U.S. stocks were lower on Tuesday, with the S&P 500 looking to close out its fifth decline of the past six sessions, as investors struggle to find anything that looks like a bargain following a long-running rally that has taken indexes to repeated records.
"Nothing is cheap," Russ Koesterich, chief investment strategist for BlackRock in San Francisco, said in a video on his firm's website. "I've come to say that reasonable is the new cheap."
Koesterich added that investors were unlikely to find an "absolute bargain" in the current environment, though "you may find some relative bargains."
One of those relative deals is in large-cap U.S. cyclical stocks, "which appear not only cheaper than smaller-cap and defensive companies, but should also be the biggest beneficiaries as we continue to see improvement in the U.S. economy."
So far this year, large-caps have run about even with the broader market. The S&P 100, an index of mega-cap stocks, is up 7.4 percent in 2014, compared with the S&P 500's 7.9 percent rise. The Russell 2000, which includes small-cap names, is essentially flat on the year.
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