(Bloomberg) -- Former JPMorgan Chase & Co. chief market strategist Marko Kolanovic re-emerged on social media this week, posting on LinkedIn and X on Monday and Tuesday for the first time since reports in early July that he was leaving his role at the bank.
The closely-followed strategist made a name for himself with warnings about 2015’s stock slump and 2018’s volatility blowup, but he was criticized when his recent pessimistic views failed to materialize. Before his departure from the bank, Kolanovic was one of few vocal skeptics left on Wall Street, as stocks staged a furious rally that began last fall.
Kolanovic emerged on X.com, formerly Twitter, Monday using a new handle, @markoinny. In separate posts Tuesday, he offered a fresh bearish take, saying markets face issues ranging from the US presidential election, to geopolitics, the Sahm Rule recession indicator, the potential for increasing bankruptcies and credit card delinquencies.
The strategist did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The S&P 500 was up 1.6% as of 3:57 p.m. in New York, continuing its rebound from an Aug. 5 rout.
News of Kolanovic’s exit July 3 sent shock waves across Wall Street, with some traders and strategists wondering during last week’s rout if his departure was a sign of a market top. Wall Street pros have compared his leaving to the exit of Charles Clough in 1999, who left Merrill Lynch & Co. after maintaining his bearish view through the dot-com frenzy — a call that proved correct later on when the tech bubble began to deflate.
Kolanovic, who previously was at Bear Stearns, joined JPMorgan when it took over the firm in 2008. Prior to that, he was at Merrill Lynch, according to his LinkedIn profile. The strategist, once called “Gandalf” in the media after a series of prescient forecasts, came to the US from Croatia in the 1990s to study at New York University and received a Ph.D. in theoretical physics in 2003.
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