The CEOs of some of the biggest American companies believe the economy may be heading for a recession.
“It could be a hurricane,” JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Tuesday morning.
Yet financial advisors warn against too much certainty, or pessimism, over what’s next.
‘It’s possible that the market can rally’
There’s a difference between what CEOs forecast for the economy and how the market will perform, Karen Firestone, chairman and CEO of Aureus Asset Management, said Tuesday during the CNBC Financial Advisor Summit.
That’s because investors try to get ahead of what’s coming and price those expectations into stocks, Firestone said.
“The market always anticipates slowdowns and recoveries,” she said, adding that people inevitably resume their buying when they believe stocks are sufficiently discounted.
She reminded investors that the market bottomed in March 23, 2020 “after it had fallen 34% and we hadn’t even locked down for more than a week. That was the beginning of Covid, but it was the beginning of a bull market.”
“And so yes,” she said, “I think it’s possible that the market can rally.”
‘I think we need to…be very, very granular’
Another problem with sweeping generalizations and predictions for stocks is that “everything in this market right now is moving asynchronously,” said Jenny Harrington, CEO and portfolio manager at Gilman Hill Asset Management, in New Canaan, Connecticut.
Although there’s been a slowdown in the housing market, Harrington pointed out, airline and hotel companies are seeing an uptick in profits.
“I think we need to right now be very, very granular,” she said.
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For her clients, Firestone is on the lookout for discounts in the market.
‘There are opportunities in sectors and in stocks that have had their own internal recession because of what’s happened with the pandemic, or coming out of it,” Firestone said. For example, stocks in the advertising sector are trading at lower prices than usual.
“We can say, ‘At these prices, there’s something to look forward to,'” she said.