We asked 6 big-money investors about their biggest fears — and they all had the same answer

Mike Ryan — Chief Investment Strategist for UBS Wealth Management Americas ($1.1 trillion AUM)

Business Insider

His biggest market worry: “One of the things that always keeps up at night is the risk of a policy mistake. I tell people, ‘Look, every time I checked, every one of the central banks all around the world, the pencils come with erasers at the top.’ There’s no infallibility. Vatican City’s the only place that claims infallibility. Central Bankers do not have that, nor do they claim it. We have to also understand we’re living through what has been the greatest monetary-policy experiment in history. We’ve never seen this before.

“Think about the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, the European Central Bank, Bank of Japan, what they’ve all engaged in is this extraordinary balance-sheet expansion that commonly has been known as quantitative easing. That’s been extraordinary in terms of helping stabilize markets and allowing the economy to recover. Now we’re in the process, the very early, beginning stages of policy normalization. That’s going to be a bit of a challenge, so there is no rulebook, there’s no guidepost to how we do this.

“I think what it’s going to require is very prudent actions by central bankers; they’re going to have to be cautious in terms of how they apply policy changes. They’re going to have to be very open and transparent with markets about what they intend to do and what they are doing. I’d say, if you ask me what the biggest concern I have, is for a policy misstep. It’s that somewhere along the line, central bankers get it wrong, either they move too quickly or they move too slowly.”