Stanley Druckenmiller says he wouldn't want to be short market, sees stock rotation continuing

Stanley Druckenmiller

Anjali Sundaram

Billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller advised investors against being short the stock market as positive news on the coronavirus front has jolted a big rotation out of growth and into value names.

"It's nuanced, but there are a lot of companies that will be direct beneficiaries [from a coronavirus vaccine], and they probably have further to go," Druckenmiller, CEO of the Duquesne Family Office, said Monday on CNBC's "The Exchange." "I certainly wouldn't want to be net short the market."

Druckenmiller's comments came as U.S. stocks ripped higher on news that a coronavirus vaccine candidate from Pfizer and BioNTech was highly effective during a late-stage trial.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped more than 1,300 points and hit an all-time high. The S&P 500 traded 3% higher and also hit a record. That rally was led by by banks, travel and energy names at the expense of high-flying stocks that benefited from people staying at home during the pandemic.

JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup were all up more than 12%. Cruise operator Carnival rallied 36%. Exxon Mobil popped 13%.

Stay-at-home stalwarts such as Zoom Video dropped more than 13%. Amazon traded 2.4% lower. Netflix slid 6.6%. These stocks are still sharply higher year to date.

"You've had a bunch of equities benefitting greatly from work from home," Druckenmiller said. "A lot of money has rotated into them. They are overvalued."

"But then you've got a whole other sector of the market that has struggled mightily because of Covid," he said. "They're selling at under-value relative to, say, a three-to-five-year outlook. So the rotation into that would seem entirely rational."

The investor also said that inflation is likely to rise over the next 5-to-6 years due to the Federal Reserve's massive stimulative measures, noting he likes both gold and bitcoin as ways of hedging against those potential inflationary pressures. This would also benefit metal miners such as Rio Tinto, Freeport-McMoRan and BHP, he said.

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