Marc Faber, the so-called Dr. Doom, may need a new nickname.
In an interview on CNBC's "Trading Nation," the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report editor reveals he may not be as bearish as some may think.
"I always tell people, 'I am a great optimist,'" he told CNBC. "Because one of the most dangerous things to do is to drive motorcycles in Thailand, and I have five motorcycles."
While Faber may now be a self-described optimist, he hasn't fully let go of all of his doom and gloom.
"You can't be always sitting there and saying 'Stocks always go up, real estate always goes up' and so forth and so on," he told CNBC. "You could have zero interest rates and stocks go down – as they've done in Japan until three years ago. Even at these very low interest rates, something can happen and dampen the enthusiasm for equities."
Faber believes that U.S. equities are fully priced. And while he says it's possible that indexes could make a new high, he thinks that the majority of shares would not.
When asked if he'd bought any U.S. stocks recently, Faber said he's done very little.
"The only thing I've really done recently is I added to my gold position about two months ago, and I bought some gold-related equities," he said. "But other than that, I've done very little because I believe that in this extreme volatility where markets suddenly drop 10%, individual stocks drop 10% or 20% in one day – it's a very difficult environment to make a lot of money unless you take huge risks."
And Faber said he's "too old" for those risks.
Faber admits to a gloomy disposition when it comes to the global economy.
