John Dorfman's prescription for a portfolio: A pharmaceutical, a defense contractor, a media company, and a technology stock.
He has no illusions about the bull market being back.
"I'm actually looking for a rally around October," the portfolio manager of the Dorfman Value Fund told CNBC. "I think the next couple of months, though, continue to look kind of rough and painful to me."
Recommendations:
Topping his list is Pfizer.
"As long as the economy is sputtering, the drug stocks are defensive, and they have lovely dividend yields," he said. "For instance, Pfizer is yielding between 6 and 7 (percent)...these are stocks that have been hammered down, in most cases, five years in a row, and they're selling at multiples like tobacco stocks."
He also likes ceramic armor-maker Ceradyne.
Also on his list is media giant Gannett.
"Yes, newspapers are in a secular decline, they're losing advertising to new media, but, Gannett has a lot more to it than that," he explained. "It has 900 publications in addition to newspapers; it has something like 23 TV stations; it has a lot of internet sites; they have a lot of ways of purveying information, and I just think the stock has been hammered excessively."
Rounding out his selections is technical component maker Ladish.