BlackRock's Doll: Equities 'caught in crosswinds'

Bob Doll, chief equity strategist at BlackRock, says stocks are being pulled in two directions and are likely to keep to a narrow trading range until economic data improves.

"For the past several months, stocks have been caught between the crosswinds of a range of positive and negative forces," he says. Equities have a number of things pushing them higher: corporate profits are strong, merger and acquisition activity is picking up, there is some nascent capital expenditure, and improvement in corporate debt issuance, he says. The Federal Reserve has said it will remain accommodative. US data may have been weak, but eurozone and Asian data has surprised markets with its strength, he adds. Pulling stocks in the opposite direction is a lack of corporate a...