Julian Robertson is high on plastic, and down on gold.

Robertson, a hedge fund pioneer, said he is constructive on MasterCard and Visa, citing growth potential for each credit card issuer.

And Robertson, unlike David Einhorn, is bearish on gold as a hedge against inflation, calling shorting the bond market a better hedge.

Einhorn, head of Greenlight Capital, said on Monday he favored gold as a hedge against inflation and a major currency crisis. Einhorn gave his prognostication at an investment management conference in New York.

But Robertson, following Einhorn, told the audience at the conference that going bullish on gold was “certifiably crazy.”

Google and Intel Corp. earned praise from Robertson, who cited Google, which began as an Internet search engine headquartered in California and has grown to a publicly-traded company worth $550 a share, as still growing.

North Carolina native Robertson worked as a stockbroker before founding Tiger Management, a company esteemed as a proving ground for hedge fund talent. A “Tiger Cub” is a term coined to describe a trader who worked for Robertson before lighting out on his own. Lee Ainslie, Dwight Anderson, Stephen Mandel and Paul Touradji all worked for Robertson; and each went on to start a hedge fund.

Tiger Management ran $22 billion until Robertson, after flubbing the dot-com boom, closed the company down in 1999.

After retiring Tiger Management, Robertson continued to manage his personal fortune, with success. Like John Paulson, Robertson profited from the subprime mortgage collapse.