Investors should 'pick through' for stocks that have bottomed, Gilman Hill's Jenny Harrington says

Published Tue, Oct 18 20222:12 PM EDT

Investors should be looking granularly at individual stocks to tell if they've bottomed and if it's a good time to buy, said Jenny Harrington, chief executive officer of Gilman Hill Asset Management. She said on CNBC's "Halftime Report" on Tuesday that the current moment in the market is not as bad as the 2008 recession or the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic. But she did call it "asymmetrical," as companies within industries and indexes do not move as a monolith. "A lot of people are hurting, but a lot of people are OK," Harrington said. "We need to remember there's a real mismatch out there. You've got Ark and those kind of nose-bleedy valuation stocks down 62%, S & P down 23-and-change, dividend stocks down nine. So there's a lot out there." Rather than looking at whether to believe in the current rally or not, Harrington said she looks at it as a process of bottoming that has started since June. While she does not know how long the process will take, she said it may be something that is looked back on as healthy for the market. She added the biggest impact on the market is sentiment, not inflation. Harrington said traders are worried about knee-jerk moves, but long-term investors should simply "stay the course." Harrington pointed to data storage company Seagate , which is down about 52% this year, as one that has already bottomed. She recommended investors look for stocks, rather than entire industries, that have likely hit their bottom by going through publicly disclosed documents like the Form 10-K, an annual report companies file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. "You can always find individual companies out there that have bottomed, that are the right price to buy now," she said. "I do not think you should just buy [SPDR exchange-traded funds] today. I think that you need to pick through." "You don't need to rush" to buy if the bottoming process is long, she added. "You can actually take your time as a research analyst now and do the research. Whereas for the past five years, you've had to scramble and do everything crazy quickly."