While corporate earnings and economic data are the most encouraging they've been in more than a year, impatient investors need to realize that we're not in a growth phase quite yet.

Who's Talking: Bill Ralls, senior vice president of research at Personal and Workplace Investing at Fidelity.

The Gist: Most every parent is all too familiar with the dreaded 'Are we there yet?' that accompanies long car rides on summer vacation and the current mindset of investors appears no different, says Ralls. As we meander toward the road to economic recovery, most investors are asking 'Is the recession over yet?' with similar intensity, he says.

"The answer most parents give on those summer vacation car rides also applies to the economy: not yet," writes Ralls. Even though economic conditions are improving, it's still too early to declare an end to the recession, he says.

GDP, for example, is forecast to post slight growth in the current quarter, but that's after it has fallen for four quarters in a row -- the first time that has happened since quarterly records began in 1947, Ralls says.

Furthermore, the U.S. economy has now had 19 consecutive months of job losses. While the rate of GDP contraction and job losses have slowed markedly enough to suggest that the worst of the recession is behind us, there is still plenty of uncertainty about the timing, sustainability and magnitude of the recovery, he says.

"Keep in mind that this just means that the pace of business contraction has been slowing, not that the U.S. economy has started to grow again," says Ralls.

Who's Talking: Brian Cebuhar, trader in the fixed-income division at Raymond James

The Gist: After hearing from many folks on the state of the equity and debt markets, Cebuhar says he's finding "a decisive split between those who feel we are due for a market correction and those who feel that we are just in the beginning stages of a market rally."

And while Cebuhar is optimistic that both the equity and debt markets have more room to run higher, he's fearful of getting "caught up in too much of a buying frenzy in any particular market."

"Now comes the hard part," he writes. Investors are trying to anticipate where the markets are heading, he says, but with the historically volatile months of September and October fast approaching, the direction of the markets can be next to impossible to predict.

Cebuhar thinks corporate earnings, which came in better than expected, may have given the markets a false sense of confidence. 'The devil is in the details," he says of the latest round of earnings. And those "details" are cost cuts.

"Many of the increases in the most recent markets can be associated with companies getting 'leaner,' which is a nice way of saying they have laid off a lot of employees and moved businesses abroad," Cebuhar says.

Add in the fact that sales are down and Cebuhar is left to conclude that either the market is pricing in a big move higher for when sales do eventually pick up -- or investors are being "fooled by short-lived, unsustainable measures to boost balance sheets."

Examples supporting either case abound, Cebuhar writes, and thus the market will likely remain sensitive to both. The trader recommends taking a conservative approach in the near term by using traditional methods to manage volatility, such as setting up a diversified ladder of fixed income securities.