Top investment strategists at Bank of Montreal’s BMO Harris private banking unit said yesterday they are betting on equity market gains and believe the economic recovery is sustainable but caution about the risk of a loss of consumer confidence, according to a Reuters report..

Paul Taylor, chief investment officer at BMO Harris, was quoted as saying that BMO's huge investment portfolio is overweight in equities and still adding to that position, believing that stocks will rise amid economic recovery.

Meanwhile, Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at Harris Private Bank, BMO's US unit, said momentum may soon shift.

"(Momentum) is one of the factors that has got us into the market in an overweight position. We will likely soon move to more of a neutral weighting in equities, but we still believe equities will be the prevailing asset class over the next four quarters," he said, according to the news service.

Mr Ablin noted that stimulus spending by the US government is providing a strong tail wind that should continue to propel growth in the fourth quarter of 2009 and into 2010. But he said that boost won't last forever.

"At some point, even a little less than a year from now, we're going to be taking this patient off life support, and as we remove the tubes and wires we really have to try to ascertain what's going on with the patient -- do they have a pulse?" Mr Ablin said.