On the Hunt for Stock Bargains
Attention, bargain hunters: Thought about buying into a Chinese search-engine company? How about something in the consumer staples area? Here's your chance, two fund managers told CNBC Tuesday.
"I would be buying at these levels. We’ve seen the market pull back pretty signficiantly off the peak of a month ago," said Michael Sansoterra, lead portfolio director at Ridgeworth Large Cap Growth Fund. "This gives us an opportunity to look at some companies we like."
That list starts with Baidu , the Chinese search-engine company, which is to China what Google is to the U.S., Sansoterra said.
"We've seen that company pull back to $130 a share on some fears of some fraudulent advertising," he said, "but when you have north of 200,000 advertisers, you’re going to get a few [bad ones] here and there. It's irrelevant to the numbers. The pullback in the stock looks pretty attractive."
Sansoterra's other picks include BE Aerospace and Priceline.com.
An area he'd avoid? Financials.
"In the growth index banks are not particularly dominant," Sansoterra said. "A lot of these banks, Bank of America included, are not going to grow like they did in the heady credit days of the last cycle."
He is "looking for companies that beat investor expectations. Banks don’t fall in that group."
In the same interview, Jack Malvey, global market strategist at BNY Mellon Asset Management, said that while he sees a period of slow growth—between 0 percent and 2 percent of gross domestic product—in the short term, there are bargains in the medium term for those with longer time horizons.
"I like defensive stocks over the near term," he said, and that includes consumer staples, utilities, energy, and certain technology stocks. To get the best of these sectors, his picks include the S&P Consumer Staples SPDR , the S&P Technology SPDR , the S&P Utilities SPDR and the MSCI Emerging Markets Index .
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Disclosures:
Disclosure information was not available for Michael Sansoterra, Jack Malvey or their companies.
