Bob Doll still thinks he hears the bell ringing. A week and a half ago, BlackRock's vice chairman and global chief investment officer of equities famously told CNBC, "Nobody rings the bell at the bottom, but I think I hear a bell ringing."
Nearing the end of a week that included a one-day rally of nearly four hundred points in the Dow Jones Industrials, Doll continues to see signs that the economy is bottoming out.
"Don't get me wrong, we've got more bad news to come -- a weak economy, weak consumer, more credit problems -- but...the path of least resistance, starting about three weeks ago, was to the upside," he said.
One important positive sign he sees involves the market's ability to resist downbeat economic statistics.
"I think the market is beginning to shrug off some of the bad news," Doll said. "We had a not-very-good [jobless] claim number yesterday, and the market shrugged it off a bit and did just fine."
He predicts that the numbers will soon bear out his bullishness.
""I think the quarter we are now in, the second quarter of 2008, will be the fourth and last quarter of negative comparisons," he said.