COEUR d'ALENE - Frederic Dickson, chief investment strategist for D.A. Davidson and Co., said Thursday the economy is not headed for another recession.

Dickson, speaking at the Best Western Coeur d'Alene Inn, said the country is on a patient and trying growth track.

Important, he said, is small businesses now are finally getting the financing they need to grow and hire, after being shut out for the past two years.

He said home prices will be flattening out during the next 12 months as a result of the Federal Reserve maintaining ultra-low interest rates. Home prices in metropolitan markets have seen small increases in April, May and June. Foreclosures are declining.

The central bank plans to keep interest rates at current low rates through mid-2013.

"I have no reason to doubt what they're saying," he told the audience.

The low interest rates make high yielding stocks look very attractive, he said.

He said the odds of another round of quantitative easing "are fairly low."

He said the second round, known as QE2, had no, or little, impact on creating jobs.

Dickson said unemployment remains stubbornly high, with no significant relief in sight.

He pointed to a job-skills shortfall.

Many open jobs require higher education or specialized training, and many unemployed are unwilling or unable to seek jobs in different industries requiring different job skills or get training. He said there are geographical constraints, too, as people are unwilling to look or move out of their region. Some can't move because they are unable to sell homes, in some cases because homeowners owe more on mortgages than the homes are worth.

"I want to hear more (about) retraining," in President Barack Obama's jobs plan, which he unveiled nationally in a televised speech.

He said there must be "retraining a workforce for jobs in place, or those to be created."

He said there are currently 5 to 7 million open, unfilled jobs in the U.S.

Among the other restraints to employment have been workers' unwillingness to accept jobs that pay less than jobs that have been lost.

On the stock market, he said D.A. Davidson sees it swinging in a wide trading range from negative 5 percent to gains of 15 percent around the current price level for the next 12 months. That outlook will remain until employment improves and housing prices stabilize.