5 Stocks That Are 'Much More Attractive' than Financials: CIO

Although financial stocks rallied on Mondayfollowing the announcement of a merger between two of Greece's largest lenders, Bill Webb, chief investment officer at Gluskin Sheff & Associates, said he thinks there are more attractive options within the equity market.

"In terms of US banks, we have no exposure whatsoever," Webb said.

"There’s a lot of, in particular, large-cap quality growth companies that are paying attractive and rising dividends, and we think that’s a much more attractive place to be now than in the financials." (Second opinions: The 'Fast Money' traders look at financial stocks.)

Webb's stock picks include Apple , Pepsico , Newell Rubbermaid , IBM and Oracle .

Although Apple does not offer a dividend, and it suffered a selloff after Steve Jobs' resignation from the CEO position, Webb said it is a great time for investors to buy if they had not already.

Webb cited slower growth in Europe, a cooling-off in the emerging economies and persistent weakness in the U.S. housing market as reasons for his thinking that there is a more than 50 percent chance of a recession within the next year.

Robert Doll, BlackRock's chief equity strategist, pegged the chance of a recession at 30 percent.

"I think with unemployment claims basically being flat, capital expenditures hanging in there, corporate earnings being pretty good, we’re probably not in recession-land," Doll said.

Doll added that he expects third-quarter earnings to be "not great, but not as bad as the big decline in the equity market would suggest."

"Lots of companies we talk to say business is okay—not great, but okay," he said.

He added that although companies do not have much confidence in the future, "current results are reasonably respectable."

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Disclosures:

Disclosure information was not available for Robert Doll, Bill Webb or their companies.

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