below to hear what he further said regarding Lyft IPO, and Wellinton Management Company’s announcement that it doesn’t support Bristol Myers Squibb’s (NYSE:BMY) proposed acquisition of Celgene Corp (NASDAQ:CELG).

Hedge fund titan Keith Meister talks Q2, Lyft, and what he expects for the rest of 2019 from CNBC.

Disclosure: None.

This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.