00:00 Speaker A
Joining me now. We've got Sandra Chow, who is the Point Wealth Capital Management founder and president. Good to have you here with us. We're we're watching different sectors in the short term and long term. What are your short-term picks? Let's start there.
00:17 Sandra Chow
Thanks for having me, Brad. Yes, with all the recent volatility, you're exactly right. We are definitely more defensive. We've increased our exposure to alternatives, like, for example, structured notes, um, and other liquid alternatives. And, um, you know, as far as what we're really looking at, we're looking at mid-cap growth, which is really outperformed year-to-date, and we're cherry-picking across the board, whether that be, you know, mid-cap or large cap. Um, companies like, for example, core weave and Duke Energy. Energy has been hit very hard. And, um, for core weave, it's really, um, it's an interesting company. Uh, they focus on AI and GPU computing. They've had huge investment by Nvidia, and they have a strong partnership with them. Uh, they have performance, scalability, and flexible pricing and cost savings. So we're looking at core weave and, um, Manulife is also interesting. Um, they have a resilient balance sheet and consistent profitability. And that is something that's so important right now with all this all this volatility.
00:50 Speaker A
And and just to kind of put some clarity on it, how are you assessing the time range, or the horizon rather, for some of those short-term plays versus some of the long term that we'll get into in a second?
01:29 Sandra Chow
Yes. As you can see, we don't have any control over the short term, and all we can really look at is kind of drill down into what the valuations of these companies are and um, the revenue. And then how um, you know, how susceptible they are to say, for example, the tariffs. So, you know, like your previous guest was saying, uh, there is, you know, this 1030, this, you know, kind of range that um, we might have in tariffs across the board depending on the country, and that is going to affect different companies differently. So we're really looking at that. That's just, um, you know, just one of the focuses that we're looking on when we're assessing which companies we're cherry picking.
02:28 Speaker A
Okay, so let's get to the long term. Where are those opportunities in your in your view?
02:44 Sandra Chow
Yeah, so, you know, we really do like, um, um, you know, large cap, strong stocks, but like I said, we like the mid-cap. Mid-cap, we feel that there is, um, potential for continued outperformance. And, um, you know, once again, if you look at year-to-date, mid-cap growth has been the strongest performer. Of course, now we also look at international. You've seen strong inflows into international developed markets. And we think that that is going to continue uh, for, you know, until the end of the year and, um, and really, I would say uh, into 2026. And emerging markets. So, you know, we all know that there's no love lost uh, with Trump and China, but uh, it's just a fact that emerging markets have outperformed the US market. Likewise, there's been tremendous outperformance. I think last time I checked, something like 13% outperformance by um, uh, by international developed markets compared to the US S&P.
04:11 Speaker A
You know, I was taking a look at a few charts, uh, out from uh, Torsten Sloc, chief economist at Apollo, talking about the negative impact on tariffs of tariffs on earnings here. And most notably here is we're thinking about, you know, of course the decline that we've seen, or the move back off the most high levels of the 145% tariffs on China now to 30%, there's still a headwind to corporate earnings that could remain significant. How are you assessing that risk across some of even the long term and short-term plays that you were just identifying?
05:13 Sandra Chow
Well, so, you know, um, like I said, different companies are going to be affected differently. And so we also know that, um, you know, this was going to happen, right? We could see this happening, um, in his first administration, he did it. So we're just looking at diversification, focusing on um, international. And especially because the US dollar is declining, you know, there's that additional potential alpha just with the currency exchange. So we're looking at that, but looking at individual companies, you know, um, like you said, the tariffs are going to be affecting it, and that's why we're looking at companies that aren't going to be, you know, that have more resiliency, that are strong, that have good balance sheets, and companies that pay a dividend, because those are companies that um, are going to be bellwether companies that you can rely on and basically be paid to wait through this volatility.
06:24 Speaker A
Sandra, great to see you here this morning. Appreciate the time.
06:30 Sandra Chow
Thank you.
