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Five Stock Picks and a Short-Term S&P Call

Published: Monday, 16 Nov 2009 | 5:13 PM ET

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By: JeeYeon Park
CNBC News Associate

Markets opened higher on Monday, continuing two weeks of gains. Will the markets continue to rise or should investors start to be cautious? Chuck Akre, portfolio manager at Akre Focus Fund, and Uri Landesman, head of global growth at ING Investment Management, shared their market outlooks. (See their stock and sector picks, below.)

“One has to be cautious…people are forgetting where we were a year ago,” Akre told CNBC.

“From a risk point of view, holding some level of cash in this market is a good idea, even though we’re missing this tail of the rise.”

Akre expects that it will take a long time for the consumer to get back to the market and that the next decade is “not going to look like the last one.”

However, he said that businesses that are not directly tied to the consumer will do well.

Counterpoint: 'Undervalued' Consumer Plays?

In the meantime, Landesman said he is confident that the markets will see 1,175 on the S&P in the "reasonably short-term."

“We definitely will need the consumer to join the party and he clearly hasn’t so far,” he said. “All of our proprietary indicators on the enterprise [side] have turned positive. All of the consumers ones are still at recessionary levels. So the consumer has to participate for this rally to have any legs."

But Landesman said unemployment is expected to peak in the next couple of months and as a result, more people will eventually be employed and wages will rise for those already with jobs. Therefore, he said he likes the consumer discretionary sector.

“It's a little bit of a second derivative, but you have to catch these trends early…I’m not wildly enthusiastic, but I’m more enthusiastic than consensus and that’s why we’re finding undervalued consumer discretionary stocks to buy here.”

Landesman’s Sector Favorites:

Consumer Discretionary

Technology

Financials

Energy

Akre’s Stock Picks:

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