Top RIAs on The Current Investing Climate: Mercer Advisors

What recent investment allocation changes has your firm made?

We recently re-extended duration in our fixed income portfolios. After shortening it to less than two years in January 2022, we extended it back closer to five years in July 2023.

What’s your top contrarian pick at the moment? 

Non-U.S. equities continue to be a relative bargain in our view given their valuations, the strength of the U.S. dollar, political instability in the U.S., and ballooning federal debt. 

In what areas of the market are you taking risk off? 

Growth stocks and longer duration fixed income are two areas where we don’t see much value in loading up on risk. With growth stocks, the reason is due to their extreme valuations, and with longer duration fixed income, it’s due to uncertainty around the prospect of future tightening and the (still) inverted yield curve. 

In what areas of the market are you putting risk on? 

We added back duration (as mentioned above); non-U.S. equities; value stocks; private credit. 

What fund families or model portfolio providers do you use? 

Dimensional Fund Advisors; BlackRock; AQR Capital Management; the Vanguard Group; and Avantis, to name only a few.