Billionaire investor Leon Cooperman is more bearish on the stock market than the consensus view on Wall Street, saying the widening U.S. fiscal deficit could become a crisis down the road. “I have a more conservative view of the outlook than most,” Cooperman said on CNBC”s ” Money Movers .” “We’re heading toward a fiscal disaster in our country. There’s nobody focusing on the debt creation in the economy.” The chair and CEO of the Omega Family Office has been warning about the burgeoning national debt for a while. He thinks that the unprecedented stimulus to aid the economy during the pandemic pulled demand forward and created an artificial economy. Cooperman, a longtime value investor, also grew worried about high valuations in the current bull market. “The big problem I have is the market is [selling for] over 20 times earnings,” he said. The former CEO of Goldman Sachs Asset Management slashed his Microsoft holding by 57% last quarter, to a stake worth just $57 million, a regulatory filing showed. Cooperman made small changes to his top 10 holdings in the second quarter, leaving most of them unchanged. At the end of June, mortgage lender Mr. Cooper Group remained his biggest holding with a stake worth $232 million. Cooperman was still overweight energy stocks, with Energy Transfer , Devon Energy and Ashland Global being among his biggest holdings.
