Federated Investors' Steve Chiavarone predicts the recent market plunge is only temporary and that recession fears are totally unsubstantiated.
Chiavarone told CNBC that he sees stocks soaring to new record highs because of labor market trends, inflation levels, the Treasury yield curve and credit spreads.
"We don't have any of the early signs of recession. Yet, we have a market where despite 20 percent earnings growth, the P/Es [price-earnings ratios] have fallen 20 percent," the fund manager recently told CNBC.
"What that tells us is the market is pricing in recession in 2019. We just don't think that is going to happen," he said.
"Our best analysis —as we look at markets and as we look at the economy — is that things are stable," Chiavarone said. "We're confident where markets are going to go over the next 12 months."
However, not everyone is as optimistic.
Declining global economic growth rates will boost defensive stocks and could lead to opportunities in emerging market currencies and mortgage bonds in the year ahead, asset manager Pacific Investment Management Co (Pimco) said in its 2019 outlook.
Higher interest rates and fading fiscal stimulus will leave the U.S. economy at a 30 percent chance of falling into a recession, the highest probability at any point during the nine-year economic expansion, Pimco said, according to Reuters.
"The models are flashing orange rather than red," the firm noted.