Unnamed Investor Analyst
Appearances
WSJ What’s News
White House Scales Back Planned April Tariffs
A lot of investors feel like if they can have their money not just in the U.S., but in Europe and China and commodities like gold, it'll make them feel less like the value of their portfolio is tied to the day-to-day actions of the White House.
WSJ What’s News
White House Scales Back Planned April Tariffs
Yeah, so for the investors who I spoke to, there's two big factors going into this. The first is uncertainty in the United States. President Donald Trump's policies and the potential trade standoff he started has many investors worried that economic growth might be dampened in the coming years, which makes having a lot of your portfolio in U.S. stocks less desirable.
WSJ What’s News
White House Scales Back Planned April Tariffs
And the second factor is that many markets that many investors brushed off over the years abroad are actually doing pretty well this year. The European index and indexes in Asia are in many cases outperforming the S&P 500. And so one investor I talked to, he's born in Canada, and he understands that the U.S. stock market is, in his opinion, overpriced.
WSJ What’s News
White House Scales Back Planned April Tariffs
But he also has just taken many of President Trump's remarks about Canada personally, especially the comment about annexing Canada and making it the 51st state. And so these factors combined when put together have made him really want to just totally pull out of the U.S. stock market, even though for years that's where the majority of his equities were.
WSJ What’s News
White House Scales Back Planned April Tariffs
Well, I think part of it is that for the past couple of years, the US has been experiencing this massive bull market and everyone's just gotten really used to seeing their portfolios go up and up every day. And so the past couple of weeks, it's just this general sense of uncertainty and investors don't like uncertainty and the stock market doesn't like uncertainty either.
WSJ What’s News
White House Scales Back Planned April Tariffs
And so in my reporting, I heard from a lot of investors who just thought it would be safer to diversify. They feel like if they can have their money not just in the U.S., but in Europe and China and commodities like gold, it'll make them feel less like the value of their portfolio is tied to the day-to-day actions of the White House.
WSJ What’s News
White House Scales Back Planned April Tariffs
While the S&P 500 is down this year, indexes like the Stocks Europe 600 and the Hang Seng Index have outpaced U.S. markets. And this has left many investors wanting to pile in abroad to places like China and Europe.
WSJ What’s News
White House Scales Back Planned April Tariffs
Some of them are looking at stocks like LVMH and Alibaba, and others are looking at lesser-known stocks in the European defense sector, both out of a desire to help, if they live in Europe, defend Europe, but also because they see that these stocks have just risen enormously over the past couple months.
WSJ What’s News
White House Scales Back Planned April Tariffs
Yeah, so plenty of investors I talked to still acknowledge that US exceptionalism is going to continue to be a dominant trend. Many people think that the current stock market downturn is a correction, and they view AI as a major tailwind in the stock market that will continue to push the S&P 500 up over the next couple of years.