(Bloomberg) -- For Wall Street skeptics arguing the good times can’t last, there is plenty of supporting evidence. Equity valuations are stretched, corporate bond spreads are tightening and gold is at a record.

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The result has been a rush to hedges — options and other instruments designed to protect gains already in the books.

Alongside all the prudence, though, a vocal subset of managers has emerged whose outlook is decidedly less wary. Despite the headwinds facing investors at this point in the economic cycle, they say there’s reason to believe it’s still early in the bull run for risky assets.

One is Nancy Tengler, who helps oversee $1.4 billion for Laffer Tengler Investments in Scottsdale, Arizona. Convinced corporate earnings growth is greater than it seems thanks to a steep falloff in inflation that is also bolstering consumers, she’s pushing clients out of Treasuries and into a broader list of bets on municipal bonds, electrical equipment makers and utilities.

“The growth is there and it’s still driven by the consumer,” she said. “Earnings season will be pretty robust. We will see more surprises to the upside than to the downside. We are very bullish.”

Stocks rose again this week, with the S&P 500 climbing almost 1% for its sixth straight gain, the longest streak since December. Ten-year Treasury yields were little changed after a four-week advance spurred by the unwinding of bets on outsized interest-rate reductions. In credit, the iShares iBoxx Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF started the week with its best three-day advance since mid-September, while oil had its first weekly decline this month.

The simplest case for optimism remains the economy, where Jerome Powell’s Federal Reserve is undoing two years of restrictive policy as inflation subsides. Data this week showed both the US consumer and labor market are holding up, while bank executives issued almost unanimously positive outlooks as earnings broadly beat expectations. On Thursday, the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow tracking estimate saw another upward revision, and is now forecasting third-quarter GDP at 3.4%.

To Philip Camporeale, a multi-asset portfolio manager at JPMorgan Asset Management, it’s almost as if the economic cycle is “aging backwards and extending, because the Fed is easing policy with a very low probability of recession,” he said. “Macro volatility is lower today than it’s been over the last two years,” he added. Camporeale maintained the overweight in stocks relative to bonds he’s had all year and is adding riskier bets such as emerging markets equities.