Fed will raise rates by year-end: blackrock's doll

Costs cuts and a modest sales gain helped home-improvement chain LOWE'S fourth-quarter profit rise 27 percent. Does the company’s strong earnings signal a recovery? Bob Doll, chief

equity strategist at BlackRock shared his insights. “We’ve got a lot of things moving in the right direction for the economy—industrial production, business capital spending, profits,

comments like Lowe's has made and many others,” Doll told CNBC. “This will lead us to some job and income growth in the months to come and gives us some self-sustaining mechanism to

economic recovery.” Doll described the Federal Reserve’s decision last week to hike the discount rate as appropriate and said the move will eventually lead to a rise in interest rates. “We

have to remember that we’re starting at zero, not one or two,” he said, referring to the interest rates. “Zero connotes an emergency and the emergency has passed, so I would guess that by

year’s end, the Fed would have raised rates by then.” Doll said investors should look into some of the global cyclical areas such as ENERGY, METALS, INDUSTRIALS and TECHNOLOGYSECTORS. *

Watch Doll's Previous Appearance on CNBC (Feb. 12, 2010) _MORE MARKET INTELLIGENCE: _ * Charts: Stocks Likely to Double Dip After May * Best & Worst Sectors to Buy After Rate Hike:

S&P's Sam Stovall * Stock Picker: Big Corporate Refresh Coming—Buy These _CNBC DATA PAGES:_ * Dow 30 Stocks—In Real Time * Where's the US Dollar Today? * Track Treasury Prices

Here ______________________________ _CNBC SLIDESHOWS:_ * Where The $200,000+ Crowd Lives ______________________________ _TOP ENERGY FIRMS:_ ExxonMobil Chevron Constellation Energy American

Electric Power NRG Energy   ______________________________ _DISCLOSURES:_ Doll does not own shares of Loews. ______________________________ Disclaimer