Legendary investor Stephen Jarislowsky is warning investors may want to stay away from the high-flying tech stocks.

In a television interview Monday, Jarislowsky, the founder and former chairman of Jarislowsky Fraser, said the outperformance of the tech sector since the start of the pandemic could eventually end in tears.

“Short-term, I would say that in high-tech and speculative growth stocks, there could very well be a collapse at some point, because that has been bought by the gamblers,” he said.

Though the rally in the so-called FAANG stocks – Facebook Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc., Netflix Inc. and Google parent company Alphabet Inc. – has eased amid inflationary fears, the group remains well above pre-pandemic levels.

Rather than chasing the hot tech sector, Jarislowsky said he favours more staid names that can benefit from long-term trends.

“In the States, the defense industry is perfectly adequate. In the U.S., I would say most of the big health care stocks are at reasonable prices. I would say that the oil stocks in Canada could go up materially,” he said.

Ultimately, Jarislowsky said he’s confident the overall equity markets will perform well for the foreseeable future as central banks across the world keep interest rates at the effective lower bound.

“These rates are here to say until such time that a solution has been found to raise interest rates without damaging the economy and putting it back in the sewer,” he said.

“As long as that happens, I think we are going to be okay with the stock market, because there are very few alternatives.”