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The world’s largest asset manager says investors may want to think twice before betting the farm on US markets.
In an interview with CNBC TV-18, Ben Powell, chief of Middle East & APAC at BlackRock Investment Institute, says he’s looking at other regions to invest in as uncertainty builds in the US due to a weakening dollar and trade tensions.
Says Powell,
“Having all your eggs in one basket, even a beautiful basket like the US, feels a bit riskier.”
The analyst says BlackRock is looking at emerging markets like India as potential candidates to outperform the US, noting strong labor force growth, technology gains, heightened geopolitical relevance and favorable demographic trends.
“We like India, yes. We think India is the right side of a lot of these huge tectonic shifts that we’re seeing. So India, in terms of the geopolitics… Clearly, India is of course a kind of continent-sized country and economy, and everyone wants to be friends with India. It’s neck and neck at the moment but potentially India’s GDP will be overtaking Japan’s relatively soon in the next few quarters…
And I still think, if I can say so, what some of the foreigners still fail to understand is the amazing technological productivity advances we’ve seen in India over the last years.”
However, Powell also concedes that BlackRock is still overweight US equities and doesn’t discount the possibility that the American stock market can rip higher from here, noting that artificial intelligence (AI) can be the “megaforce” that can act as a tailwind that offsets other concerns in the market.
