Back to the 'Nifty Fifty': Invest Like It's the '60s
Robin Knight
Dusting off an old long-play record of the Rolling Stones or Beatles and harking back to the heyday of the 1960s and 70s is one thing. But Guy Monson, CIO & managing partner from Sarasin & Partners, has taken baby-boomer nostalgia to the next level and is looking to the bygone era for investment advice.
"What I see is a re-emergence of the concept of the nifty fifty, which really came about in the late 60s and early 70s as the super-cap U.S. growth stocks with global exposure started to radically outperform the rest of the market," Monson said.
The "nifty fifty" was a list of 50 stocks that many institutional investors considered to have strong earnings growth and a high price to earnings ratio. The list included names such as Coca-Cola and Dow Chemical and is credited with fuelling the bull run of the era.
- Watch the full interview with Guy Monson above.
"I think today this will be almost self-fulfilling because exchange traded funds and index players will be forced buyers each time this happens," Monson said.
"It's the cash flow and long-term dividend growth that I'm going for rather than the yield and I am putting a growth filter on it. That's the core of my portfolio," he added.
Monson picked out Novartis, France Telecom and IBM as some of the best stocks in his portfolio. IBM was in the original "nifty fifty" list. He favours stocks with a "growth bias," but are still large cap.
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