Uber Bull ‘Steve’ Still Loves Stocks But Thinks Maybe Bitcoin Is ‘Pets. com’

Admittedly, we didn’t conduct a whole lot of due diligence when it comes to figuring out who Steve Chiavarone is and look, maybe Steve is some kind of titan of finance or, to quote the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club, a “Seer of Seers, Sage of Sages, Prognosticator of Prognosticators and Weather Prophet Extraordinary.”

If that’s the case and we just missed it, well then chalk it up to years of egregious Balvenie abuse on our part, abuse which has admittedly eroded our ability to recall who’s important and who isn’t.

What little due diligence we did conduct found our friend David Stockman describing one of Steve’s recent market calls as follows:

But when we ran across this gem from one Steve Chiavarone yesterday we had to double check because we thought perhaps we were inadvertently reading The Onion.

But, no, he’s actually a paid in full (and then some) portfolio manager at the $360 billion Federated Investors group who appeared on CNBC, and then got reported by Dow-Jones’ MarketWatchjust in case you had the sound turned off during his appearance on bubblevision.

So here’s how the bull market will remain “alive for another decade.” According to Chiavarone, millennials who don’t have two nickels to rub together will make it happen. No sweat.

• “Millennials are entering the workforce, but their wages are going to be under pressure their whole career,” he explained to CNBC’s “Trading Nation” on Friday. “They won’t make enough money to pay down their debt, fund their life and fund retirement where there is no pension. So, they’re going to need equities.”

MarketWatchcaught the full measure of  what shines on the inside of Mr. Chiavarone’s financial beer goggles:

• “The risk is not being in this market,” says Chiavarone, who helps run the Federated Global Allocation Fund. The firm’s current price target is for 2,750 on the S&P by the end of next year and 3,000 for 2019. “We are probably frankly low on both of them,” he said. “Tax reform could push up the markets.” That’s not to say there won’t be some pain along the way, specifically the potential for a recession in 2020 and 2021, according to Chiavarone. What’s an investor to do in that case? “Buy the recession,” he said.

So that’s Steve or, more poignantly, that’s Stockman on Steve and if you know David, it’s never great news if you end up being on the wrong end of his market critiques.

Well, lo and behold, Steve popped up on “bubblevision” again this week and – surprise, surprise – he’s actually a bit concerned about speculation and greed. Only not when it comes to equities. Rather, when it comes Bitcoin.

Here he is explaining that what we’ve seen in cryptocurrencies is “the first sign of greed since the Great Recession”.

Got that? Just to drive the point home, here’s a quote from CNBC’s own piece on that video:

Chiavarone, who is a bull on the actual blockchain technology, believes there’s a good chance bitcoin will suffer the same fate as Pets.com.

For the Bitcoin bulls out there, what can we say other than: “When you lose Steve”…