The Next Great Bull Market Is Coming Soon: Belski

Wall Street may be bracing for a U.S. debt default, but volatility (^VIX) is falling and stocks are rising thanks to a continued streak of strong corporate earnings reports, with IBM (IBM) and Morgan Stanley (MS) among the latest to beat the street. The long-term picture looks rosy for corporate America according to Brian Belski, chief investment strategist at Oppenheimer. He says, "American companies are the best positioned companies right now for the next cycle, which we believe we're on the precipice of the next great secular bull market."

Belski says right here, right now staying invested matters. "The next 10-years we want investors to be overweight stocks. Over the next three to six weeks, two to three months, we think we have a lot of consternation and volatility involved in the equity markets around the world," he says.

Despite short-term headwinds (European contagion, U.S. debt negotiations), which are arguablyalready priced into the market, "2012 will be a year that will be defined by job growth," says Belski. This is a welcomed notion for the 9.2% of Americans looking for jobs.

But the optimistic view seems contingent upon Washington and Wall Street playing nice. Belski's hope is to see policy that will fuel business, thus jobs and the recovery. With corporate America sitting on a record-high $2 trillion in cash, he says U.S. companies need incentives to hire, to repatriate cash, and to pay dividends. "We have a burgeoning asset class developing called dividend growth and we have to provide investors with an outlet to sell their bonds, because the next great move collectively is that interest rates are going higher," says Belski.

Higher rates will cause a negative performance in bonds, send investors looking for new high quality assets, and Belski argues, dividend growth provides just the right opportunity.

Or does it? Macke doesn't see dividend growth driving stocks higher. He points to Microsoft (MSFT), a company that has increased its dividend for six years in a row, is yielding 2.4%, and recently sunk $8.5 billion to buy Skype. "As an investor, I'd rather be long Apple (AAPL), who has a huge cash pile, but they're putting it to work for me rather than getting that cash back," says Macke.