Things are looking good for cyclical stocks — those of companies in the materials, technology, industrial and consumer goods sectors — as their earnings and share prices are heading upward, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Profit for consumer discretionary companies is on pace to gain 10.2 percent for the third quarter, the best of any sector in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index, according to FactSet.

It's no wonder then that in the past three months, consumer discretionary stocks have risen 5.5 percent, compared with 4.3 percent for the S&P 500, The Journal notes.

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Stocks in other cyclical sectors have done even better, with materials up 8.5 percent, industrials 8.3 percent and technology 6.5 percent, according to the paper.

The earnings and stock performance has some experts convinced that the economy is sustaining solid growth.

"The recovery is no longer a debate," Michael Sansoterra, a portfolio manager for the RidgeWorth Large-Cap Growth Fund, tells The Journal.

"Things are getting better, they have been for some time, and you can fight that at your own peril."

However, The Journal notes, earnings for S&P 500 companies in the year-ago quarter were the weakest since the financial crisis. Specifically, company profits declined 0.4 percent in the third quarter of 2012 from the previous year. Earnings for the materials sector fell 24 percent in the third quarter of 2012.

Friday's report that non-farm payrolls grew 204,000 in October made some investors bullish about stocks overall.

"This is good news, this is what we've been looking for," Erik Davidson, deputy chief investment officer for Wells Fargo Private Bank, tells Bloomberg.

"The one thing that people have been waiting to see is an inflection point in terms of jobs and we're starting to see that."

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