While many investors are piling into areas of the market where economic growth has been concentrated and valuations are high, value investor Whitney Tilson says he’s keying on unloved blue chips.

“There are a lot of big-cap blue-chip companies that are trading at moderate prices,” Tilson tells Reuters. “At a time when everyone is getting enamored with high-growth darlings and commodities, that is precisely the time when we look to play defense and own boring companies that we think have a lot of growth.”

Tilson likes Microsoft, for example, which he says is a better play right now than high-flying Apple. He calls Apple a “fabulous business”, but says Microsoft is a better one that is trading for half the P/E multiple of Apple.

Tilson also says he’s leery of what will happen when the Federal Reserve ends its latest round of quantitative easing. “What happens when QE2 ends and the government starts to withdraw some of that liquidity?” he says. “How much of this is just artificial, deficit-driven, money-printing stimulus? And how much of it is really genuine? I don’t know the answer to that, but I worry.”