'Easy Money' Has Come and Gone: Five Spot

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Stuart Quint, manager of the Aberdeen U.S. Equity Fund(GXXAX), says consumer-staples stocks are cheap after investors made "easy money" in the equity-market rebound.

The mutual fund has risen 23% this year, better than 78% of peers tracked by Morningstar. Over the past three years, the Aberdeen U.S. Equity Fund has lost an annual average of 1.1%, less than 82% of its rivals.

Welcome to TheStreet.com's Fund Manager Five Spot, where America's top mutual fund managers give their best stock picks in five fast and furious questions.

Are you bullish or bearish?

Quint: By definition, the easy money has been made in this recent rebound of the stock market. Whether the stock market can continue to go higher is the question. Unemployment trends, which feed into income and spending, and therefore companies' revenues, will ultimately be the deciding factor. The team at Aberdeen focuses on companies that we believe will survive the tough times and have the potential to prosper once this recession ends.

What is your favorite sector?

Quint: Consumer staples are one area that we are overweight. We believe that our holdings in consumer staples have the potential to deliver steady earnings with relatively lower risk and are trading materially below their historic price-to-earnings multiples.

What is your top stock pick?

Quint: State Street(STT) is a name that we are following. The company benefits from the increasingly global nature of capital markets along with consolidation in providers of back-office services for large pensions. Over time, we think that the stock's multiple could rerate due to its ample capital base and an attractive, yet sustainable, organic growth rate.