4 Wall Street heavyweights shared charts with us that show their highest-conviction investments

• Top Wall Street experts shared with BI their top investment ideas, illustrated in charts.

• Some trade ideas shared with BI include tech stocks, international stocks, and deep value stocks.

• One analyst said it’s a good time to buy because it’s impossible to know when rates will bottom out.

When you want to communicate an idea, sometimes a chart can do the talking better than anything.

That can be particularly true in the world of markets, where there are seemingly endless viewpoints and research available about where a given investment is headed. A simple visual aid can, at times, cut through the noise.

With this in mind, we asked some top Wall Street minds to share some of their highest-conviction investment ideas that could be illustrated in a single chart.

Of course, investment decisions are more complicated than looking at a single graphic and clicking buy, and should be based on thorough research and individual needs and goals.

But at the very least, the charts below might provide some food for thought about pockets of opportunity in the market right now.

Kristy Akullian, head of iShares investment strategy, Americas

Going forward, Akullian likes the tech and growth factors, which she says largely overlap.

Amid AI bubble concerns, this may come as a surprise. After all, they’ve been the hottest stocks in the market over the last few years, and some investors are starting to wonder how long the domination can last as AI hyperscalers pump massive sums into infrastructure buildouts.

However, robust earnings growth — not valuation expansion — has been responsible for most of the outperformance.

The chart above shows this dynamic, with the orange portion of the tech section representing the outsized impact of earnings. Akullian thinks this trend will continue. Yes, valuations remain relatively high, but if earnings continue to come in strong, investors may have the justification to keep bidding share prices higher.

“The prevailing narrative is about how equity markets are highly concentrated and richly valued. Breaking down year-to-date performance we believe that concentration is a feature and not a bug of current equity markets — indexes are concentrated because earnings are,” Akullian told Business Insider.

She added: “It’s the fundamental drivers of return in US tech and growth stocks that makes us comfortable continuing to lean into recent winners, though we prefer nimble approaches to style factors that can also capture other beneficiaries of positive momentum as they emerge.

Que Nguyen, CIO of equity research at Research Affiliates

Nguyen highlights the chart above to show that valuations in the UK market (represented by the bottom, lightest line) are still depressed relative to the US and other European markets, making it an attractive buy ahead of an eventual rebound, Nguyen said.

She identified a couple of catalysts that could drive an upward move in UK stocks.

One is that European governments are starting to spend more, especially on defense. This will likely also be the case in the UK, but even if it’s not, the higher spending levels in continental Europe should benefit the UK, which is its biggest trading partner, Nguyen said.

Second, a potential shift in pension fund requirements in the UK will shift inflows into the country’s stocks, she said. Right now, many UK pension fund providers say they’re voluntarily aiming to have 5% or more of their assets in domestic assets by 2030. The UK government has said they have the authority to mandate a minimum allocation if it is not satisfied with the voluntary pledges.

“Now what they’re saying is, ‘Since we need to rejuvenate our economy, then what we need is more investment,'” Nguyen said. “That increase in demand for UK stocks, or at least the halting of selling UK stocks by these very large pensions, could also be important.”

John Pease, member of the asset allocation team at GMO

Pease argues that value stocks are historically cheap relative to more expensive stocks. The above chart shows that the bottom half of the market in terms of valuation level is cheaper relative to the top half than it is 97% of the time going back to 1981. Those levels rival the peak of the dot-com era.

Pease said he most likes “deep value,” or the cheapest 20% of stocks, calling the trade an “extremely compelling” opportunity.

“You’re seeing relative valuations that are close to the same levels they reached in 2021, in the late ’90s,” Pease said.

He continued: “There is no reason for that to be happening. There is no reason for these stocks to be that discounted, which is why we expect them to outperform even if valuations don’t do anything because they’re so discounted it’s very easy for them to surprise to the upside.”

Kieran Kirwan, director of investment strategy at ProShares

With the Fed already a year into its rate-cutting cycle, Kirwan said it’s a good time to start thinking about small-cap and mid-cap stocks.

That’s because during the few years after the Fed ends its rate cuts, the two groups of stocks tend to beat the market handily, according to a ProShares analysis of the last five cutting cycles. This is shown in the above chart, with the green bars representing mid-cap stocks signaling future outperformance.

It’s unclear what path short-term interest rates will take in the months ahead and in 2026. The Fed is expected to cut rates by 25 basis points in September, and if the labor market weakens further, the central bank could institute more cuts. Sticky inflation, however, could tie the Fed’s hands.

Still, Kirwan said that now is a good time to buy because it’s impossible to know when rates will bottom out, and small- and mid-cap outperformance could already be underway.

“Attempting to time structural changes in market leadership is a fool’s errand,” he told BI. “While we know as a general matter that both mid-and small caps have historically outperformed large caps after the rate cut cycle ends, each cycle comes with its own nuances.”

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