Where to Invest $100,000 Right Now
Four wealth advisers highlight investment opportunities.
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Stashing cash under the proverbial mattress looks pretty tempting about now.
Investors have been suffering whiplash as geopolitical tensions roil financial markets. President Donald Trump’s demand for US control over Greenland brought back the “Sell America” trade on Jan. 20, sending volatility measures up and the S&P 500 down more than 2%. When the rhetoric softened the following day, the S&P 500 gained more than 1%. Still, markets are jittery and concerns about mega-cap tech have many investors on edge. Gold’s price has been hitting record highs as investors seek out safe havens. It now stands at about $4,892 an ounce for a gain of more than 10% so far this year.
Wealth managers surveyed by Bloomberg aren’t recommending stockpiling cash, but a risk-off mood did lead to a focus on value stocks for two of the four experts. Japanese stocks got a nod, as did companies that excel in anticipating consumer — or animal — wants and needs. In the fixed income world, one manager argued for investors moving beyond plain-vanilla bond offerings and into high-quality securitized bonds.
For investors who like to invest using exchange-traded funds, Bloomberg Intelligence ETF research associate Andre Yapp suggested funds that can act as rough proxies for the experts’ ideas.
When the wealth managers were asked how to spend $100,000 on a personal passion, responses ranged from buying the rookie cards of baseball greats to a high-end family trip to Antarctica to buying a thoroughbred horse.
Read more: How to Maximize a Roth IRA — And Retire Rich
Jack Ablin, chief investment strategist, Cresset Capital
Explore Japan
The idea: I would put half of the money in Japanese stocks and the other half in the S&P 500 Value Index as a counterpoint against the current heavy-tech weightings in the S&P 500.
The strategy:
We see three main reasons for investing in Japan now. With new leadership, we’re expecting economic stimulus and policy support for businesses. We expect stimulus through spending growth, offset with some monetary tightness. Japan may also implement some tax cuts, so from the economic and fiscal side, the environment will be very supportive.
On top of that, there are the corporate reforms that got underway last year. There is a lot more reform and oversight in governance of companies on the Japanese stock market, not to mention relatively cheap valuations.
Probably the most important reason is the Japanese currency. It is table-poundingly cheap. In terms of the Big Mac Index, you can essentially sell a Big Mac in the US and buy four Big Macs and a beer in Japan. That will help not just US investors if the yen appreciates to the dollar but also helps Japanese exporters.
The S&P 500 Value Index gets half of the $100,000 given that it’s much cheaper than the S&P 500 and would incrementally benefit from stimulus from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Plus, we anticipate easier monetary policy after May [when Jerome Powell’s term as Federal Reserve chair ends]. The value style is poised to accelerate if fiscal and monetary conditions play out as we expect. But this is also a defensive play, with essentially some downside protection because mid-term election years are generally not good for the stock market — they average around flat. Owning something that could benefit if the levers are pulled that way, which we expect, and provide some downside protection is probably the best way to go in this market.
The big picture: At the S&P 500 level today, valuations are stretched, fundamentals are mixed and momentum is strong. So in the very near-term, the path of least resistance is higher, but it all depends on how economic conditions play out, how earnings continue to move forward and any of the other geopolitical headlines that could cross the transom and upset the apple cart. But all in all, the music’s still playing.
Kim Forrest, chief investment officer, Bokeh Capital Partners
Stay Sector-Neutral
The idea: I like taking a sector-neutral approach in this stock market. It’s really tough to pick sectors because anything can happen — something geopolitical, interest rates, you don’t know. Focusing on things that managers can control — running a company well, delighting customers — and finding the companies that are doing this best, sector by sector, can allow you to perform well regardless of what is happening on a macro basis.
The strategy:
My bias is for finding companies that are growth at a reasonable price. What I’m really looking for are a mix of large-cap and smaller-cap stocks that will outperform peers through product marketing. All that means is that a company knows who its clients are and satisfies them and keeps making products people love so they keep coming back. I worked for companies that made software products for engineers, and if you would put a function in that somebody had asked you for, they thought they were ruling the world and were a client for life.
A company like Coca-Cola has done this, and it’s one of our picks. But the approach goes well beyond consumer staples. One of my health-care picks is Elanco, a spinout of Eli Lilly. They are in animal pharma, with half of their business agricultural — vaccines for pigs and cows and stuff like that — and then they have lots of products for domestic pets. I got them because when they were spun out they had six products in development that they thought would be blockbusters. One was a product that stopped cows from being so flatulent. That alleviates some of people’s concerns about milk and meat— cows aren’t producing so much methane and you get to enjoy your steak.
The big picture: I’m a glass half-full person. We’re in a declining interest-rate environment, and I can see another double-digit year for the S&P 500 as long as we have growth. The other thing is that I’m convinced we will no longer have the recessions we’ve had that were kind of like, “oops, we made too much and we have to lay people off.” In 2000, companies were forced to have pretty good accounting systems, and they really cleaned up their act, and later companies instituted CRM [customer relationship management] systems so they could see demand in real time and react. Companies have visibility into supply and demand and can act accordingly. We still get recessions, but they’re because of financial crises, and we are really terrible at forecasting those.
Steve Sosnick, chief strategist, Interactive Brokers
Play Defense
The idea: If you’re investing new money, I’d skew defensive. There’s a bit of a rotation away from some of the big-cap tech stocks, and if the rotation continues, that’s a situation where value stocks with lower betas — in other words, stocks that are less volatile than the overall market — and higher dividends can outperform. There is more room for multiple expansion simply because they haven’t run up as much in price.
The strategy:
There are logical reasons for putting new money in an S&P 500 index fund, but that means you’re allocating about 40% or more of your money to the AI trade, and I find the idea that we’re in the early phases of a rally hard to believe. If I were strictly investing in US large-cap stocks — and I think it makes sense to have 15% to 20% of your money outside the US — I’d put two-thirds in value and a third in growth.
I’ll stipulate that the biggest tech stocks are valued highly because of their power to earn money. But a lot of the premium that goes to these companies is based on the fact that they’ve had a tremendous return on assets and return on equity because they haven’t needed to have the same amount of fixed assets as other companies. And now these companies are switching from asset-light to asset-heavy models. That’s one reason I skew more heavily toward value. With value, you can win if there’s a continued market rotation, and you can win at these stocks if the market has a big midterm election swoon this year. We’ve had two down years in the last 10 years — 2018 and 2022, both midterm election years.
Another risk around investing too heavily in the AI theme is that I have existential concerns around OpenAI’s ability to meet the commitments being priced in. How can a company that probably had revenues of $20 billion in 2025 scale up fast enough to spend $300 billion with Oracle? Tech companies have all of these deals with Nvidia, and if those flows don’t come to fruition, it hurts Nvidia’s prospects. It doesn’t necessarily cost Nvidia money, but in Oracle’s case it actually does because they’re starting to build out based on this.
The big picture: This is about as uncertain a policy environment in the US as I can recall, and there are very understandable economic reasons for uncertainties surrounding monetary policy and the Fed’s dual mandate to promote stable prices and maximum employment. On top of that, you have a very activist administration that would like to usurp some of the Federal Reserve’s role. As for geopolitics, I’d advise investors to de-emphasize geopolitics because markets often ignore them.
Lara Castleton, US head of portfolio construction and strategy, Janus Henderson
Look Beyond AI Giants
The idea: The predominant theme for us is that we are very confident on AI, where we see room to run with an active strategy excluding the Magnificent 7. In the AI space outside of the Mag 7 theme, one area we like is health care, especially the biotech universe, where there is a ton of innovation. In fixed income, we see opportunities in the securitized sector.
The strategy:
Many investors get their AI exposure through the S&P 500, which is very tied to the Mag 7. The biggest differentiator in the AI area as we start 2026 versus 2025 is that we finally saw divergence happen last year, with five of the Mag 7 stocks underperforming the broader market. These stocks are no longer moving as one cohesive piece.
The opportunity for us as active growth managers is that, while we don’t want to peel back on growth exposure, we can take a more purposeful active approach to how you’re getting that growth. Our portfolio managers are starting to notice AI trickling down more into second-order effects. So there are companies that are now benefiting from AI in terms of productivity, in terms of improved margins. And then, as always, you have the companies that provide the picks and shovels, that provide the infrastructure, and they’re not necessarily the largest weightings in the broad indices.
The health care space, meanwhile, has been left behind in the AI boom for a couple of years. But there is an uptick in mergers and acquisitions activity, and if you have the right people who can pick winners and losers, it’s nice ballast against the tech sector exposure. So the growth play excluding the Mag 7 doesn’t have to be concentrated just in technology.
In fixed income, one area where we think investors can get some of the best, high-quality yields is in the securitized sector. We think investors should expand their universe beyond the Treasury, sovereign or corporate credit markets. You’re hearing about hyperscalers issuing in the corporate markets, but there are also deals coming from them in the securitized market, where there is the potential for a greater spread over what other credit markets offer investors today. The reason for that is that the securitized area is a more difficult space to manage and trade, and there has been this fear that it’s tied more closely to the consumer. But we feel broadly positive about the economy, and consumer spending on the high level is still coming in strong. That should be a pretty supportive backdrop for the securitized universe.
The big picture: From a very high level, we’re pretty comfortable on the overall economic backdrop of 2026, especially in the first half of the year. We feel it’s a good environment to stay invested and not necessarily need to take your foot off the gas pedal.