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By Carolina Mandl
MIAMI (Reuters) - Point72 Asset Management's founder Steven Cohen said on Tuesday that he would expect the stock market to reach a peak soon amid inflation pressure and uncertainties around U.S. President Donald Trump's policies on tariffs and immigration.
Trump has threatened to impose a universal tariff on foreign-imported goods and others aimed at specific sectors or countries, while on the immigration front he has launched a sweeping border crackdown.
Such measures would "actually slow growth, not increase growth in 2025" and make it more difficult for the Federal Reserve to tackle inflation, Cohen said at the investment conference iConnection, in Miami.
"I don't think that's a great backdrop. In 2025, I would expect the markets to top over the next couple of months," Cohen said, adding that the peak may already have happened.
The S&P 500 surged over 23% last year.
Point72's founder expressed more concerns about Trump's policies than about a rout in tech stocks on Monday triggered by Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek, which revealed that its model was on a par or better than industry-leading rivals in the United States at a fraction of the cost, sending shares in Nvidia down roughly 17%.
Asked about the selloff, Cohen said "great companies are going to be expensive," in a comment that seemed related to Nvidia.
"There'll be new companies that will use these tools and start hearing about that. And then another big advance comes along and that's how it's going to come. And there are going to be moments when people are going to doubt it like yesterday," he told the audience of investment experts.
Cohen said AI is in the early stages of something that will be transformational for the economy.
Point72 has a new artificial intelligence (AI)-focused fund that posted a 14% gain after launching just three months ago, Reuters reported earlier. The fund is expected to have raised nearly $1.5 billion.
In a wide-ranging interview, Cohen spoke about his recent decision to stop trading to focus on running the firm, driving strategic initiatives and mentoring. Point72 manages $36.9 billion and has 200 portfolio managers around the world.
"I'm 68 and had this vision being 70, still behind screens. I was like, that doesn't make sense," he added.
Among his plans for the firm, he said he believes it could be more than a hedge fund.
"I can do more than that," mentioning as example the recent hiring of Todd Hirsch, a former senior managing director at Blackstone, to head a new strategy focused on the fast-growing private credit business.
(Reporting by Carolina Mandl in New York; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Stephen Coates)
