U.S. stocks are the best place for investors compared to their international counterparts, according to Emily Roland, co-chief investment strategist at John Hancock Investment Management. While she noted global economic growth is decelerating and other countries are struggling, Roland told CNBC’s Bob Pisani at the Future Proof wealth festival that the U.S. is showing signs of stabilization. That makes the country’s equities the “place to be” for investors, she said. “The U.S. is simply holding in better than the rest of the world,” Roland said in an interview from the conference in Huntington Beach, California. “I would call it the cleanest shirt in dirty laundry today.” Roland said part of her reasoning stems from her outlook that quality stocks will perform better in a late-cycle environment. There are more of these names in the U.S., she said, while telling investors to look in sectors like health care and technology. She also said there’s a “unique opportunity” for investors in U.S. bonds. Arguments that the 60/40 portfolio — a strategy that involves putting about 60% of an allocation into stocks and the other 40% into bonds — was dead are overblown, she added. But Roland said investors need to act quickly, as bond yields will likely “come down in a meaningful way” into the next recession. “Bonds have something they haven’t had in 15 years or so, which is income,” she said. “And we like that.”
