While some experts are calling for an end to the six-year bull market for stocks this year, star money manager Ken Fisher begs to differ.
"In 2015 expect an S&P 500 and global bull market extension of 15 percent-plus," he writes in
Forbes magazine. A 15 percent gain for the year would put the S&P 500 at 2,368. It traded at 2,054 Thursday morning.
As for Fisher's reasoning, "third years of presidents' terms haven't gone negative since 1939. . . . Average third-year return? 18.5 percent," he says.
Last year, he explained that there are only two reasons bull markets die: "running out of steam after climbing to the top of the wall of worry, or an emerging wallop of big badness that surprises everyone."
"Today's sentiment is far from the euphoria in John Templeton's great wall of worry depiction, which holds that 'bull markets are born on pessimism, grow on skepticism, mature on optimism and die on euphoria," Fisher was referring to the legendary money manager.
Among the stocks Fisher recommends are steelmaker Nucor, telecommunications titan Verizon, pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline and BNP Paribas, France's largest bank.
Some other top stock gurus are bullish too.
MarketWatch columnist Howard Gold surveyed several big-time stock market gurus who were bullish on stocks last year, and they remain that way this year, "if a bit less enthusiastically, because the bull market is a year older."
The list includes Laszlo Birinyi, president of Birinyi Associates; Jeremy Siegel, finance professor at University of Pennsylvania, and Sam Stovall, managing director of U.S. equity strategy for S&P Capital IQ.
Birinyi believes the S&P 500 index will register "a modest gain of just under 3 percent in the first quarter to 2,120, which would be the top of the current trading range," according to a commentary he wrote last week.
Siegel told CNBC that stocks will keep rising this year thanks to low interest rates. But the Dow Jones Industrial Average "will have more difficulty touching 20,000 in 2015 than hitting 18,000 this year," because stocks are closer to their fair-market value.
Stovall predicts the S&P 500 will reach 2,250 this year. "Since 1945, the S&P 500 gained an average 15 percent during the third year of the presidential cycle," he explained.
In addition, Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist at Wells Capital Management predicts "a good year on Main Street but a more challenging environment for Wall Street," as the Fed raises short-term interest rates. "While the stock market may end the year a bit higher around 2,150, it may also experience a significant correction of 10 percent to 15 percent sometime during the year," he wrote this week.
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