Stocks you should buy at market highs

The dilemma of what stocks to buy is particularly tricky right now. If you want to own shares of companies, you’ll be getting into a market that began rising more than nine years ago and now sits near an all-time high. The bull market, now 3,453 days old, on Wednesday became the longest in history. And the Standard & Poor’s 500, the broadest measure of U.S. stocks, hit an intraday record Tuesday for the first time in six months. So is it too late to jump in and pick up some stocks?

Pinpointing market tops is difficult. While Wall Street skeptics have been warning of a big drop for years, this bull keeps proving them wrong, and has risen almost 325 percent since March 2009.

That’s why investment pros say it’s wrong for investors to flee completely.

“That would be a mistake,” says Cliff Hodge, director of investments at Cornerstone Wealth Group in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Bailing out now, no matter how long and how high the stock market has climbed, may be just as risky as staying in. Stocks could continue to power higher as investors react to the economy’s fastest growth in four years and corporate America’s best stretch of profitability since 2010.

There are enough risks, such as a fullfledged trade war with China breaking out or interest rates spiking higher than anticipated, to remind investors that going all-in this late in a bull run is not prudent, either.

“The ninth year of a bull market is not the time to plan for onward and upward,” says Rob Arnott, founder and chairman of Research Affiliates, a money management firm in Newport Beach, California.

Investors need to strike a balance. They should spread their risk around, buy stocks that offer better value than recent high fliers such as popular but pricey Netflix and look for opportunities of good reward with lower risk.

Here are some stocks and other investment approaches to consider:

“The ninth year of a bull market is not the time to plan for onward and upward.”