President Obama said Friday’s positive employment report indicates that the worst of the recession is over. What is the economic outlook going forward? David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor’s, and Howard Ward, portfolio manager at Gamco Growth Fund, shared their insights.
“The worst has been behind us for a while—if you take out construction, we’ve been up three months in a row and three out of the last five months,” Wyss told CNBC.
“It’s a slow recovery, but it’s a recovery.”
Wyss said based on the employment number, he expects the Fed to tighten rates.
“But given the inflation numbers, I don’t think it’s going to be all that quick,” he said.
In the meantime, Ward said he is a “nervous bull”—and stays fully invested.
“I want to hitch to some of the commodity trade and I like some of the commodities that have been laggards, like natural gas,” he said.
- Natural Gas Futures Now
“If the consumer starts to participate in a bigger way in this economy—which has to happen to sustain this recovery—then that velocity of money picks up and we start to think of inflation as a bigger problem down the road, but it’s not likely to happen this year,” Ward added.
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CNBC Data Pages:
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CNBC Slideshows:
Cramer's 12 Stocks to Play the Recovery
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Today's Dow Leaders (as of this writing):
Caterpillar
General Electric*
IBM
Intel
United Technologies
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Disclosures:
No immediate information was available for Wyss or Ward.
*GE is the parent company of CNBC and CNBC.com.
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