U.S. futures unchanged; 3 investment strategies to watch
U.S. futures are relatively unchanged as investors monitor U.S.-Iran negotiations. It comes after the S & P 500 hit a record high in Friday trade, posting its sixth positive week in a row for the first time since October 2024. European equities are struggling to find direction, with oil and gas stocks outperforming as crude prices remain elevated amid the uncertainty in the Middle East. In Asia, South Korea’s Kospi continued its recent rally, hitting another record high driven by chipmakers Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix. Here are three investment strategies we heard in CNBC’s Singapore and London studios on Monday to help navigate the noise. Weaker U.S. dollar opens door to emerging markets Colin Purdie, global chief investment officer at Manulife Investment Management, said his group is taking active bets across their portfolio and is “very positive” across Asia. Purdie said his longer-term view on the dollar “tends to be relatively bearish”, adding the dollar would become “weaker over the next few years,” presenting opportunities in emerging markets. “When you look at the emerging market space, be it in fixed income or equity, certainly not everything is born equal. There’s different trends and different impacts that are going through each of these markets right now. So it’s about picking your spots carefully”, he added. South Korea’s Kospi has ‘much farther to go’ Timothy Moe, Goldman Sachs’ chief APAC equity strategist, said the firm’s Kospi’s target upgrade to 9,000 is conservative, telling CNBC that strategically, “there still is much farther to go.” While acknowledging the Kospi’s run-up in recent months, Moe said there was a “perfect positive storm” for South Korean companies. He cited strong earnings growth and “exceedingly powerful earnings dynamics,” adding that companies in the memory sector were seeing demand “rapidly” accelerate, giving them strong pricing power. “The key debate in the market is how long the current super-normal profit cycle for the semiconductors can last, but we think what’s being mispriced in the market, even now, after the strong runs, is the duration of those profits. If they can last for three to five years at this at this elevated rate, then we think the market will go higher”, he said. The non-AI trade .FTSE 5Y mountain FTSE 100 over five years Anna Macdonald, investment strategy director at Hargreaves Lansdown, said the FTSE 100 presented attractive opportunities away from the AI trade, due to its relative lack of tech companies. Macdonald cited the index’s energy and mining stocks, financial services and pharma stocks. She said: “You can actually be quite broad brush in your approach to picking up a diversified U.K. index, which is really not that concentrated within AI.”
