Legendary investor Druckenmiller: Banks and crypto rise together, market "very confident" Trump will win
Stan Druckenmiller, the well-known hedge fund manager who has managed Soros’s fund for more than a decade, said in an interview on Wednesday that the market appeared to be “very confident” that Mr Trump would win in the past 12 days, and said “you can see that in the bank stocks and in the crypto market”. He said the market was digesting the expectation that Mr Trump would win before the US presidential election in November.However, he would not vote for Mr Trump or the vice-president, Kamala Harris. Mr Druckenmiller called Mr Trump a “blowhard” and implied he did not have enough dignity to be president, while he said Ms Harris as president would be bad for business. “When I go to the polls, I might write in a name,” said Mr Druckenmiller, who has not donated to any candidate.The 71-year-old Mr Druckenmiller, who managed Mr Soros’s money for more than a decade and funded Nikki Haley’s primary challenge to Mr Trump, predicted that even if Ms Harris won the election, the Democrats were “extremely unlikely” to gain control of Congress.He said that if there was a so-called “blue wave” (meaning a Democratic landslide), the stock market could be in trouble for the next three to six months. He also said a “red wave” (meaning a Republican landslide) “or is more likely than Trump president and a blue Congress”.Scott Bessent, who also worked at Soros Fund Management, has been advising the Trump campaign on economic issues. He proposed the idea of a shadow Federal Reserve chairman who would serve as a potential counterweight and alternative to the current chairman, Jerome Powell, until Mr Powell’s term expires in May 2026.But Mr Druckenmiller said the idea of a shadow Federal Reserve chairman was “a terrible idea and irresponsible”.He said the Federal Reserve’s decision to cut interest rates by 50 basis points in September was a mistake, and his family office, Duquesne, had sold bonds after the Fed announced the cut.Mr Druckenmiller said the market needed to temper expectations about the pace and extent of monetary policy easing by central banks.