Coming off a Q1 loss, Third Point's Dan Loeb raises his bet against the stock market

collected by :Haron Adler

referring to The firm posted an 18.1 percent return for 2017, which was below the S&P 500's total gain of 21.8 percent. Stock pickers such as Loeb generally like periods of market volatility as it presents pricing opportunities. "Looking ahead, we still see S&P growth in the U.S. supported by fiscal stimulus in 2018," he said. "We remain focused on maintaining a portfolio that can deliver compelling risk-adjusted returns across market cycles and will opportunistically adjust the portfolio across expected further waves of volatility." Loeb said the firm also is watching the economy "to see if a recession, which we don't think is close, might be getting closer."

Here's why capex spending creates stock market winners and losers

Thanks to a corporate tax windfall there's been a surge in capex spending by large corporations during the first quarter of this year. This time around, it's tech companies spending on infrastructure and driving overall growth in capex. See also: Here's why an earnings peak doesn't mean it's all downhill for the stock market"Capex growth this quarter was led by the tech [sector], with tech capex growth tracking 75% year-over-year in the first quarter. And tech companies' guidance on capex is three times as bullish as for the rest of the S&P 500," said the analysts. That means, that current darlings, such as large technology companies are likely to underperform, adding to a long list of reasons for being cautious on the sector.

As it stated in