Quarterly Outlook
Equity outlook: The high cost of global fragmentation for US portfolios
Charu Chanana
Chief Investment Strategist
Investor Content Strategist
Key Points
This content is marketing material. This article is not investment advice, capital is at risk.
“Sell in May? It turned out to be a month generally marked by recovery and consolidation after the bounce back from the April lows. Retail clients continued to buy the dip in equities and remained undimmed in their optimism despite mounting pressure from bond markets and hedge funds going short. Among individual stocks we saw buying by UK retail clientsof US assets, with strong interest in Alphabet, Amazon and Berkshire Hathaway in particular, as investors snapped up the stock after Warren Buffett’s decision to retire presented an attractive short-term entry point. We also saw heavy interest in UnitedHealth, with investors trying to pick the bottom as shares of the healthcare stock plunged. Eli Lilly and Super Micro Computer were among the other favourites. Among chipmakers clients remained net buyers of Nvidia, just, at 51% buys. Clients seemed more positive on AMD at 61% buys. Among favourites Tesla and Meta clients were sitting on the fence at 50% buys and sells. Quantum computing stocks were also in vogue, led by a surge in D-Wave Quantum after its strong earnings update. Rigetti Computing also attracted net buyers (60%), as did Palantir (56%). Microsoft was among the most sold shares on the platform with just 39% of trades a buy. Hims & Hers was also sold after a rally of over 100% saw profit taking. In the UK specifically, momentum in Rolls-Royce continued with clients remaining net buyers at 58% long to ride a 10% rally in the stock, while Marks & Spencer rose in popularity after a cyber attack attracted dip buyers and its earnings suggested a strong performance in the core businesses. Shell was also a strong favourite at 80% buy trades. Clients were net sellers of Vodafone and easyJet, both of which reported this week, while Barclays was sold by retail investors as they sought to take profits on a 10% rally over the month and 20% YTD gain. Although investors remained positive on equities generally, clients continued to hedge into gold with 60% buys on the iShares Physical Gold ETC in May. In the ETF space we saw continued retail dip buying with a strong 69% and 76% buy trades on our two most popular S&P 500 Vanguard ETFs. Among the traders, clients were short the Dow Jones on UnitedHealth’s decline and long Australia and France. In FX, they were mildly long the euro and short sterling and very marginally long dollar against sterling on a proportion of client trades.” Top Stocks Buy% UnitedHealth Group Inc. 81% Vanguard S&P 500 Acc UCITS ETF 76% Berkshire Hathaway Inc. B 73% Eli Lilly & Co. 73% Super Micro Computer Inc. 70% Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC) - ADR 69% Vanguard S&P 500 Dist UCITS ETF 69% Legal & General Group Plc 68% Vanguard FTSE All-World UCITS ETF 68% Alphabet Inc. - A Share 65% Alphabet Inc. - C Share 65% Nebius Group NV 64% Amazon.com Inc. 63% Advanced Micro Devices Inc. 61% Marks & Spencer Group Plc 61% iShares Physical Gold ETC 60% Rigetti Computing, Inc. 60% Tempus AI Inc 59% D-Wave Quantum Inc. 59% Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc 58% BP Plc 58% Robinhood Markets Inc. 56% Palantir Technologies Inc 56% Apple Inc. 56% Boeing Co. 55% Alibaba Group Holding Ltd - ADR 55% Uber Technologies Inc. 53% Glencore Plc 52% NVIDIA Corp. 51% Coinbase Global Inc 51% Tesla Inc. 50% Meta Platforms Inc. 50% MicroStrategy 49% Intel Corp. 44% Vodafone Group Plc 42% Broadcom Inc. 42% The Walt Disney Company 42% Microsoft Corp. 39% Hims & Hers Health Inc. 39% Barclays Plc 16%