Stocks shed losses Thursday morning, led by health care and technology. How should investors position their portfolios for the rest of the year? Tom Forester, portfolio manager at Forester Value Fund, and Dean Curnutt, president of Macro Risk Advisors, shared their insights.
“There’s a great deal of artificiality in the markets,” Curnutt told CNBC.
“We still see a lot of structural issues, the least of which is the mortgage problem, which is getting worse, not better.”
Unemployment also continues to be an issue, said Curnutt. He advised investors to stay in the highest quality and away from the smaller-cap stocks.
In the meantime, Forester said while he likes insurance and some of the bank stocks, they are eventually going to run into trouble after the first quarter.
“We’re concerned about home prices starting to head back down, now that a lot of the programs are off. Once the Fed stops [supporting] Fannie and Freddie, you’ll see mortgage rates come back up and that’s going to lead to more pressure on the banks—and probably more losses on a lot of the real estate problems that we had in the last year,” he said.
Instead, Forester told investors to look into some of the technology names.
“You have Microsoft that’s trading below market multiple."
"HP is still at around 12 times earnings," he said. "There are places to make money."
Tech Sector Alert:
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Other Market Views:
- Take Profits in Banks Before the Correction: Equity Pro
- Art Cashin: Beware the VIX 'Sell Signal'
- Cramer: Stocks Are on Sale–Buy, Buy, Buy
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CNBC Slideshows:
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CNBC Data Pages:
- Dow 30 Stocks—In Real Time
- Track the DJ Technology Index Here
- Where's the US Dollar Today?
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Other Hot Tech Stocks:
Apple
Intel
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Disclosures:
No immediate information was available for Curnutt or Forester.
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