To BNP Paribas SA’s Geoff Dailey, a crack in the US stock-market rally won’t mean it’s over. It will just mean it’s a good time to buy.
(Bloomberg) — To BNP Paribas SA’s Geoff Dailey, a crack in the US stock-market rally won’t mean it’s over. It will just mean it’s a good time to buy.
Dailey, head of US equities at the bank’s asset-management arm, said stocks may be heading into a volatile period as investors see if incoming economic data will allow the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates steady when it meets next month — as currently anticipated.
“It could very easily create some volatility, which we would see as a buying opportunity,” Dailey said in an interview. “We have an optimistic outlook on the equity markets from here despite, perhaps, a little bit of a consolidation period given the move we’ve seen since the beginning of June.”
The stock-market has dipped this month as the downgrade to the US’s credit rating and a slew of expected Treasury sales put renewed pressure on interest rates, dampening some of the optimism about the trajectory of the US economy. But even with that pullback, the S&P 500 Index is up more than 17% this year on mounting speculation that the Fed is done with its rate hikes and the US will avoid a recession.
“From a US equity fundamental perspective, our base case is we have a soft landing — or at the very least, a very shallow recession — which bodes well for stocks over the intermediate term,” Dailey said. “We’re seeing a plausible path to inflation continuing to gradually ease, an end to Fed rate hikes, and a re-acceleration of economic growth in the back half of 2024.”
Dailey said health-care and biotechnology look particularly attractive due to innovations in those industries. BNP Asset Management also sees opportunities around artificial intelligence, as well as industrials — an economically-sensitive sector that has shown signs of outperformance in recent weeks as investors expand their wagers outside of big tech shares.
“There are still some data points that we need to see in terms of inflation and Fed policy to get an all-clear sign for the markets,” he said, seeing the recent downward pull on the market as expected profit taking.
“But we think it’s going to be a buying opportunity for those names that we’ve done the work on and teed up to add or names that we have had on our bench as we wait for a more attractive valuation point.”
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