Loreen Gilbert, WealthWise Financial President, spoke with Yahoo Finance about the state of the U.S. economy and stock market.
Video Transcript
JEN ROGERS: Welcome back to "The Final Round." Stocks rocketing higher here today on the heels of Chair Jay Powell talking and positive vaccine-trial news out of Moderna. We have all 11 sectors higher on the day, 29 out of 30 Dow components. Only Merck actually to the downside. We have the VIX below 30.
All right, things are looking pretty good, right? I don't know. You're going to have to listen to our next guest. Bringing her in now, Loreen Gilbert. She is WealthWise Financial President. And Loreen, you say this is a bear-market rally. What do you make of the action today?
LOREEN GILBERT: Well, it was a great day in the markets most definitely, but when we look at the numbers-- let's just look at unemployment. We have more people unemployed than we have small-business owners in the United States. That's significant. So certainly in every recession when people are unemployed they look for new ways to earn money, and maybe out of this we'll get new businesses because out of every recession, great businesses are born. But I'm saying that this is a significant issue structurally in our economy, and it's going to be hard to get those unemployment numbers down.
Even as you said earlier, if 40% of those are permanent, we've still got numbers that are higher than the Great Recession. And when we look at bringing down unemployment at maybe 1%, maybe 2% per year, that's going to take a long time to work through the system.
ANDY SERWER: So Loreen given that take, then where do you come out in terms of valuation? I mean, is the market even too high right now, or do you expect it to just flatline for two years because maybe it is ahead of itself?
LOREEN GILBERT: Well, what I'd say is it's definitely a stock picker's market. I don't think it's an index market at all. And I think that every company needs to be looked at as well as every sector needs to be looked at. Today, of course, we had some of the laggards from the past rallying today. But if you just look at the airlines, once again, it's going to be a long time before those airlines are back at 100%, even 80%. So in my estimation, that rally is overreaching.
AKIKO FUJITA: Loreen, you talk about some of the sectors that you like. I see health care is on your list as well, and I'm wondering how investors should be looking at that sector. It also seems like some of the bigger names, like we saw with Moderna today, are a little more volatile, and, you know, we see the moves based on the headlines. How should investors be looking at the individual names, or is it really as simple as going after a company that really has skin in the game in terms of a treatment or a vaccine?