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FORTUNE.COM // DECEMBER 2019
ECONOMISTS MAY BE FRETTING about a 2020 recession; not so the
panelists on our annual roundtable of investors. (Even the self-
described “bear in the room” was fairly upbeat.) But our experts
also characterized 2019—a year in which virtually every asset
class registered big gains—as a weirdo anomaly. Next year, they
say, investors will need to be pickier. Our panel was wary about
the future of Big Tech stocks, and bullish about smaller tech, as
well as health care—with or without Medicare for All.
This year’s panel included Savita Subramanian, head of
U.S. equity and quantitative strategy and head of global ESG
research at Bank of America Merrill Lynch; Josh Brown, CEO
of Ritholtz Wealth Management; Karina Funk, comanager with
David Powell of the top-performing Brown Advisory Large-Cap
Sustainable Growth mutual fund; Rob Sharps, head of invest-
ments and group chief investment officer at T. Rowe Price; and
Angela Strange, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz. Here
are edited excerpts from their discussion.FORTUNE: We’re going on 11 years of a bull market in the U.S., but many
investors have spent the past couple of years wondering when the other
shoe is going to drop. We’ve had slowing GDP growth, we’ve had declining
corporate earnings. Are we staring at something worse, like a recession?JOSH BROWN: I’m going to start by correcting you. We’re in a secular
bull market that began in 2013. That’s the first time we made a new
high since the 2007 crash, and that’s important because we don’t
measure the 1982 to 2000 bull run from the lows of 1974.
There’s also the cyclical bull that’s making new highs as we speak.
In December 2018, we were down 20% in the S&P 500. So this is
not quite as long of a bull as you might suspect if you just look at the
starting point and the end point. [Pause] I’ll leave now, if you want.FORTUNE: No, please stay for the remaining 40
minutes! (Laughter) But you raise a good point:
Is anybody here feeling defensive right now for
reasons other than the age of the bull?SAVITA SUBRAMANIAN: Not to be the bear in
the room, but there is this risk that a lot of the
earnings we’ve seen over the last 10 years have
been manufactured, by companies either buy-
ing back shares to pump up their EPS growth,
or cost cutting. The next leg of this bull market
has to be driven by a real economic recovery.KARINA FUNK: I don’t foresee playing defense
in a potential recession scenario. Some of theE
“A lot of the earnings we’ve seen over the last 10
years have been manufactured.” Savita Subramanian • BofA Merrill Lynch