Faced with the extreme market turbulence of the past week, money managers are staying the course and relying on their long-term investment strategies while also looking for opportunities amid the panic.
Kevin Burkett, portfolio manager at Burkett Asset Management, says his firm’s strategy isn’t predicated on timing markets or guessing where macroeconomic forces are headed.
Instead, it’s focused on a core basket of what he calls “all-weather businesses” that are less vulnerable to the wild swings of tariff-stressed investors.
“If the strategy isn’t pinned on timing markets, if it’s not pinned on geopolitical insights, then I think it’s more reliable,” said Burkett.
“The idea is … when we go into these sort of stressed periods, we’ve already done the work proactively.”
There have been extreme selloffs on the markets and a few big swings upward over the past week since U.S. President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs on countries around the globe.
Markets dove back into the red Thursday, one day after surging on the news that Trump would pause some of the tariffs for 90 days.
IG Wealth Management vice-president of investment strategy Pierre-Benoît Gauthier says his firm entered 2025 on the defensive side, and is now looking for good entry points on certain stocks as valuations become more attractive amid the volatility.
“If people are waiting for the drama to subside before they start to scale back in, they are going to wait for a long time,” he said.
“This is going to be an event-driven market, and we feel like we need to start thinking in a sense of accepting that and scaling back in because valuations are getting much more attractive.”
Investors should look into companies that are less sensitive to fluctuations in consumer demand, noted Gauthier.
“What we are looking at is also … increasing exposure to less affected parts of the market, and I think this is likely to be a common theme everywhere,” he said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 10, 2025.
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