Where to Invest $100,000 Right Now
Investment experts see opportunities ranging from dividend-paying stocks to crypto lending platform Aave.
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Like a punching bag toy, the S&P 500 keeps absorbing hits and popping right back up. The resilience of the US stock market is both a marvel and a source of worry for many investors, as the market’s tech concentration grows and valuations continue to rise. Following two years of roughly 25% returns, the index is up about 12% for the year and has risen more than 30% from its April 8 low. The strong performance has endured despite tariff turmoil, inflation fears, major policy shifts coming out of Washington, geopolitical conflicts, mounting government debt and concerns over Federal Reserve independence.
Bloomberg asked four wealth advisers what opportunities stand out at this time of uncertainty about the future of the economy and markets. The ideas ranged from dividend-paying stocks and health-care companies to energy plays and crypto assets.
For those who like to invest using exchange-traded funds, Bloomberg Intelligence ETF research associate Andre Yapp highlights funds that can serve as rough proxies for many of the investment themes.
When the wealth advisers were asked how they would splurge with a $100,000 windfall, answers included buying art from the late 1800s, home remodeling projects and an outdoor kitchen that would enable one barbecue-loving expert to become “the undisputed pitmaster” of his neighborhood.
Read more: How to Maximize a Roth IRA — And Retire Rich
Michael Contopoulos, deputy chief investment officer, Richard Bernstein Advisors
Go on Defense With Quality
The idea: From our perspective, markets have gotten ahead of themselves. We are trying to protect and position for a scenario where the Fed won’t be able to cut as much as the market expects, earnings growth is weaker than the market predicts and inflation is higher than anticipated. We want quality and certainty, and we can find that in really high-quality dividend-payers and in traditional defensive areas like consumer staples, health care and utilities. We also see that in international equities from the UK, Germany, Switzerland and Japan.
The strategy: We look for consistency of cash flow through good times and bad, like stocks with an A or A- ranking from S&P Global. In a high-quality dividend payer, we want companies that have increased the dividend every year for the past 20 years. We’re less concerned about sector selection and instead focus on capturing the type of exposure we want. In this case, that means defensive, quality and even cyclical stocks that are less volatile than the overall market, which are called low-beta stocks.
The big picture: If there is an earnings slowdown and the Fed remains tighter than markets expect, the S&P 500 will have a rough go of it in the next six to 12 months. About 35% of the S&P 500 is in seven stocks, and if they don’t do particularly well, the headline market performance may not be very strong. But the other 65% may be doing okay. We’re calling for a slowdown, not an earnings collapse, so retaining some broad exposure — even in lower-beta cyclicals like financials and industrials — can make some sense. It will be a difficult period, but you can find opportunities in a general broadening of the stocks performing well in the S&P 500.
Ann Miletti, head of active equity, Allspring Global Investments
Look to Emerging Markets, Small-Caps
The idea: The first thing I’d consider is diversification. I think about balancing risk versus reward here a lot, and how I protect myself while staying invested. I’d invest with a five-year time frame and put 40% in fixed income, in short-term high-yield bonds. The other 60% would go to equities, with 15% in emerging markets, 35% in small caps and 10% in health-care stocks.
The strategy:
In fixed income, there are ways to compound at about 6% per year without taking a ton of interest-rate risk. Short-term high-yield bonds let you get higher yields with shorter maturities and still benefit from Fed rate cuts.
In equities, I like emerging markets. They’ve been responding favorably to tailwinds from a weak dollar and have room to run given the discounts they’re trading at relative to domestic markets. There are questions about whether the performance is sustainable, but I think it is. The share of global assets under management comprised of emerging markets exposure is estimated to be 5%, down from a peak of more than 13% in 2010. If this were to reach its 10-year average weight of 6.5%, it could mean over $500 billion in new flows.
With small caps, the S&P SmallCap 600 Index has trailed large-cap indexes for the last several years in a higher-rate environment. We could be entering a cycle of lower rates, which will provide a tailwind for smaller-cap stocks. Quality is important — I don’t want to own companies with high leverage or no line of sight to profitability. Another tailwind could be a reemergence of an M&A cycle. The current administration is focused on deregulation, and if the market stays stable, I wouldn’t be surprised to see more acquisitions in 2026, which could largely benefit smaller companies.
With the 10% in health care, I’d invest in the med-tech and diagnostic space. I am a believer that we are in the early innings of an innovation cycle, and AI is a driver of that. Most of the focused investment has been dedicated to the infrastructure side of things like semiconductors. I’m more interested in how it can change industries and create real-world advances. Health-care tools and diagnostics is a big area ripe for change, given the pressures on price and the need for more cost-effective solutions.
The big picture: Any way you look at it, the broader equity markets are expensive, but valuation is a poor timing tool. I acknowledge that earnings continue to grow, and profit margins remain robust, so that is a positive. Our teams spend a lot of time watching the direction of the capital expenditure cycle and the labor cycle. That’s where we have a little more angst on what we’re seeing, with some numbers looking fine and others looking softer. Those two things — combined with the market being highly valued and some macro situations being more uncertain — do give me some reservations.
Ophelia Snyder, co-founder, 21Shares
Bet on Bitcoin, Aave, Solana
The idea: My first and foremost idea has been, and still is, Bitcoin. It has clearly proven what its role is now, and one of the interesting things is that while Bitcoin is rapidly normalizing as a needed part of standard portfolios, that process isn’t done yet. The other asset I’m excited about is Aave, a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol that lets you borrow and lend assets peer to peer. And this is a longer-term bet, but I like Solana in the smart contracts space.
The strategy:
With Bitcoin, a lot of institutional money is not here yet in any material way. You don’t see pension funds or insurance companies or much in the way of advised money — it’s mostly individuals allocating. You see Bitcoin’s price on the front page of the Wall Street Journal or on a banner on Bloomberg TV, so it’s there from a consciousness perspective. But there is still quite a lot of space between the culturalization and the allocation to institutional portfolios. There is still a lot of upside, especially when combined with a good regulatory tailwind and increasing acceptance from governments.
I also like Aave, which is the main lending platform on Ethereum. It has the largest selection of different types of yield options [ways users can earn returns on their crypto assets]. It has about $70 billion in active deposits, which makes it the same size in terms of deposits as a top-40 US bank. It’s enormous, and I just don’t think that the governance token associated with it is being correctly priced today — its market cap is only $5 billion. Aave has very little name recognition outside of the crypto industry, but recently overtook Circle to become the second-biggest cryptocurrency by the value of digital assets in its platform, after only Tether. The platform is also very well positioned to continue growing as we see broader adoption of stable coins.
With Solana, I’ve been a big fan for many years. They’ve done a remarkable job of executing on their plans, and I have a bias toward execution when I think about organizations and how they operate. There is a lot of opportunity in smart contracts — programs that run on the blockchain — because we still haven’t figured it out. Smart contracts are in the early stages of customer adoption, and Solana is well-positioned for when they figure it out.
The big picture: It used to be that people thought of crypto as all the same, but that’s changing. Part of the reason is that the regulatory environment is not treating them all the same. The current presidential administration has so far done a lot of good things pushing for clarity in the crypto space. The issue I see now is that essentially what crypto needs is clarity and stability in its regulatory environment. Regulatory structures need to be built that will have some permanency — we need to codify who is in charge and what needs to be done and make it a real structure.
Dana D’Auria, co-chief investment officer, Envestnet
Explore Energy
The idea: Assuming you have a solid, well-diversified portfolio, you might want to look at energy. I typically don’t try to do side bets, but this is one I believe in enough to offer up. If you’re willing to keep this trade on for a while, energy is a place where you could see benefits from long-term secular demand. Everyone is well-versed on the AI energy demand, and on top of that, you have demand in terms of population growth and living standards going up in developing countries.
The strategy:
The energy sector has very much underperformed this year and has been caught up in a lot of geopolitical concerns. There’s worry about oil prices, and if we get to a place where some of the Ukrainian issues settle down, maybe that would lower the price of oil. So you have that working against the sector. Valuations matter — energy’s price multiples are routinely below that of the S&P 500, and the sector has underperformed this year. Commodity prices, such as those tied to energy, would likely climb if inflation rekindles and could therefore be a good hedge with the overall portfolio.
I would invest with a broad energy sector ETF. Once you get into individual names or talk about whether you should get into natural gas, oil or something else, you’re making the investment more based on the idiosyncratic factors.
The big picture: Your well-diversified market portfolio is by some measures not that well-diversified since it is very concentrated in the largest, growth-iest stocks, and much of that is related to the AI thesis. Investing in energy gives you another iron in the fire that, while correlated with the data center play, takes a different slant than a direct bet on AI. If you think about the source of returns from AI, one question is will AI data centers get built? The answer there is probably yes. The other question is, when will AI result in broad-based productivity increases? That second question is harder to answer.