Parking money in safe havens to wait out a summer swoon may be the worst move you can make.

So says Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist at Wells Capital Management.

And he’s not just talking the talk he’s walking the walk. He’s currently underweight high quality bonds, gold, dividend payers and consumer staples .

Huh?

“They could underperform significantly if confidence steadily rises,” Paulsen explains. And if history is any indication – confidence is about to rise considerably.

Paulsen says what matters most is that we’re in year 3 of the recovery. He says the last time we went through major recoveries – in the early 90s and early 2000’s – year 3 was an inflection point – it was the year that confidence started to improve, and improve significantly.”

“That’s going to be a big theme,” he predicts, “steadily rising confidence. And it will come when most investors are putting money in the market expecting another kind of environment all together.”

Of course you could argue that this time is different because of Europe. Who could feel more confident as Europe grapples with recession?

Paulson, however, again points to history. “The crisis will be with us forever but our sensitivity to it will ebb.” He believes Europe today is much like Japan in the early 1990’s.

“Japan was the world’s second largest economy at the time and while Japan went into depression, the rest of the world enjoyed an economic boom. Today, the rest of the world can go on without Europe.”