Barron's 2016 Roundtable Part 2: Lots Of Savvy Investment Ideas

• The cover story in this weekend's Barron's offers the second part of the Barron's 2016 Roundtable.
• The panelists share their best investment bets for 2016, as well as some grim forecasts.
• Other feature stories include a report from Davos and a special monthly report on alternative investments.

The panelists in the 2016 Barron's Roundtable share 31 of their best investment bets for this year in this week's cover story in Barron's.

"Part 2 of the Barron's 2016 Roundtable: 31 Savvy Investment Ideas" by Lauren R. Rublin offers the second installment of the 2016 Roundtable. See why the participants are bullish on the consumer and see values in health care, media and retail stocks. But the bears on the panel predict that stocks will fall further, and the forecast for emerging markets is grim.

"Investors should stay as defensive as possible. If you have to stay invested, stick with sectors such as consumer staples and utilities," says one bearish expert, who added, "The U.S. corporate sector has a relatively weak balance sheet. Companies have loaded up on debt. The stock market is vulnerable, and prices could go much lower. … People will be surprised by how low the market goes."

See which panelist thinks China is misunderstood, and who thinks the Federal Reserve interest rate hikes are done for this year. Also find out which expert sees opportunity in Puerto Rico's debt.

The 2016 Barron's Roundtable participants are:

• Scott Black, president of Delphi Management
• Abbey Joseph Cohen, president of Goldman Sachs Global Market Institute
• Mario Gabelli, CEO of Gamco Investors
• Jeffrey Gundlach, CEO of DoubleLine Capital
• William Priest, CEO of Epoch Investment Partners
• Brian Rogers, chairman of T. Rowe Price
• Oscar Schafer, chairman of Rivulet Capital
• Meryl Witmer, general partner of Eagle Capital Partners
• Felix Zulauf, president of Zulauf Asset Management

Featured this week are Cohen, Gabelli, Gundlach and Zulauf. Just a few of their stock picks are AbbVie Inc (NYSE: ABBV), Annaly Capital Management, Inc. (NYSE: NLY), CBS Corporation (NYSE: CBS) and Lowe's Companies, Inc. (NYSE: LOW), while they also recommend closed-end funds and currency trades.

The article includes links to the report cards for the 2015 Barron's Roundtable, the first part of this year's Roundtable and videos of the four featured panelists.

See also: Barron's Picks and Pans: International Paper, Newell Rubbermaid And More

Other Feature Stories

Discussion of climate change, sustainable development goals and the collapsing Chinese stock market were on the table at the 46th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The meeting's theme, "Mastering the Fourth Industrial Revolution," seemed to many outside observers as something of a sideshow to the main event: the market meltdown.

Barron's special monthly report on alternative investments features a rare hedge fund winner in 2015, a compelling case for hunkering down with real estate and an economic forecaster who says stocks are still overvalued.

In addition, find out what Barron's thinks the prospects are for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Co (NASDAQ: HMHC), International Paper Co (NYSE: IP), Newell Rubbermaid Inc. (NYSE: NWL) and more.

At the time of this writing, the author had no position in the mentioned equities.

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