Seek balanced core portfolios - Given the current gains in defensive shares, including technology, many portfolios are not balanced. Therefore, rotating portfolios into cyclical shares, small and mid-cap stocks, under-performing markets and more “value-oriented” growth assets makes sense. At the most basic level, investors need to avoid market timing
Citi’s Global Investment Committee remains invested in “Unstoppable Trends” while gradually seeking room in portfolios to add regions and industries that have collapsed under COVID-19 and can potentially recover.
Following a confirmed COVID-19 treatment, global yields may rise. Equities may also rally modestly on a post COVID-19 recovery, but performance dispersion may see winning and losing sectors rotate.
Investment Opportunities and Challenges in a Post COVID-19 Recovery
By Celestee Tan
Given the unevenness of the economic rebound both by geography and by sector, navigating global markets in 2020 is likely to require investors to focus on a more targeted investment approach. Citi’s Global Investment Committee has moved Global Equities from Neutral to Overweight, increased its Underweight in Bonds and trimmed its Overweight in Gold. It also added a thematic allocation to REITs.
As individual States in the US emerge from the first-order effect of lockdowns, the result has been a uniform, major jump in economic activity, but an acceleration in the spread of the virus across half the country. Citi analysts expect financial market volatility to remain high. However, improving financial conditions, supportive macroeconomic policies, improving sentiment by consumers and business suggest that the new economic recovery could endure.
Citi analysts have shifted from Neutral to Overweight Global Equities, increased Underweight in Global Fixed Income, reduced Overweight to Gold and added a new allocation to Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs).
