Why there's 'upside' in the S&P 500 as the Fed lowers rates
The Federal Reserve kicked off its highly anticipated interest rate easing cycle last week with a 50-basis-point cut. Summit Place Financial Advisors founder and president Liz Miller joins Wealth! to break down how investors can best position their portfolios in a lower-rate environment. "So far this year, we saw the early part of the year really led by, we know, the mega-cap techs and they've held up fine. But what we're going to see now, and we've even started to see in the last week or two, is that some of these other sectors that are more interest-rate sensitive are going to start doing better, like housing and rentals (XLRE) and financials (XLF) and consumer goods (XLP, XLY) that really were struggling in the market the first part of this year," Miller tells Yahoo Finance. With the S&P 500 (^GSPC) at all-time highs, Miller notes that it is largely skewed by mega-cap tech stocks. "When we look at other sectors, they aren't making all-time highs. And our last high in the market was really December 2021," she adds. Thus, she believes that there is a lot of upside in the index as the Federal Reserve continues to cut lower interest rates. As China looks to recover its weak economy through a series of stimulus measures, Miller expects the nation's growth to impact US investments: "What's really needed is to get consumers in China to regain their confidence and start spending again. We look at luxury goods as sort of one of the easy views on what's China spending. We own a lot of multinationals, from Apple (AAPL) to Nike (NKE), that all do better when China is doing better. So we see this in small ways in a lot of US investments too." Miller views Nike as one of her top retail picks following the leadership shake-up. She calls the company "one of the most valuable brands in the world," and with the stock's decline over the last few years, investors can get it at a discount. She expects to see a "turnaround story" in Nike's fundamentals, and hopes to see new leadership return the company to its competitive position. For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Wealth! This post was written by Melanie Riehl
