The advertising slogan “When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen” is about 20 years past its prime.
The line should now be: “When Abby Joseph Cohen talks, people listen.”
In response to some of her investment advice in March, investors sold like crazy and stock market prices on Wall Street tumbled.
The results weren’t as prolific last week, but folks’ ears still pricked up when Cohen spoke at an event for the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation.
More than 300 of the federation’s biggest donors turned out May 10 to hear the Goldman Sachs financial guru speak at the JCF’s Business and Professional Division’s annual spring event, held at the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco.
Cohen drew applause for expressing the same optimism that has made her Wall Street’s most influential “bull” since the early 1990s: As long as the U.S. economy remains strong, the market will prosper.
“We are seeing the most efficient economy ever,” she proclaimed during a half-hour speech that focused heavily on the economy but also touched a bit on Judaism.
The co-chair of Goldman Sachs’ investment policy committee even attempted to bridge the two topics.
“There’s a Jewish proverb that says the most successful people have two traits: No. 1, they conduct themselves as if they will live forever — planning, making long-term investments in education and family.
“But No. 2, they conduct themselves as if their life might end that day, behaving in a manner in which they would be proud.
“During the 1990s, it could be said that the U.S. economy learned to do [both].”
Cohen has been named Wall Street’s top-rated portfolio strategist three years running by Institutional Investor magazine, and has been tabbed as the ninth-most powerful woman in the world by Fortune magazine.
Two years ago, Businessweek wrote an 11-page cover story about her and titled it “The Prophet of Wall Street.” The strategist is also a regular guest on the television financial talk-show circuit.
On a quieter front, Cohen, 47, is also a frequent speaker at Jewish functions, an occasional traveler to Israel and a “good giver” to the community, according to a federation executive in New York.
In addition to the San Francisco engagement, for which she declined a speaking fee, Cohen spoke gratis at a New York fund-raiser two days earlier for the American Associates of Ben-Gurion University in Israel.
She is also this year’s chairperson for the United Jewish Appeal-Federation of New York’s annual Wall Street Dinner, an event that last year drew more than 1,000 people and raised $17 million.
“She is a tireless worker for Jewish causes,” remarked George Frankenstein, the Business and Professional Division’s event chair. “Over and above her wonderful success in the financial world, she understands what giving back to her community is all about.”
Said to be a very private person when it comes to her personal life, Cohen didn’t talk much about Jewish connections during her JCF speech last week, other than saying part of the reason she gave the address was that “it is Yom HaAtzmaut and last week it was Yom HaShoah.”
Showing a less-serious side, Cohen utilized Jewish humor to deliver a crack from the podium. Several years ago, her cousin had heard her do a radio interview without realizing it was her own relative. Cohen, despite the deprecatory nature of the story, revealed to the audience that her cousin had quipped: “On the radio you sound like a tall blonde shiksa!”
In actuality, Cohen is a short brunette whose mother, Shirley Silverstein, was born in Poland and whose father, Raymond Joseph, was Brooklyn-born to freshly emigrated Polish parents.
Still active in the same Conservative synagogue she began attending as a girl in a middle-class neighborhood in Queens, N.Y., Cohen is also active in the state’s UJA-Federation, serving on its executive council of professional women.
Cohen has made a name for herself by staying bullish on the market for the past eight years, and for jumping on high-tech stocks before everyone else did.
Every time Wall Street has reached new heights, Cohen has boldly predicted U.S. stock markets would continue to rise. And when markets dipped, such as falling nearly 20 percent in mid-1998, she correctly advised clients to remain in stocks.
In contrast, two months ago Cohen made major news when she cautioned Goldman Sachs clients to trim the stock in their portfolios from 70 to 65 percent. She also advised less exposure to high-tech stocks. Since then, the Nasdaq has tumbled significantly.
Cohen repeated those tips at the JCF event, a swanky reception exclusively held for people who had made at least a $1,500 donation to the annual campaign during the year. (Those under 30 were admitted with a $750 minimum donation.)
Reminding the audience of her firm’s advice earlier this spring, Cohen said, “We did suggest…that we would be less enthusiastic about the stock market, at least on a temporary basis. We did modestly reduce or recommended equity exposure and we did remind people that technology was one of those areas that we thought had been given [overblown] respect.”
However, Cohen has far from soured on playing the market. Last month, she called the market downturn a buying opportunity and has been quoted as saying stock prices could rise 15 to 20 percent by year’s end.
Not a stock-chooser, Cohen is more of an economic analyst. She bases her prediction that the S&P 500 will hit 1,575 points and that the Dow Jones will reach 12,600 points by the end of 2000 almost purely on the economy.
Most of her San Francisco speech focused on that locomotive-like economy, which she believes is only in the midst of an expansion — the likes of which is seen only once every 50 to 100 years.
Cohen praised companies for being more efficient than ever before and for “focusing on the long term and on what they really do well.”
Moreover, pointing to the global economy and the rapid rise of the Internet marketplace, she said there is no need to fear inflation.
The only thing that could go wrong with “this long-term reinvigoration of our economy” is failing to facilitate a new emphasis on education, Cohen anticipated.
She said the two most notable expansions of the U.S. economy were each accompanied by a major push for education: the introduction of free public schooling at the end of the 19th century and the huge expansion of college education after World War II.
The problem now, as Cohen sees it, is that many children aren’t getting properly educated. Public schools and the teaching field are deteriorating, and because only some students have access to computers and training, a great “digital divide” is arising, she said.
Overall, however, Cohen sounded the trumpets for continued economic prosperity. Computer technology and telecommunications still have a lot of maturing to do, she predicted, and as that happens, they will continue to carry the economy on their backs.
And so what if she was making that point only a few hours after the Nasdaq had dropped nearly 200 points?
“We are now just in the midst — we’re not finished — with the next technological shift,” she said. “It’s real, it’s palpable, it’s measurable.
“And don’t worry about what happened today.”