A $338 Billion Manager Says Now Is Time to Protect Stock Profits

(Bloomberg) -- A $338 billion money manager says equity investors best quit while they’re ahead this year and move to safer holdings.

Deutsche Bank Wealth Management is continuing a shift from global stocks to high-grade debt and other lower-volatility assets, according to Global Chief Investment Officer Christian Nolting. The wealth manager has cut equities to about 40% of its portfolio from more than 50%, and it expects that trend to gather pace in the second half of the year.

Deutsche Bank Wealth first turned cautious at the end of April, saying markets had risen, companies’ earnings outlooks were doubtful and the U.S.-China trade war wouldn’t be solved in 2019. It turned out to be a prescient call: an index of global shares is broadly flat since then.

“What I don’t want to see in the second half is we lose all the performance,” Nolting said in an interview in Singapore. “We are still in profit-taking mode” as valuations have expanded but earnings are not coming through, he said.

The firm is pumping some of its profits into investment-grade corporate debt and developing-nation hard currency bonds, according to Nolting. It’s also channeling money into European crossover paper, which includes securities that offer higher yields than investment-grade products with less credit risk than their junk counterparts.

Global investment-grade corporate debt has returned more than 3% since the end of April, according to a Bloomberg Barclays Index.

“What we take out of equities, it goes into investment-grade U.S.” and other lower-volatility products, Nolting said.

--With assistance from Ishika Mookerjee.

To contact the reporters on this story: Abhishek Vishnoi in Singapore at avishnoi4@bloomberg.net;Ruth Carson in Singapore at rliew6@bloomberg.net;Lilian Karunungan in Singapore at lkarunungan@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Divya Balji at dbalji1@bloomberg.net, Tom Redmond

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