Surging Crude Means Picking Shrewd

Big jumps for the unemployment rate and the oil prices on the same morning. Coincidence? Not likely, according to Christopher Zook.

"Crude oil, there's a tremendous imbalance right now in supply and demand, as well as the fact that you've got institutional buyers of the commodities trying to hedge out their portfolios against inflationary risk," the chairman and chief investment officer of CAZ Investments told CNBC. "The reality is, it's stagflation, it's coming, and we saw it this morning."

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So where in the world should a stock-market investment put his money?

"The best idea right now would be Applied Materials," he said. "We believe there's a tremendous growth opportunity there in the solar business, as well as the economy begins to recover in 2009 and 2010, they're going to get strength in their core businesses as well."

Zook also likes Procter & Gamble and Genentech.

"Procter & Gamble we like because of the defensive nature and the consistent performance of that company in an uncertain environment," he said. "We also like Genentech right now because of the new indications that they're getting for their core drugs; we believe that the valuation is very reasonable for the amount of growth that you're getting in cash flow for that company."

Disclosures:

Disclosure information for Christopher Zook was not immediately available.

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