"[The Fed] went from extremely dovish, in my mind, to just dovish," Fink said. "Rates are going to remain low for many years. That's a great foundation to be in higher-yielding fixed-income and ... equities."

While the Fed did continue to taper its bond-buying, the central bank is actually being more aggressive now relative to the slowing of issuance of bonds due to lower deficits, he said—calling for the Fed to wind things down more quickly.

David Fuller's view

BlackRock CEO & chairman Larry Fink is a wise and measured financial commentator, in my opinion. The point in bold above is highly important.

I watched Larry Fink’s comments today.  He is only looking for small additional gains on Wall Street this year, due to valuations and because tapering will end QE later this year.  He also thought that EU stock markets could have a “temporary melt-up” because of the ECB’s policies, but he was very dismissive of Europe’s energy policies. 

We know that the USA, EU and Japan have the most bullish monetary policies.  However, they are more fully reflected by Wall Street’s valuations than those of Europe or Japan.  Meanwhile, the current elephant in the dealing room is Brent crude oil.  It does not have to spike upwards, but it easily could, although it would probably not stay high for long because whoever holds the oil wells in Iraq and elsewhere will want the revenue.  Today’s prices suit oil producers.

 (See also yesterday’s comments on the Middle East and oil prices.)