Barron's 2009 Roundtable Summary Part II: Opportunities for a “Grizzly” Bear Market.

In Barron’s Roundtable’s second installment, four strategists (Bill Gross, Felix Zulauf, Archie MacAllaster and Abby Cohen) offer up some investment ideas and thoughts on the market. Included in this post are some of their key thoughts and ideas, as well as an updated summary report below.

Bill Gross, PIMCO’s bond king, says attractive areas of the market include preferred stock issued by banks; AIG 8.25%, due Aug. 15; iShares Barclays TIPS Bond ETF (TIP); Pimco High Income Fund (PHK).

Archie MacAllaster is one of the few real optimists on the panel, saying that “it’s going to be slow going, but bargains are out there.” He offers up four picks with his glass-is-half-full stance.

Felix Zulauf, on the other hand, is bearish. He believes that “fiscal policy and other interventions may stabilize the economy later in the year and into 2010, but economic growth will be anemic and disappointingly low once things start to improve. Less leverage means lower growth, lower profit margins, a lower return on equity, lower valuations and such.” He thinks we are in a secular bear market that started in 2000.

Abby Cohen, of Goldman Sachs, seems more positive than Zulauf in her analysis. She says that “Using a dividend-discount model or a price-to-book-value basis, our sense is fair value for the S&P 500 may be 1,100 or 1,200 in 2009. There is notable upside, but that doesn’t mean the market goes back to its highs. Because consensus earnings expectations are too high, the market may come under some pressure again. But in the next several months we expect share prices to be higher, not lower.” She goes on to explain how “correlations will move lower this year, and differences in fundamental performance and valuation will come to the fore. That creates opportunities for security selection both in the equity and fixed-income markets.”

By clicking on the image below, you can see our summary of the Roundtable members’ thoughts and stock recommendations. We will continue to update the chart once the third article is published.

Barron's 2009 Roundtable Summary Report