In a new report, BMO Nesbitt Burns suggests that investors should crawl out of their bunkers and get back into U.S. stocks.

Nesbitt points out that such “market imperfections” as excessive use of corporate options, inflated earnings, insider trading and unfair IPO allocations are now under scrutiny. “The fix is in for that set of problems, at least for the moment, although vigilance must be eternal. Caveat emptor,” it says. “Despite these issues, stocks outperform in the long run. Our work suggests that equities represent good relative value today, admittedly with the help of low bond yields and notwithstanding all the obvious problems the country has to deal with.”

“We believe the real story investors should focus upon is not the latest perp walk featuring some highly paid corporate scofflaw. Rather, the relevant news is that companies have already taken firm steps to rectify the problems that developed in the late 1990s and are well on the way to a profit rebound,” the report says.

While Nesbitt does not see an immediate equity market surge in the U.S. It says that current trends, “represent the path to profitability that will ultimately convince the markets that higher stock prices are fully justified.”

“Meanwhile, getting the gun-shy retail equity investor interested in buying stocks because many of his or her neighbors are being laid off is not an easy sell. That, however, is precisely the image we are trying to convey. It is time to start shifting portfolios toward riskier assets in the U.S. It is time to begin this shift not because there are no problems, but rather because U.S. companies are rapidly taking the right steps to ultimately fix those problems. For this reason, it’s likely that safe assets (Treasuries) are now overpriced,” it concludes.