- Billionaire hedge fund investor Marc Lasry thinks the Fed pouring in trillions of dollars into the system, despite the economy “doing fine” has been lucrative for investors.
- He called COVID-19 a “once in a lifetime opportunity” for investors, who he said can benefit from massive stimulus while the economy itself is fundamentally solid.
- “You’re not going to see this again. Where you’ve actually got an economy that’s fine, and you’ve got a Fed pumping trillions of dollars in,” he told Yahoo! Finance.
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The Fed pouring trillions of dollars to shore up markets has in fact made coronavirus a “once in a lifetime opportunity,” billionaire investor Marc Lasry says.
“I know you’re not supposed to say this, but it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity. You’re not going to see this again. Where you’ve actually got an economy that’s fine, and you’ve got a Fed pumping trillions of dollars in,” Lasry, the CEO of Avenue Capital Group and the co-owner of the Milwaukee Bucks told Yahoo! Finance.
In recent weeks, the Fed has poured trillions of dollars into the economy to help it ride out the coronavirus.
The Fed's measures include $2.3 trillion in lending to support households, employers, financial markets, and state and local governments, as well as reducing interest rates to almost zero.
The central bank also bought $428 million worth of bonds issued by individual companies, as part of a $250 billion programme to buy corporate debt. Companies whose debt the scheme has already purchased include household names like Coca-Cola, AT&T, and Berkshire Hathaway.
Lasry compared the current climate to the Great Recession.
"You've got a lot of companies that are in trouble," Larry said. "It's a once-in-a-lifetime, but it happened 10 years ago, also."
But Lasry believes the economy is better prepared to survive the ongoing COVID-19 crisis than the economy could have, had this happened in 2008.
He said: "Today we all know something. We will be fine in two years. People will be back out, there will be a vaccine. The question is: How long will it take to get back to normal?"
He also said that making loans to other companies that subsequently collapse is what helps debt investors like himself do "extremely well."
Lasry's hedge fund has piled into the stocks of companies who have recently filed for bankruptcy, including Hertz and J.C. Penney.