How to spot cheap markets

It's a fraught time for fund managers in the stock markets. But as John Stepek explains, that's something you don't have to worry about.

Poor Hugh Hendry. The Eclectica hedge fund manager was one of the most vocal proponents of the bear case before the credit crunch, and gained lots of media exposure for his straight-talking put-downs of pompous talking heads during the eurozone crisis.

But now he's been forced to throw in the towel by the Fed's endless money-printing. As we noted, it's not that Hendry has turned bullish he still thinks everything will end badly. But while the printing presses are running hard, he doesn't see any benefit to fighting the world's central banks as governments across the globe compete for growth by devaluing their currencies.

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John Stepek

John Stepek is a senior reporter at Bloomberg News and a former editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He graduated from Strathclyde University with a degree in psychology in 1996 and has always been fascinated by the gap between the way the market works in theory and the way it works in practice, and by how our deep-rooted instincts work against our best interests as investors.

He started out in journalism by writing articles about the specific business challenges facing family firms. In 2003, he took a job on the finance desk of Teletext, where he spent two years covering the markets and breaking financial news.

His work has been published in Families in Business, Shares magazine, Spear's Magazine, The Sunday Times, and The Spectator among others. He has also appeared as an expert commentator on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, BBC Radio Scotland, Newsnight, Daily Politics and Bloomberg. His first book, on contrarian investing, The Sceptical Investor, was released in March 2019. You can follow John on Twitter at @john_stepek.