Sam Zell Doesn't Buy Some Stock Prices Based On Economic Activity

Where's the money?

“I don't understand the correlation between economic activity and the price the stocks are trading for,” said Sam Zell, chairman of Equity Group Investments and founder of Equity International.

Zell was a guest co-host on CNBC's Squawk Box Tuesday, where he discussed the issues he sees in stock pricing in relation to economic activity.

“The stock market went up, I don't know, 30 percent last year,” said Zell.

“Where? Where is it? I mean, I'm looking at operations everyday…We're missing an awful lot of bounce. And the stock market would of suggested that everything was 'Kum ba yah'.”

He doesn't think we'll reach 3 percent GDP, but suggested maybe 2.5 to 2.7 percent

“So far, I don't see the bouncy in activity levels,” said Zell.

Related: Samsung Profits Sink For Second Quarter In A Row

Zell noted waning enthusiasm and also emphasized making long-term investments and noted his disbelief in how much certain market pockets are overvalued.

“There are pockets such as the technology area where I think the pricing is crazy. I mean I once figured out in [2006 or 2007] at the time if Cisco CSCO was worth what the stock was trading at it would own, it would represent 25 percent of the U.S. economy in 10 years…It's unsustainable and so is a lot of this other stuff,” said Zell.

Jason Cunningham had no position with the mentioned entities while writing this article. Visit Jason on Twitter at @JasonCunningham and @Benzinga.