Goldman guru sees shares revival

IT'S OFFICIAL - the bull market is back. Abby Joseph Cohen, legendary Wall Street optimist of the dotcom boom, broke cover today in London to tell investors that shares will continue their revival next year on the back of a resurgent US economy and higher company profits.

Head of US portfolio strategy at Goldman Sachs - and best known for defying the bears by sticking with shares after slumps in 1996 and 1998 - Cohen told a seminar: 'The bull market is for real.'

Her confidence was echoed by Goldman's European counterpart Peter Oppenheimer who said that, despite the rebound in equities here, markets were still 'modestly undervalued'.

'We can't look forward to the 6% to 7% economic growth of the US, but we feel the consensus here for next year is too low. We believe we are moving into a global synchronised economic recovery,' he said.

Markets around the world have climbed since the last days of the Iraq conflict in March, when the FTSE 100 slumped to 3287 and the S&P 500 on Wall Street, now at 1046, dived to 800.

Cohen said the recovery was entering a 'second phase' of more moderate growth.

'We think the [stock market] rise is fully substantiated by what is happening in the US economy, which has pulled out of the lethargy of the past three years, and a corporate sector that has gone through extensive cleansing,' she said.