When there is a lot of market volatility, Wall Street pros advocate that investors start diversifying their portfolios. But where should you be looking? Carson Group chief market strategist Ryan Detrick tells you where his firm is looking in the video above.
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So bottom line, Ryan, what are you all doing now in your portfolios that you run for advisors?
Yeah, not panicking, I guess, for starters, because we expected some volatility. We say, you know, stay diversified, right? You know, I've come on to you guys for a while saying, we think the US is going to do well, stay in stocks. Yes. But what we've started to do a little bit, we're looking around the world. We look at Europe, um, that potentially could do better. Emerging markets, maybe not quite as much there, but we look at things like gold. We've had gold in our tactical models for, for, for she was almost going on two years now. I think gold, I think hit a new all-time high again today. You know, so stay diversified. We haven't overweight equities. Yes. Do we still like the US? Absolutely still like the US. I mean, to us, like the conversation before I joined, we're more neutral tech, right? We think maybe you still see a little bit of lagging out of tech, and there's other areas. I mean, you know, it's look like low volatility, right? Low volatility is pretty much everything except for communication services and tech. Low balls up pretty good this year. Financials, industrials, there are some groups, like nine out of 11 groups are up on the year. So it's not like the markets down and getting killed and it feels like it because everybody's in mag 7, but stay diversified and, um, just continue to enjoy what we think is still a bull market.
Ryan, I'm going to take the other side of this for a minute.
Sure.
What if we're in a scenario where the markets haven't actually priced in a bad enough scenario? Like you're not the only guy coming in here to say, I still like the US, I still like big tech.
Right.
I mean, if these tariffs go into effect and they stay in effect, if the tariffs next week that we don't know exactly what they're going to be go into effect and stay into effect in effect, right? Like, you know, if you see the IRS, which has fired over many thousands of people, doesn't collect that many millions and billions of dollars of tax revenue, you know, there are some things here that could turn out not so great. Has the market priced those in?
Well, I'll put it this way. Great question there. One, I think we're all trying to figure out here. Uh, when I look at the over-the-top negativity, I think a lot of that has been priced in, right? When President Trump won, what did we expect? We thought, well, maybe extension of the tax cuts, the from 2017, some deregulation and tariffs, right? Now, it hasn't happened in that order. And that's what's kind of upset. We're moving forward with potentially extending the tax, uh, tax cuts from 2017, which could be a positive thing. But you're right, there is a lot of uncertainty out there. There's usually uncertainty, but again, that what helps us sleep at night is being diversified. Yes, the US hasn't done as well, but again, other parts of the world really have. And honestly, we didn't like Treasuries for two years. We started dipping our toe in some Treasuries because again, we think, you know, diversify your diversifiers. If we get a pullback in the market, bonds might do okay. And I know people were burned by 2022 because that was not the case at all. But look at this recent, uh, you know, 10% correction we had. Bonds did pretty darn well. So just have some bonds, maybe have a little gold, some commodities, uh, and and still stocks and it'll hopefully weather the storm from volatility that we might see or we will see, probably, honestly, around these tariffs, but once we get to the other side, we still don't see an economy with a recession. Just look at today, right? Initial claims still solid, you know, durable goods yesterday, you can pick and find problems with it. People are still buying stuff, people still are not getting laid off yet, and maybe it changes, but for now, this economy is still okay in our view.
