James Chanos: Private-Equity Deals Propping Up Stocks

One of Wall Street's biggest short sellers, James Chanos, said the recent wave of private-equity deals and speculation about buyouts is helping to prop up stocks prices.

“Investors forget that merger booms are coincident with the market," Chanos told Sue Herera on "Power Lunch." "They don’t happen at market bottoms, they happen at market tops.”

When asked about the abundance of cheap credit fueling the merger boom, Chanos said that  equities are long-duration assets and that to look at short-term interest rates alone is “missing the point.”

Chanos, president and founder of Kynikos Associates, also talked about public and private pension funds investing in hedge funds.

“There’s going to be continual blowups, there’s going to be continuing losses, but there’s also quite a bit of profitability that the hedge fund industry has brought on and people forget that side”, said Chanos. “The hedge fund industry has done a lot for investors, both public and private.”

Chanos believes that there is a middle ground in regulating hedge funds. “I don’t think the hedge fund industry has any issues with providing records and providing more information on a timely basis.”