Stocks Are the Only Option for Investors: Jack Welch

Welch: Investors' Hunt for Yield Leads Them Stocks

Insight on the markets now, with Jack Welch, former GE chairman & CEO; Jason Trennert, Strategas Research Partners; and Jim Iuorio, TJM Institutional Services.

Investors are being "forced to get back in" the stock market, former General Electric chief Jack Welch told CNBC on Thursday.

"You're sitting there waiting. You're getting no money. Your CDs are doing nothing. Treasurys are doing nothing," Welch said in a "Squawk Box" interview. "What do you do?"

"Everyone's decided they can't get yield so they have to go in the risk trades. ... There's no question, you're forced to get back in." He also said this is happening despite a stock market performance that's "clearly ahead" of the "real economy."

Welch, founder of the Jack Welch Management Institute, said, "This economy is a 2 percent type economy."

"This is not a bad economy," he added, "but it's nothing like the stock market."

Welch argued that the stock market is artificially based on where investors put their money. Nobody's fighting the easy money policies of the Fed and other world central banks, he pointed out. "There's liquidity everywhere."

—By CNBC's Matthew J. Belvedere; Follow him on Twitter @Matt_SquawkCNBC