‘Trillion-Dollar Man’ Dan Peña Predicts Market Pullback, Offers

On Sep 30, 2021

“Trillion-Dollar Man” Dan Peña says he’s stockpiling cash ahead of a painful market correction.
The veteran investor told Insider that debt-fueled speculation has reached unsustainable levels.
Peña warned reckless traders they’re setting themselves up for disaster.

Veteran investor Dan Peña predicted a painful market pullback, warned newbie traders not to get cocky, and revealed how he’s prepared for a crash, in an interview with Insider this week.

Peña is the founder and chairman of The Guthrie Group, an investment consortium. The former Wall Street financier and oil tycoon brands himself as “The Trillion Dollar Man” — reflecting his claim that graduates of his executive-coaching program, Quantum Leap Advantage (QLA), have generated over $1 trillion of value since 1993.

Bracing for a correction

The US stock market is barreling towards disaster thanks to a lethal cocktail of excessive debt, artificially low interest rates, inflated asset prices, and too many unsophisticated investors, Peña said in July.

“At the very least, we’re gonna have a major pullback — no market goes up forever,” he told Insider this week. The investor noted that margin debt is higher now than during the dot-com bubble or the months before the financial crisis. He also asserted that the vast majority of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are bought with borrowed money.

Peña warned the upcoming sell-off will be a jarring wake-up call for younger investors.

“Other than the 90-day

recession
we had last year, they’ve never seen a down market,” he said. “We’ve been in a

bull market
for 12 years in just about everything. They haven’t experienced it when the shit really hits the fan.”

The investor also suggested Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has stockpiled over $140 billion of cash in anticipation of a correction, and the conglomerate’s biggest holding may have followed suit.

“Berkshire, Apple, and many other top companies are hoarding more and more cash because they know a crash is coming,” he said. “It’s inevitable.”

Going for broke

Peña called out the new generation of investors that has speculated wildly on meme stocks and other questionable assets over the past 18 months.

“These kids can’t buy a house, so they buy partial shares in companies they don’t understand,” he said. “That’s not a rational investment methodology.”

Peña also cautioned people who have mortgaged their homes or taken out loans to buy stocks and crypto, emphasizing that returns aren’t guaranteed, and they risk getting caught out. “It’s easy to say ‘buy on dips and sell on highs,'” he said. “If it was that easy, everybody would make a jillion dollars.”

Novice traders aren’t the…