Biggest risk for individual investor is missing out on rally, expert says
It's not too late to buy into this record stock market rally, investment expert Katie Nixon told CNBC on Friday.
In fact, she thinks "missing out" is the "biggest risk" for the individual investor right now.
"We have the interest rate picture changing, but for the right reason. Growth is improving, inflation expectations are ticking up but just slightly, in a manageable way. Fundamentals are improving. So all the ducks are sort of in a row here for a continued rally," the chief investment officer of Northern Trust said in an interview with "Power Lunch."
Stocks have been soaring since President-elect Donald Trump's victory on Nov. 8., with investors pinning their hopes on promised tax cuts and deregulation.
However, while there are now a lot of forward-looking assumptions built into the market about a Trump presidency and what it might mean for earnings, it's happening in an environment that's already improving, Nixon said.
Her advice is to buy into the market now, instead of averaging in, because she has higher confidence in her short-term outlook than the longer-term one.
"We've been talking about low return expectation. We might be in that kind of environment for the longer term, but we're going to have some front-end loaded equity returns right here in the next year or so," Nixon said.
Erik Ristuben, chief investment strategist at Russell Investments, has a different strategy. He's not advocating buying in, instead he is trimming equity positions on the margin.
"We're in kind of the buy the dips, sell the rallies kind of mode right now and this has been a rally so it's probably a good time to take some profits," he told "Power Lunch."
He thinks the strong U.S. dollar will create some earnings headwinds, which the market will start to factor in.
Instead, Ristuben likes the European and Japanese stock market, and is long the dollar.