Where To Invest $10,000 Right Now

the call. And he bounced Suzanne Woolley with Move, which is up now five pc since that contest. Yeah. Move, It's interesting. Moves traditionally been thought of as the greatest ticker of all time, but uh, not that day. It's so sad and so unjust. So we welcome them back to trillions. Uh. They work on Bloomberg News with me ericson Bloomberg. Can tell back before I was in b I I was in data and Suzanne Um. I was

contributing articles to Suzanne and the Personal Finance. You started a blog, right it was you did so many great pieces. We were like way ahead of the curve, and I got approval from Data to submit articles this blog when the blog ended, but then you allowed me to submit articles because I just I used to be a financial journalist, so I missed doing it. And then when I went to b I that got shut down. They want all my stuff to be sort of creative idea like the Radiohead.

She green lighted the Radiohead article, which became that one episode of our Top Performing. But this episode of Trillions is not about us. It's about you, guys, because you also do uh something that's updated quarterly on Bloomberg dot com that's called where to Invest ten thousand dollars right now. It's so catchy, like it just makes you want to click on it right now, give me the goods. It's a it's a little it's got a tinge of BuzzFeed.

I know, I know it's true, a e t s you should own and stop, you know, worrying about it. And we always give advice about, you know, checking your portfolio, checking your risks. You get the yeah, here's some spinach. Yeah, the spinach first, and then it's like, I don't know hallapeno. So in this episode of Tryans, we're to invest ten tho dollars right now. Okay, so I really want to know where I'm supposed to invest ten thousand dollars right now. Also, if you have any insights on how I can get

ten thousand dollars right now, that'd be great too. But before we kind of get into that, let's also just take a step back and talk about what what's been happening in the markets right now, because things got a little bloody for a second. Yeah, the market went down quite a bit last week, um and seems to be coming back now. UM. I talked to a lot of investors about it, and some of them were really brue leaved because the valuations right now are just so high.

So if you're just if you're a professional, this might be scary. But if you actually have your money, your retirement money in the market, and you're that money is coming out of your paycheck and go into your four oh one K and you're buying at these prices, it looks like there's not any good places to put your money. You know. People keep saying, oh, emerging markets are this great value, and then they've been really painful, really been really tough. And then the US docks look great, but

they just look at the valuations. They're really high and it doesn't look like you're gonna get my much return from them. So it's like a relief rally, a bit of a deep breath. But it's interesting because the market has been going up for a long time. None of the people you spoke with, you know, have this feeling that, Okay, this is the big one. The market's really going to go down now. It sounds like if everybody has that attitude, that's exactly why these have really short bottoms. They can't.

They really bounced back very quickly. But when when it was happening, it felt like, especially on Twitter, I mean, the bears were coming out doing touchdown dances where you know where all the bulls now and then boom, three days later, we're back to normalcy. Right. I was. Actually I was in Oklahoma, so I was out of the bubble. I was reporting a story and I nobody mentioned the market.

The economy seemed to be doing amazingly. Everywhere I looked there was new development, new new building, and um, I think there's a mood talking to these investors, like they see the economy and they just can't imagine a real bear market in these economic conditions because it just feels so good right now. On the flip side, let's face it, the stock market went up for a little while when the economy was a little was struggling. More so, can the stock market still go up now the economy is good?

In other words, how much can stocks just go up and up? People I talked to were like, Oh, I don't think it'll be another It'll be another year before it really crashes. But then again, like what's your risk return here? Like? How much further can it really go up? I don't think people feel like it's good. They're gonna lose a lot of money right now, but they don't see themselves making a lot of money either. So been with the people that you spoke with? Did they view

this last little spasm as a buying opportunity? Um? Yeah, a few people did. Nobody was panicking, that's for sure. Some people were investing more. I actually worry about some of the people I was talking to you. I mean, there's a lot of folks in their sixties and seventies who are stocks stock stocks. So if the market actually does go down, um, and they're on the verge of retirement,

they're actually in some trouble. So I actually do worry about now that we're this many years into this bowl market, where how far out on a ledge and a lot of folks are. I agree, because there's some really pretty subpower estimates for the SMP going forward over the next decade. I think morning Star respects real you know, injusted inflation adjusted returns of something like one point five percent or

two or I think maybe even lower. So if you get whacked in a downturn and you don't have time to recover, it's it's a really dangerous thing to have happened early in retirement because you just it's very hard to earn that money back. Okay, so let's get to the goods. I got ten dollars, would always spend it. Oh sorry, invested, that's a totally different article. Yeah, we'll do that next a fun weekend. Well, if you're a russ Coast rich um at black Rock, you would look

at cheap Asian equities. He thinks Japan is cheap, and Japan is usually trades little cheaply, but he thinks, you know, there's a good reason now why it shouldn't be trading at such a discount, and he also likes UM stocks in South Korea. And what do you like about South Korea? Well, South Korean equities, he said, UM are not only like the cheapest equities in the emerging markets, but even looking across like aquity is sovereign debt credit there by some

measures the cheapest asset class. So really it's just the pure cheapness I think as opposed to the real fundamental And Eric, you got a ticker that gives me some exposure there, yes, so on on these articles, I will give the e t F to play it. I picked e w J. I mean rust works at black Rock.

It's also the most liquid. E w J is a big Japan et F. However, if you are more cost conscious and don't need that liquidity, there's a whole new The fee war has broken out everywhere, including Japan, so you can get the Franklin foot see Japan ETF for nine basis points. Now, I mean that's Van Guardian level and the JP Morgan b b j P which is nineteen basis points, and they effectively do the same thing.

But some investors like the currency hedge in Japan, d x J was a huge hit, which it's actually doing a little better than a W J because the dollar has gotten strong. So if you think the dollar is gonna be strong, you might want a currency hedge over there. But also one of the interesting thing that Japan and South Korea, Um, you know a lot of these Asian countries and Japan aren't in an E t F together. It's it's weird. There's like emerging market Asia E t

F S, then there's Japan, Asia X Japan. It was tough to find them all together. So you could do E w J plus A x J. A x J is a Asia E t F that is X Japan. So it has China, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan or v A. The vanguard Developed Developed International has Japan, and it also considers South Korea developed, so it's in there. So you get both in that. But then again you get a lot of other countries with that too. I love that South Korea is still not always considered a

developed market. It's still emerging. It's like, I know, you go there and it's like, are you kidding me? This is like more advanced than the US. When I when I was writing at this, uh, this piece up both you know my editor and the copy editor asked me to check that South Korea was indeed classified as that emerging. So is Russ a recurring character? Yes, So that's part of this exercise. You've got this little panel. Every order you go back to them and say, what are we

going to buy a ten thousand dollars with right now? Yep? Yep? So how was Russ's last time? Last time? What did Russ? Um? He said, the same thing emerging Asia Pacific. He's the same thing last quarter. He You know, Russ is literally you know, I can't always get them to change things. So we got five, We've done one. Who's number two.

We've got Sarah Ketterer. She's with Causeway Capital and she thinks that a that value may finally start to triumph over growth, which is would be a really big change, which I don't believe. Eric agrees with no. Right, it has to come back essentially, someone on Twitter the Day some time in our lifetimes, yeah, right, at some point someone on Twitter the Day said what song best describes like value investing right now? And the answers were epic.

They were like, everybody hurts, don't stop believing. Um. There was some classics on there, and I realized that a lot of songs are about pain, and that's what value investing is about. It's about how long can you take the pain? But eventually you'll be right. The question is when, yeah, can you last that long? But anyway, Sarah um liked Global consumer staples and she actually chose uh tobacco stocks within the staples, which she, you know, said as the

most maligned and possibly misunderstood segment. Obviously an unhealthy segment. But she thinks that combustible traditional cigarettes are gonna go away, more people are gonna start vaping, which we're seeing, not that that's healthy might do, but and that you know, while the regulations about around vaping get established, the smaller entrants are going to have a harder time, you know,

with the costs of that greater regulation. So it gives the income been big tobacco companies and Edge and Eric, I think you found sort of a dividend index because part of what part of her argument was to find high dividend yielding stocks. So how did you screen for that? This was a tough one. Most of them are pretty easy, to be honest with you, which is good because I'm

usually doing this in a rush, but this one was hard. Um. I think I did a screen for it um dividend fun with at least such and such in staples, and this one came to the top. I started kicking it around. I'm like, you know what, this is pretty perfect. It's the first Trust morning Star Dividend Leaders FDL. It screens for stocks that have dividend consistency. Then it picks the hundred highest yielding names. It's heavy consumer staples and big

tobacco companies are in the top ten holdings. And it's got it. It's pretty good one point four billion, so it's got nice tight spreads, very liquid charges point four or so. It seemed to fit the bill for what she was looking for. Ben, how do you feel about investing in tobacco? Oh? I was actually thinking about dividend stocks and how I might not want to invest in those either. Tobacco it seems like too narrow a play to me. It just seems like for me, for me,

I'd like to be more diversified. But with dividends, I was thinking, like, what do you get like a two percent yield? Like rates are arising, Like you can do better with bonds and that's a lot safer, Like why why why why the dividend play now much less risk? You know, the FDL I think it it yielded a three point four percent So still though, I see what you're saying. These you know, we looked recently, you know, a lot of dividend e t F yield less than the tenure Now, I mean it's a lot of them,

including big ones. So the ones that yield more typically tip into utilities and staples, so you definitely have this rate risk more with those. So it's a you're right, there's much more risk. They look very innocent, don't they. Yeah, it's it's this play that we've heard about for years and years and years. You know, it's safe, you know, dividend stocks, But but do you lend that could change These people in Oklahoma that you talked to, you said

they're heavy equities. Do you think part of the heavy equities is going into high dividend yielding stocks to make up for the fact that they couldn't get yields. And I think that's totally true. They didn't want to be in bonds and they didn't want to be in cash because they saw that losing out to you know, to to inflation, Like they couldn't keep up with inflation with some of that stuff, and and now they have other alternatives,

I think, okay. Number three. Number three is Ann Harnett, who is the chief investimate strategist at Absolute Strategy Research. He's out of London, and his idea, his favorite move is to go along on treasuries. Um. We've obviously seen a lot of turmolent treasuries lately. Um, and this one, this was the one that seemed a little a little

um out of step with the news cycle. Yeah, yeah, that's true, but um, you know, he really he thinks that people should go by long dated bonds all the way up to the thirty year with fields close to three point four per cent. You know. He points out that even the Hawks don't expect more than four rape rises in the coming year. So that was one of his ideas. And the other another one that I thought was interesting was by US exposed stocks and markets that

have sold off aggressively for other reasons. So he mentioned things like Fiat Chrysler Automotives and Loxotic Group they both have over their sales in the US, and he sort of saw that as a a cheap way into buying US earnings. How do you feel about that one? Eric? For that one, I honed it on the treasuries, and he was he seemed to love all treasuries, the ones on the short end, the middle, and the long end

of the curve. So I went with g o VT, which is a treasury e t F that invests in the whole enjelata, so you get all the way you know from He's a treasury and enjelata. I wanted to check, I know you like it. I think a treasury enchilada would be very like organic and you feel like you didn't even eat after eating it. That's that would that

it would have iceberg lettuce. It does not sound like a good enchilado in your back to the Oklahoma crowd, this this focus group that we're now like, we have seen that over the last two years, most of the last twelve months. It seems Trump stuff doesn't really affect the markets that much. The media goes nuts, markets don't move, but rates. You really can see a lot of upheaval in bondy tfs. How do investors over there um sort of take in these gigantic variables like politics, and rates.

Do rates matter more or how do they feel? Like? You know, actually heard more about the hurricane than I did about Trump. What Trump said about the Feds seemed to spook a few people. He was mending on that. But otherwise, you know, I think your average like sixty five year old retire you with two million dollars in a portfolio or something, isn't probably watching the Fed as closely as as we are here at Bloomberg World headquarters. But yeah, we're in our little guaranteed Number four. Number

four is Jim Paulson of the Luthho Group. He was cautious as he was um the quarter before he talked about balanced investors might want to reduce their equity allocations in favor of bonds even though yields are rising. Um. But he was the one person who looked at gold because it has been down a while since spring, although recently it bounced back in all of this of this turmoil, and Eric picked a couple of good gold ETFs new

generation news school. Yeah, everything's g l D and i AU, but there's a ton of new ones out um the two. Because if you're reading this, and you're probably retail, you're probably really more focused on the expense ratio. You don't need g l d s highly liquid volume. You're not like Cowper's, Okay, so I went with the cheaper ones. So the newer there's the new school goldietfs are cheap. So for example, Bar and g l d M are

both eighteen basis points. But as we were writing this, Bar cut its fee to point one, seven, four nine, to be hundreds of the basis point cheaper than g l d M. That's how hardcore the fee war is getting how they how they how is it cheaper than the usual ones, your usual suspects, and how do they get it down that much more? So? Eighteen or seventeen and a half, if you will, is more than twice

as cheap as g l D which is forty. So you know, but when you're if you're used to paying for funds, like you know, getting down to that level it's almost a rounding error. But if you were thinking about if you if you had an option to pay forty dollars for something or eighteen or seventeen dollars that same thing, I mean, everybody would pick the cheaper one. So in a way, if you're going long term, those those basis points will add up, so there's no reason

not to use these cheaper all. They're doing the same thing, the story and golden the vault, and that's that there's nothing different about them. So I'll sequel. You might as well go for the cheaper one. G l D M, in fact, was launched by g the g l D people I called the minim g l D S minim specifically to stave off this coming fee war. So now they have like the big g l D which traders love, and they can still charge a lot. Now they've got the new one for Oh you want cheap, we got

that too. Now cheap gold. There you go, um Ben, I want to ask you about people you talk to, even beyond the Oklahoma crowd. What are the feelings of gold out there? I know on Twitter you tend to have bugs and haters and it's a very it's a controversial asset class. Do you find that generally people use gold or should they even use it? Is it? Is it worth it? Well? I think you have the same split among like regular investors you do among among professionals

like I don't see the point of it. If you're asking my opinion, I don't get why you would want it, especially these gold bugs who are like obsessed with with these ETFs, like that you have to have the gold in the vaults that they can like put like an identification code on and like they know it's safe there in case like the world comes to an end. I don't know how you're going to get your gold from London or wherever. The heck. This is if if the

world does come to an end. And further on your gold storage issue, it's um there's actually gold ETFs that store it in different places to appeal to those like paranoid crowd types. So s g O L if you are very paranoid, stores in Switzerland because and they'll say, look Franklin Roosevelt confiscated gold and they don't trust any Western country storing the gold. Then there's another one that will send gold to your house when you redeem if

you want. It's a huge fee, But people like I think that if you're gonna promise to do that, you must be actually holding the gold. I think at some point just by the gold bars yourself and like keep them in your basement and go that direction. And Steve Orman did a great story on that well, the question is where do you put the gold when you get it?

And all these guys, um, they're all guys. They do they do these crazy things where they like will paint it black and use it as a doorstop, or they'll bury it, ye black, the black thing on the ground that really hurts if you stuff your toe on it. And um. But the problem is then like they die and then people can't find it, or people put their gold in the ground and then they can't find remember where they put it, and so in a safety deposit box.

They're worrried about somebody coming to their house and like knows that you have gold and steals it. So they paint it just in case that one thing happens. Yeah, I've heard them using it in gardens. You know, they sort of outlined the garden and like gold bricks pinched black. I want to come to that garden, but you don't want to. You don't want to hang out with that guy.

All right? Number five, Okay, number five was interesting. Um Jim Hamill of Artisan Global he um is investing in sort of they as a shop, invest in solid franchises, stocks that are solid franchises, and he's into the digital payment space, which he sees as you know, pretty recession proof. UM A matter what, right. So he's big on a

number of stocks. They're domestically and abroad. And I looked at his the holdings of some of the artisan funds and they had stocks including like Visa, pug Ciguro, Digital World, pig Q two holdings UM. And that's just like a basic play on how we transact today. And Eric found up. I think you picked I pay right. How did you get exposure to that? UM? I think I just started typing mobile payments and the autocomplete normally if you just type of phrase, guarantee there's an e t F tracking,

the autocomplete will help you out UM. And sure enough there was. I had recalled something out there that was doing this, and I pay is the ticker. It's actually really big for an indie e t F launch with no big backing. It's from e t F MG group. It's five million dollars. It's had a nice run. It's up UM looks like since launching, and that's both in the SMP and XLK, and it's got an active share original exposure to the tech e tf so, but a lot of the names you've heard of in here, um,

you know, like a Visa, master Card, American Express. But then you get down after those and there's most companies I have never heard of. So um, it's a decent It passes some my my tests for being a decent mobile payments play. The question that I don't know, which it is hard to gauge, is how much of these stocks here get revenue from the mobile payment trend. That's another thing you should look at, you know, judging from this, it doesn't look like it's a bunch of stocks that

everybody owns repackaged and put with a new name. It looks pretty legit in my opinion. And million Is is pretty decent. Okay, So we got one more and it's our our token Vanguard guy because it used to be one guy. Now it's a new guy. Yes, yes, um Joe Davis who's their chief Global economist and head of investment strategy, because um, the guy we had before went to become Vanguard's first global chief risk officer, So so

his replacement. You know, Vanguard talks a lot about very you know, good standard advice that Eric Weltunists finds really boring. But it's one of those boring but important things about diversifying and sort of looking at portfolio, maybe diversifying out of fang stocks a little bit. But the main point at ink, you know, Joe Davis made was basically like over the long run, these blips they get canceled out. Um,

so he just you know, don't mark a time. Basically, this article Vanguard should is probably not the right person to ask because it's like, you know, where to invest ten thousand? Vanguard's is not going to give a fun answer. I mean that they're just gonna say diversify, and they every time it comes I read it. Every quarter I read it, I'm like, what am I going to pick here? There's take the same one. VT Barrick yells at me every year. I thought they're sort of like ballast, you know,

they're like the voice of yeah, you're right. This is like the you know, the vegetables at the end of this article, which is like truth be known, it's probably best to just buy v T I, which is the total stock market covers the whole thing for four basis points, but the sec lending revenue goes back in so it actually tracks perfectly. It's literally free exposure. You could not get In fact, we were an article one day saying this is as close to a perfect etf as possible.

It's huge. It's the third et f ever to hit a hundred billion dollars for a reason. It's just so easy and good. But it is definitely boring. Yeah, I know, it doesn't give you much to work with. I'm sorry about that. It does go up though, so that that's not so terrible. And if you only had ten thousand dollars, if that's all you had, like you probably shouldn't put

it all on tobacco stocks, totally know. If the article, now that's a good if the articles, if you only had ten thousand dollars, then the first five you gotta get out, moved them to the top and make that the end. Yeah. Absolutely, yep. So speaking of ten thousand dollars, you've been doing this for a second, Suzanne, how long have you been doing it since team we've been doing it? And what do you think you've learned by doing it

and asking this question of so many different investors. Um, I think I've learned that you know, there are so many different ways to look at the market, and also to just always keep a broad perspective, we get very sort of zeroed in on the spire at it. We're so you know, we're here in New York. We're just in our own little little bubble. Um. I would never have looked at South Korean South Korean equity market before.

So I mean I've I've learned a lot about sort of what the opportunities are and that there always are opportunities. I've also learned that Eric Beltunis is an invaluable resource. He always pulls through for me. I send him like a panick note, like I've I've got all the entries? Can you write them up? But usually have all but one. You're somebody who hasn't sent it in. I'm like, good now that that person is buying me a little more time. So, Ben,

what have you learned by reading um? I am the kind of person who just like reads the Vanguard thing because I'm just as I said, I'm like, not fun at all when it comes to investing. But I think it's really interesting to hear about the fact that these two really really smart people can completely disagree on everything or be looking at completely different parts of the world. And that's one of the great things about investing is

that it's very democratizing, very humbling. Ben, Suzanne, thanks for joining us on Trillians. You can say something. You're welcome. Thanks for listening to Trillions until next time. You can find us on the Bloomberg Terminal, Bloomberg dot com, Apple Podcast, Spotify, and wherever else you'd like to listen. We'd love to hear from you. We're on Twitter, I'm at Joel Webber Show, He's at Eric Ball Tunas, Ben Steveman is at b Steverman, and Suzanne Woollie is at wealth Watch. What you get

that handle is. Trillions is produced by Magnus Hendrickson and Jessica Levy is the head of Bloomberg Podcast. Bye.