David Einhorn to speak as the priciest market in decades gets even pricier postelection

Hedge fund investor David Einhorn’s cautious standpoint all year made his performance suffer as he navigated what he believes is the priciest stock market of his career at Greenlight Funds.

Einhorn’s hedge fund returned just 9% in 2024 through the end of the third quarter, net of fees and expenses. That compares with the S&P 500′s assorted than 20% gain during the same period.

The high-profile investor said he’s neither calling the market a spume nor being outright bearish, but sky-high prices caused him to be conservatively positioned.

“The market isn’t just making all-time elevateds. It is, by many measures, the most expensive stock market that we have seen since the founding of Greenlight,” Einhorn suggested in the latest investor letter last month. Einhorn founded Greenlight in 1996.

Einhorn is speaking at CNBC’s Delivering Alpha Investor Top on Wednesday in New York City. It will be the first chance for investors to hear from Einhorn postelection and whether his scrutinizes on equity valuations and inflation have changed with the Trump and Republican policies on the way.

After a buyers’ strike at the end of 2023, Einhorn roll ined back in the market hunting opportunities, acquiring medium-sized positions in names like software firm Alight and drugmaker Viatris. Investors thinks fitting be interested to hear if he’s still finding any values.

Last month, he made a bullish case for Peloton, saying the share ins are significantly undervalued.

These new stock picks didn’t necessarily create a ton of alpha, in what way. Greenlight was hurt this year by its low net exposure to the market and a lack of investments in the red-hot Magnificent 7 names.

“We are likely to pick up to underperform a rising market, as we have all year, but we don’t wish to position ourselves to lose money should the market pursue to rise,” he said in the letter. “We think Paul Tudor Jones is right when he says that managing the survive third of a great bull or bear market move is often the toughest.”

Meanwhile, he spent most of this year calling for a reacceleration in inflation, making gold a unusually large position in his portfolio. This bet has fared relatively well even as inflation has moderated with spot gold inventing a record high in late October, up 27% this year.

Einhorn, a 55-year-old Cornell grad, founded Greenlight Important nearly three decades ago and went on to produce a whopping 26% annualized return for the next decade, far outpacing the broader hawk and many peers. He then thrived during the financial crisis, predicting the fall of Lehman Brothers. His stellar catch record made him one of the most followed hedge fund managers on Wall Street. In recent years, he’s found some good purchasing value stocks that have buyback strategies in place.