Latest news with #TravisPrentice
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Nvidia nears record highs: How to play AI momentum
StoneX chief market strategist Kathryn Rooney Vera and Informed Momentum Company chief investment officer Travis Prentice join Opening Bid to discuss current market dynamics, including the artificial intelligence (AI) trade, with names like Nvidia (NVDA), Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Intel (INTC), Broadcom (AVGO), and Micron (MU). To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Opening Bid here.
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Most US investors are 'underweight overseas,' strategist says
US stocks (^DJI, ^IXIC, ^GSPC) slump lower into negative territory Wednesday morning after showing signs that the market rally, fueled by last week's US-China trade war truce, is beginning to stall. JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon warned of an "extraordinary amount of complacency" in markets at the bank's annual investor day on Monday. The Informed Momentum Company CIO Travis Prentice and Franklin Templeton Chief Market Strategist and Head of Franklin Templeton Investment Institute, Stephen Dover, join The Morning Brief for a discussion on where they see the market broadening out, especially in foreign companies and international markets. To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Morning Brief here. It is time now for today's strategy session. US stocks opening in the red after snapping six days of gains with the rising bond yields sparked by deficit concerns weighing on risk sentiments. So, our investors still too complacent amid the recent market calm. Joining us now on this, we've got Stephen Dover, Franklin Templeton, Chief Market Strategist, along with Travis Prentice, CIO of the Informed Momentum Company. Thank you both so much for being here this morning. Stephen, I want to start off the conversation with you because we are seeing a little bit of so-called market complacency according to our sources here. What should investors do to hedge against that uncertainty? Where do you see continued opportunity? We primarily are focusing on the broadening of the market. Um, we had a very concentrated market the last few years. That's broadened out even year to date, and we see a further broadening. And, uh, to to push that a little further, we would advise investors to go abroad. Uh, we see a lot more opportunity overseas versus to the US than we have over the last, uh, certainly four or five or even 10 years. And so, with that in mind as you're thinking about the strategy and how that kind of sets up for where investors should be kind of placing their portfolio and and weighing their portfolio. I mean, where are you kind of looking at this activity and initiating any type of trade today on this? So our, um, it it's interesting. We just had our CIOs meet and we said something that probably, you know, you don't really like necessarily to hear on the news because it's not aggressive, but we did call it aggressively neutral. That right now the market, we think the market's going to be pretty much sideways for the rest of the year. So it's an opportunity to upgrade in quality and broaden and probably look at where you're pretty far from the benchmark or pretty far from neutral and think about whether you want to move in that area. Most US investors and indeed many foreign investors are actually underweight overseas. Um, they're underweight and more broadly diversified, and that's where we look. Specifically, in terms of sectors, maybe a barbell type of approach where you're looking at growth, um, which would be the big tech firms, and then you're also looking at quality, uh, particularly quality, uh, um, dividends. And and then just lastly, uh, you know, what to avoid? You probably want to, uh, really look at avoiding, um, perhaps energy as prices drop. And you're going to have to be careful with industrials and consumer discretionary as the tariffs roll in. I think specific companies could do well, but as groups they're probably going to be challenged. And, uh, Stephen, I want to bring you into the conversation because one thing that I've been thinking about here is Travis. I'm so sorry. I want to bring you into the conversation because I know that you sent over some thoughts about international plays as well, and it was interesting. You mentioned France, Canada, China, Europe overall, Europe financials, a lot of different opportunity and only one or two things related specifically to the US. Is that a signal of what you're hearing from clients right now about demand for those international opportunities? Yeah, well, I think our clients, um, to echo what what Steve said a little bit is to stay diversified in this kind of tumultuous market environment. And so I certainly part of that is diversified by styles, but also diversified by geographic exposure. So, you know, we don't think it's an either or, you know, US or or non-US. We think it's all of the above. And specifically having a a a style of investing like momentum that picks up on trends kind of no matter where they emanate. I think if you look at the world stock by stock, opportunity by opportunity, it is a world of opportunity, and certainly we see some very strong trends, uh, as you laid out in Europe, uh, even Chinese biotech. Uh, we're seeing some emergence of Chinese biotech companies with some of the deals that we've seen lately. So there is tremendous opportunity even in these dislocated market environments. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Most US investors are 'underweight overseas,' strategist says
US stocks (^DJI, ^IXIC, ^GSPC) slump lower into negative territory Wednesday morning after showing signs that the market rally, fueled by last week's US-China trade war truce, is beginning to stall. JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon warned of an "extraordinary amount of complacency" in markets at the bank's annual investor day on Monday. The Informed Momentum Company CIO Travis Prentice and Franklin Templeton Chief Market Strategist and Head of Franklin Templeton Investment Institute, Stephen Dover, join The Morning Brief for a discussion on where they see the market broadening out, especially in foreign companies and international markets. To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Morning Brief here. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Forbes
25-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
These 7 European And Asian Stocks Are Crushing It And Still Cheap
London-based BAE Systems makes the Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jet and is benefitting from European nations turning away from U.S. defense contractors. Portfolio managers investing in non-U.S. stocks have been trying to get investors' attention for years, pointing out that valuation multiples overseas have grown much cheaper than stocks in the U.S. since the Financial Crisis, and this year their patience has finally been rewarded. The MSCI EAFE index, covering stocks in 21 developed markets excluding the U.S. and Canada, is up 7% this year, significantly outperforming the 7% decline for the S&P 500 index in the U.S. It represents a small dent in the decades-long disparity between the two—JPMorgan reports that from the second half of 2008 through the end of 2024, the S&P 500's annualized total return was 11.9%, versus 3.6% for the MSCI EAFE. That amounts to a seven-fold return on investment for the former, while the international portfolio hasn't even doubled. Some of that dominance is because U.S. stocks have produced much stronger earnings growth, but some is also because the S&P 500's average P/E multiple has swelled to 21.7x, while EAFE is only at 14.0x after starting in a similar position, according to the JPMorgan report. With fears swirling that tariffs and broader uncertainty will compress earnings in the U.S., international investors are hoping that gap can narrow even more. Asset management giants like Vanguard, BlackRock and Franklin Templeton offer dozens of low-cost international funds to choose from. Active managers that are outperforming the indexers are primarily doing so by zeroing in on European defense stocks and domestically-focused companies that are perceived to be insulated from the effects of Trump's tariffs in nations like Japan and China. 'We're at the lowest relative weight of the U.S. in quite some time,' says Travis Prentice, chief investment officer of the Informed Momentum Company, which manages $2.5 billion in momentum-based strategies. 'In aerospace and defense, particularly in Europe, momentum not only persisted, but accelerated through all this tariff turmoil.' Graeme Forster, a portfolio manager at Orbis overseeing $4.5 billion in its International equity strategy, agrees, singling out airplane engine maker Rolls-Royce, London-based BAE Systems, Europe's largest defense contractor, and German defense firm Rheinmetall as good bets. Orbis' international strategy has returned 10.8% annually since inception at the end of 2008, beating its index by four percentage points, and produced a 10% return net of fees in the first quarter this year. Rolls-Royce and BAE Systems are each up more than 30% this year already. Rheinmetall has soared 150% thanks largely to the German parliament's commitment in March to create a fund to spend more than $500 million on defense and infrastructure over 12 years, a stark departure from the nation's longstanding frugal spending policies. Trump has been critical of NATO on several occasions, attacking European nations for not paying enough to support the alliance, and paused U.S. military aid to Ukraine in March. That prompted the European Commission to unveil a 'Readiness 2030' plan in March enabling $900 million in spending to defend Ukraine and protect themselves from Russia's aggression. Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission's president, cautioned that 'the security architecture that we relied on can no longer be taken for granted' and urged nations to 'buy more European.' That's contributed to U.S. defense firm Lockheed Martin, which makes F-35 fighter jets, sinking 15% since Trump's election, while BAE Systems, which also produces fighter jets, has soared. 'Sometimes there's news and sometimes there's noise, and we've always had to figure out how to sift through it, but 2025 has been a particularly newsy year,' says Alaina Anderson, portfolio manager for William Blair's $1.1 billion International Leaders Fund, which recently added positions in BAE Systems and French cybersecurity and defense firm Thales. 'It's been news that speaks to a change in the structure of markets, the nature of relationships between countries and the durability of long-established institutions.' Anderson's fund is also adding positions in China despite its status as the chief target of Trump's trade war, focusing on stocks like the country's largest online travel company with more than 50% market share within China. 'We think there's low geopolitical risk in that name, given that it's really domestic-driven consumption,' says Anderson, with the stock up 50% since last August. Despite Trump's pressure in ratcheting up tariffs on China to as much as 145%, the Shanghai Composite index has lost a mere 1.6% in 2025. Prentice references Beijing-based electronics firm Xiaomi as one stock with momentum after tripling in the past year. It sells everything from smartphones to electric vehicles and could be poised to benefit if America's largest tech companies face harsher tariffs on imports into China. Orbis' Forster is more enthralled by opportunities in neighboring Japan, where the Nikkei 225 has roughly mirrored the S&P 500's losses so far this year. The yen has weakened substantially in the last five years, helping Japanese companies hire skilled workers cheaply in U.S. dollar terms, and Forster thinks the prospect of higher interest rates, which the Bank of Japan raised in January to their highest level in 17 years, could counterintuitively stimulate growth. 'Everyone is a massive saver there. Everyone's paid off their mortgages and they've got a ton of money, and it just sits in bank accounts earning zero,' says Forster. From 2016 until last year, Japan had negative interest rates in place, but with inflation finally returning, the rate hikes could make the yen stronger, ease import costs and improve margins for retailers and domestic businesses. Forster likes real estate firm Mitsubishi Estate's stock, with a valuable portfolio of real estate which trades at about half of its fair value, Orbis estimates. The developer owns most of the property surrounding Tokyo's famed Imperial Palace—its stock performance has been middling for decades, but it's rallied 25% so far this year, with rents rising meaningfully for the first time since Japan's 1989 market crash. 'The nice thing about a real estate business is as they push up rent, it's not a wage-heavy business, so they're not getting squeezed on the cost side,' says Forster. 'That could be very sustainable, because real estate is quite cheap in Japan, and you're getting it at half price.'
