Market veteran Nancy Tengler says it’s premature to call a new bull market as she names her favorite “reliable” stocks. “I think that rally has been excellent,” Tengler, CEO and chief investment officer of Laffer Tengler Investments, told CNBC’s Squawk Box Asia last week. “Since mid-June we have increased risk in our portfolios and it has worked very well. But I don’t think we’re heading into a new bull market,” she added. She pointed to recent data suggesting that inflation may have peaked, but stressed that “there is still work to be done” to contain inflation, which remains high compared to a year ago. reasonable to reduce. There is also uncertainty about the course of further interest rate hikes, as the US Federal Reserve “is sticking to the plan somewhat unreliably”. “You shouldn’t be chasing this rally because we don’t know if the Fed will go to 75 [basis points]. We don’t know if they will make a political mistake,” Tengler said. She noted the “tug of war” between conflicting data: Commodity, food, and energy prices, for example, have all fallen, but rents and other inflationary “Don’t be a hero” Tengler’s advice to investors: “Don’t be a hero.” She is shifting her portfolio around include “more reliable producers” or companies with a proven track record of growing earnings “We got rid of some of the more cyclical names and added the defensive names last fall…their earnings growth is reliable and we’ve really tried to stick with reliable dividend growth companies,” She said one stock she currently has in her portfolio is music streaming service Spotify. Tengler acknowledged competitor Netflix’s high-profile challenges but believes the companies have different prospects due to their different business models. “You can leave your music on when you leave the house. It’s not a stay at home game. And you can listen to podcasts. They’ve really, really jazzed up that part of their business,” she said. Read more Tesla valuation doesn’t make sense until it hits this level, says fund manager Time to buy tech? Top investor Paul Meeks shares his take – and reveals what he’s buying ‘Pretty compelling value’: Analyst picks his best global stocks to weather slower growth We’ve seen cloud providers deliver excellent returns over the earnings season “, she said. She named Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle and Google parent Alphabet among stocks she likes to continue doing,” she added. In the semiconductor space, she favors “broadly diversified” companies that she believes will benefit if the sector is beginning to recover and have good capital allocation plans Their top picks are Broadcom and Texas Instruments — two companies that return much of their free cash flow to shareholders through dividend increases and share buybacks.
