A portfolio manager who made a name of himself during the dot-com bubble is abandoning his bearish view on tech stocks.
Paul Meeks, chief investment officer at Sloy, Dahl & Holst, says he’s back to “risk on” after being skeptical that the stocks could deliver strong returns.
“I don’t think they’re screaming buys here, but I would initiate positions or slightly add to — nothing too aggressive,” Meeks said recently on CNBC’s “Trading Nation.”
He may sound hesitant, but it’s still a meaningful change from his June 5 appearance on the program.
During that interview, Meeks, who worked for Merrill Lynch during the tech boom and subsequent collapse, noted that the recent outperformance of tech back worried him.
The reason? He felt their stock prices had gotten too expensive and didn’t reflect valuations accurately. Meeks was particularly weary of “FANG” stocks — Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google parent Alphabet.
Since then, the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 is down 1.5 percent. Facebook shares performed the best among its peers in that time frame, up nearly 9 percent. Alphabet is down 7 percent, Amazon is fell 5 percent and Netflix is relatively flat.
Now, he’s ready to dip his feet back into the market, and cloud stocks such as Oracle, Salesforce, Microsoft, as well as “FANG” names Alphabet and Amazon.
“In the technology sector, I’d like to focus on the leadership names — the ones that are doing well. They are mostly my grouping of cloud-oriented names. I actually think that most of them have come down quite a ways since they announced their June quarter results,” Meeks said.
For investors with iron stomachs, Meeks also listed what he refers to as “troubled companies.” He has exposure to names such as Fitbit, CenturyLink and Akamai in his portfolio right now.
“I do think that if anything ever slightly positive happens to these companies, they’re going to have a big, big bounce off the bottom,” Meeks said.
The man who ran the largest tech fund during dot-com bubble turns bullish on FANG stocks. Here's why