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Q&A: US equities outlook

27 April 2026

Michael J. Mattioli, CFA, Portfolio Manager, Core Value Equity

 

 


 

1. What is the current market outlook? 

We would describe the current market environment as having a wide range of potential outcomes, just given what's going on with geopolitical events, as well as the rise of artificial intelligence.

When you think about the U.S. economy, really, there's some positives and negatives going on. The consumer’s still spending quite a bit, but when you're looking at unemployment levels, that's starting to tick higher. It's something that obviously is making us a little bit nervous there. In terms of an opportunity, we're finding high-quality businesses trading at a significant discount relative to the broader market.

2. Where do you see opportunities and what are areas that warrant caution?

Right now, we're finding a fair bit of opportunity within high quality companies that seem to be left behind due to narrow market leadership.

For our investment process, it all comes back to the price that you pay relative to the worth or insurance value of the business. So, when we look at areas such as healthcare, the more durable growth types of areas like consumables, or med-tech, or even managed care. Those are screening very well on our numbers.

It’s controversial right now, but parts of core application software, most notable around human capital management and customer relationship management, and also system of records—when we look at our numbers, many of them are trading between our bear- and worst-case set of assumptions.

3. What will you be monitoring closely in the months ahead?

Obviously, current geopolitical events are going to be difficult to forecast.

Some of the things that we're watching though are commodity prices and interest rates, both which are headed higher. Consumption makes up such a large portion of U.S. GDP. Thus, if that were to falter any bit, we're not really seeing that much anything going on there. But for us in our investment process, everything comes back to what's the range of values, what's the price that we could pay. And right now, we're finding a great deal of value within quality companies relative to the rest of the market.

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