As the COVID-19 crisis continues to produce market uncertainty and investor anxiety, John Rogers Jr. and Mellody Hobson, co-CEOs of Ariel Investments L.L.C. (which ranks No. 1 on the BE 100s ASSET MANAGERS list) assembled some of the nation’s most successful value investors for last week’s powerful, 90-minute roundtable discussion: “Invaluable Insights 2020, Managers Unplugged.”
In response to her question related to how the nation will emerge from the economic downturn, Rogers was the only panelist to predict a V-shaped recovery characterized by a sharp decline followed by a speedy, sustained rebound while Bhansali, Herro, and O’Keefe believe it will resemble a U shape in which the economy takes longer to hit bottom before bouncing back.
Bullish on US stocks, Rogers, Gabelli, Miller, and O’Keefe endorsed the S&P 500 while Bhansali and Cates maintained MCSI will dominate.
In further evaluation of past turbulent markets, Hobson found that during the current pandemic, the U.S. stock market took 22 days to fall 30% compared to 250 days during the financial crisis of 2008 and 257 days for the dot-com collapse of 2002.
Miller is drawn to FAANG stocks—Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Alphabet (a.k.a. Google): “I think they’ve performed so well because the companies are so extraordinary, in terms of return on capital, in terms of market share, in terms of defensible moats.
