The current volatile market can be a buying opportunity, according to Bob Haber, portfolio manager at Fidelity Investments Canada.

“We’ve entered into a more trading-oriented, bifurcated market and in order to take advantage of the volatility and put it on your side, buy when things are down and all the reports are about the end of the world,” Haber said during a conference call today. “And then if you’re trading-oriented, sell when it sounds like everything is great.”

The single most important question facing markets today, Haber notes, is whether the U.S. will sink into a recession and if it does, how deep it will go. Along with his Fidelity colleague, portfolio manager Chris Goudie, Haber is optimistic and not a believer in the inevitability of a global recession.

As far as the retail credit market goes, both managers agree a credit crunch exists, but say it’s a matter of leaving behind the days of too-easy credit and returning to the types of lending practices that existed 10 or 15 years ago. “There certainly is liquidity around, and there is lending going on but it’s going back to the p’s and q’s of credit worthiness,” says Haber.

When questioned about the policy actions of the central banks, Haber notes they have successfully increased liquidity, but that the stock market has not reacted favourably to slow reductions in the discount rate.

After the price of gold hit a record high today, concern about price corrections for commodities are inevitable, but Haber points to indicators outside the stock market to show that commodities — both those with futures contracts and those without — continue to be strong and provide an opportunity for investors.

“If you’re going to get in, it seems that the way to get in is to play that global growth through commodities and through the emerging markets,” he says.

And according to Goudie, the structural shift from rural economies to urban in many parts of the world — most notably China — means that demand for raw materials will only increase. And, he notes, these kinds of supply-demand ratios are significantly in favour of higher prices. “Unless we find supply to meet that growing demand the price over the long-term simply has to move higher,” says Goudie.