‘Tech stocks to tumble amid poor market sentiment’ according to Scott Minerd

Technology stocks will tumble further this year as investors flee to safety and buyers stay on the sidelines, according to Scott Minerd, chief investment officer for Guggenheim Partners.

The Nasdaq Composite Index will probably drop below 3,800, sliding another 13%, he said.

The tech-heavy index already has fallen that much this year, closing at 4,363 last week.

That’s more than 16% below the all-time high it reached in July.

“The market sentiment is so bad,” Mr Minerd, who manages about $240 billion (€215bn), said.

Nasdaq growth stocks such as Amazon and Netflix, the biggest gainers in 2015 on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, face new scrutiny amid doubts about their high price-earnings ratios and economic concerns, driven by China and oil.

LinkedIn plunged last week after the company said its new business lines for sales and marketing tools aren’t going to grow as quickly as predicted.

Tableau Software, a maker of data-analysis and charting software, saw its value plummet by half after falling short of fourth-quarter estimates.

He expects a bear market similar to 1987 or 1998 rather than a crash like the dot-com bust of 2000 or the 2008 financial crisis.

“I don’t think we’ll have that kind of a wipeout here,” he said.

“Stocks aren’t as overvalued as they were then.”