How to position amid widespread market volatility, according to BlackRock’s Ben Powell
BlackRock’s Ben Powell says he remains upbeat about a specific set of investment opportunities despite the global stock market sell-off continuing on Monday. Trillions of dollars have vanished from global markets as investors flee assets set to be hit hard by President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff regime. While economists warn that the brewing trade war spells bad news for the majority of the global economy, there are still a number of areas that could outperform during the volatility, according to Powell, BlackRock’s chief investment strategist for APAC and the Middle East. “At BlackRock we’re very excited about our prospects here over the medium term. Shorter term, the market story is going to dominate I think,” he told CNBC’s Dan Murphy on “Access Middle East” Monday. “It’s a Monday maelstrom and I think it is going to be choppy for these next several days. I would suggest that we remain relatively calm … There’s still much to like in the world … we need to not lose sight of that.” Powell said his team’s view on U.S. equities had been reduced to “neutral,” and they were preparing to “hunker down and favor cash” in the short term. BlackRock has long been invested heavily in infrastructure — which can be hard for individual investors to access — but Powell said mass transport and shipping infrastructure offered areas of opportunity in a time of likely mounting inflation. “I do think having exposure to inflation-resilient assets, so ports and airports and all of that stuff, has been historically the domain mostly of the sovereigns and the other kind of very large institutions,” he said Monday. “I think that’s going to become more and more mainstream as we seek, potentially, a more inflationary world. Tariffs should be inflationary over time. So inflation resilience [is] more and more important. You can take that thought in different directions, gold and others, but private assets, infrastructure, we think are going to be critical.” Powell also pointed to specific regions he believes can provide investors with more predictability. “These pockets of stability are becoming increasingly rare in a chaotic world. So you can look at different jurisdictions — Singapore comes to mind, and certainly the [Gulf] region, the UAE, Abu Dhabi, where we’re set; it’s increasingly kind of cool to be stable.” BlackRock on Monday opened its first office in Abu Dhabi. Within the Gulf region it also has an office in Dubai and its regional headquarters office in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. “The balance sheet strength that local economies here have is very huge,” Powell said of the Gulf economies, in particular the UAE and Saudi Arabia. “I think the stability will continue, the growth will continue … [it may be] a trickier time over the next six to 12 months, but it still looks for us at Blackrock that the UAE prospects are extremely bright.”
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