“The yield curve is a rear-view mirror and a crystal ball.”

How will stock market trading perform in 2024? Trends.be asks stock market watchers about their favorite stocks.

This week: Ben Grange, Managing Director of the Flemish Investors Association. With a background spanning more than two decades in the financial sector, Granjé has gained extensive experience at Morningstar and various banking institutions and investment funds. He was educated in both Belgium and the United States, culminating in a master's degree in psychology. Granjé is committed to financial health by promoting education and inclusivity in a community focused on sharing knowledge.

1/ yourself

VFB is not a consulting firm telling you which golden share you should buy now. It is a meeting place to exchange experiences and ideas, an educational environment to define your (financial) future and an interest group for individual investors. So my first piece of advice is always: invest in yourself. Read, learn, talk and start investing as soon as possible (while it's not too late). Involve your family and give your children the tools to achieve their vision. There is no better gift unless it is a first investment. And VFB membership of course. Investing is the most social thing you can do with your money. “Everyone can invest” is our motto.

2/ Global ETF: Invesco FTSE All-World

Some people like to do a lot of analysis, while others prefer to invest from the hammock. They both benefit from the golden rule: keep costs low. This ETF (ISBN: IE000716YHJ7) combines broad diversification with low costs, and is tax-optimized and accretive. Set a permanent task and forget about it for ten, twenty, or fifty years. This strategy is ideal as a first investment, and may be your last. There are of course many ETFs. Find what suits your circumstances and investment portfolio (for example, if you need dividends).

3/ Real Estate: Wereldhave

Prices in this sector are greatly affected by interest rates. This has risen sharply in the short term, causing a significant devaluation of the currency in this sector. But the peak appears to have already been reached, and even if interest rates do not fall immediately (vigilance on inflation is required), prices are likely to rebound – not to mention nice, stable earnings. Be careful, because a number of companies have been choked by their debt ratio, which on the positive side could lead to a wave of consolidation. We also find opportunities to buy closer to home, such as Wereldhave, Aedifica and VGP. It is possible to achieve a wider spread with listed REITs (Reliability of real estate investments or real estate investment trusts).

4/ Chips and semiconductors: BE Semiconductor Industries

Whether you support technological progress or greening, chips are essential for better solutions. Closer to home we know X-Fab and Melexis, and a little further away ASML and TSMC. Less well known is BE Semiconductor Industries (BESI), which has actually enjoyed a good increase since the beginning of February and appears to be continuing its momentum. Here too, you can opt for sector exposure through a fund or ETF, to cushion the impact of some geopolitical tensions in your portfolio.

Stocks of the Magnificent Seven companies (Tesla, Alphabet, Microsoft, Apple, Meta, Amazon, and Nvidia) are already high, and in an ideal scenario we catch them after a strong pullback based on emotion, not reason. Dreaming is allowed. But the strength of these companies means they remain interesting: their products continue to generate revenue, and on top of that, they're sitting on a mountain of cash. Especially now that interest rates have risen a bit, and these companies have become rich overnight, they can keep the competition at bay (or simply buy it out, if the competition authority allows it) and diversify. We like Nvidia (chips), but that valuation is too high, Microsoft is a perennial staple in our portfolio, we see Tesla and Apple slowing down a bit and so we end up with Alphabet or Meta. When in doubt, with an S&P 500 ETF, suddenly there are all of them.

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