Jeenah Moon/REUTERS
Despite all the market turmoil of the first stretch of President Donald Trump’s second term, US investors have ended up more or less where they started the year.
But there are lasting effects of the administration’s tariff policies, such as a renewed vigor from asset managers to look outside the world’s largest stock market for investment opportunities.
At the Sohn Investment Conference in Manhattan’s Lincoln Center on Wednesday, big-name investors like billionaire David Einhorn and Tiger Cub Rob Citrone talked up a German chemical company and Mexican telecom stock, respectively.
Bridgewater’s co-chief investment officer, Karen Karniol-Tambour, who spoke with Citrone on Wednesday, said that for the last few decades, the S&P 500 was “the best you could have done.”
“But where that leaves us is that today it’s hard not to feel that we’re fundamentally in a different place than that,” she said.
The main thing she is relaying to investors is “treat diversification seriously,” echoing comments that she made at the recent Milken conference in Beverly Hills, where she said that allocators should “have some of your assets in Asia or even China, if you can.”
Einhorn started his presentation on Wednesday with a critical joke about Trump’s tariffs — implying that the US is shooting itself in the foot — though his firm, Greenlight Capital, profited off the first quarter’s market turbulence with large positions in gold. He’s a believer in the fundamentals of Bayer spinoff Lanxess, saying, “We think we have a butterfly,” even though the market sees it as “a moth.”
Einhorn said the company, which develops and sells a range of chemicals, including consumer protection products like disinfectants, could benefit from tariffs as it has production sites in the US and is a Chinese competitor.
Jeenah Moon/REUTERS
Citrone, meanwhile, named América Móvil, the telecom giant founded by Mexico’s richest man, Carlos Slim, as his favorite stock because of its exposure to many countries in Latin America. “We trust Carlos — so that’s an amazing stock,” he said.
Citrone, who made 52% in 2024, said that opportunities are ripe in Latin America, which investors have “left for dead for the last 25 years.” Beyond equities, he also likes rates and currencies in the region. He said his fund has 75% of its risk outside the US, with a certain amount in emerging markets.
Karnoil-Tambour said that, of course, money won’t leave US capital markets overnight, especially as it remains the deepest equities market for investors.
Citrone drove home how undercapitalized other markets are, saying that when Nvidia’s stock fell after investors’ discovery of DeepSeek in January, “it was like two Mexicos.“
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