Legg Mason Inc.’s Bill Miller said U.S. stocks may rise 15 percent in the next 12 months as the Federal Reserve continues efforts to inflate asset prices and boost the economy.
“The Fed wants the stock market to go up, and they will do what’s necessary to get it to whatever level it takes for the wealth effect of higher stock prices to stimulate growth,” Miller wrote in a letter to shareholders released today.
Miller, famed for beating the S&P 500 for a record 15 straight years through 2005, trailed the U.S. benchmark for the next three years as bets on financial and real-estate companies backfired. He outperformed peers in 2009 as the stock market rebounded from a 12-year low.
Declines in top holdings such as power producer AES Corp. have hurt returns in 2010. Miller’s $4.1 billion Legg Mason Capital Management Value Trust fund was up 3.8 percent this year through Nov. 12, compared with a 9.4 percent return for the S&P 500, including reinvested dividends. In the past five years, the fund declined at an average annual rate of 7.7 percent.
The Federal Reserve on Nov. 3 announced plans to buy $600 billion in U.S. Treasuries in a round of unconventional monetary stimulus known as quantitative easing. The Fed left unchanged its pledge to keep interest rates low for an “extended period.”
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