Cautious Picks In a Troubled Market

Stocks getting beaten down. Talk of a commodity bubble.  Where's an investment dollar to go these days?

"We're really kind of stuck, whether it turns into a recession formally, or a stagflation kind of environment, neither of those are particularly good for equity markets as a whole, and so we're not particularly positive, and continue to be cautious," Andy Bischel of SKBA Capital Management told CNBC.

He's cautious, but he's also got some ideas about equity investments:  Tyco , Nokia , and Emerson Electric .

"We do like the industrial companies," he said.  "They all are big exporters or have big international operations, and all of them are in pretty good position, and their earnings are likely to hold up a...lot better than the rest of the economy as a whole."

Some commodity-oriented companies also get Bischel's approval.

"We also like things like Chesapeake Energy and Unit in the natural-gas area, where we think that the mcf [million cubic-feet] price of natural-gas ought to be over nine dollars, and ought to close in a bit on the ratio with oil," he said.  "Those things to us are very appealing in a tough market that we think is going to have a lot of trouble here."

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