"sober outlook" is a valid phrase and can be used in written English.
You can use it when describing someone's attitude or perspective that is serious and level-headed, without being excessively optimistic or pessimistic. Example: Despite the economic recession, the CEO maintained a sober outlook and focused on making strategic decisions for the future of the company.
While the weekly level exceeded analysts' expectations, total jobless claims still inspired a sober outlook.
Wells Fargo's chief financial officer offers a sober outlook on the economy.
The doctors who will help her offered a more sober outlook.
In an interview, G. Kennedy Thompson, the chairman and chief executive of Wachovia, said the economy had slipped into a mild recession and he provided a sober outlook for the banking industry, saying the crisis gripping the housing market was only half over.
Just the steady drip, drip, drip of bad news has turned me from my longstanding optimistic view on U.S. markets to a much more sober outlook for the next several years.
"But the sober economic outlook for public spending in Wales means when anybody says can we have more spent on something we have to understand that is more of less because the Assembly's budget is going down".
As much as hard work has sobered and intensified his outlook, Mr. Bierko said, perhaps the most lasting impact of his "Music Man" experience has been watching firsthand how Ms. Stroman created a work of such buoyancy even as she was weathering the loss of her husband, the director Mike Ockrent, to cancer in December.
In the Southwest this past summer, the outlook was equally sobering.
You can normally count on Garman Research, a specialist in debt markets, to be sober and sure-footed in its outlook the last place to find a surprising prediction.
He has had one or two disappointments - chiefly the failure to come up with efficient delivery of gene therapy - but ultimately his rosy outlook is best tempered by sobering personal experience.
A dim technology forecast from Cisco Systems sent stocks tumbling yesterday, as investors who had been upbeat after four weeks of gains got a sobering reminder of the economy's uncertain outlook.
