Stocks: Lots of Room to Run

Stocks have lots of room to run, said Goldman Sachs senior investment strategist Abby Joseph Cohen at the Bloomberg Hedge Fund conference in New York Wednesday morning. Cohen, a 22 year veteran of Goldman Sachs, estimates that even after the 2012 market rally, stocks could rise another 10% to 15% in 2013. While Congress has given the U.S. population reason to worry about taxes and the fiscal cliff, the overall fundamentals of the U.S. economy are healthy, and consumers have money to spend, Cohen said. Moreover, the U.S. has been reducing its debt relative to its growth domestic product during the past few years. She noted that debt was 4% of GDP for the fiscal year that started in October compared to an 11% ratio in 2008. "We are slowly growing our way out of the most extreme version of the debt crisis," she said.