Wall Street’s First-Half Whiplash Rewards All-Weather Portfolios

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(Bloomberg) — Somehow, for all its drama — tariffs, fiscal brinkmanship, inflation fears, and geopolitical flare-ups — the first half of 2025 may be remembered by diversified investors for something else entirely: the strongest stretch of synchronized market gains in years.

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Rather than spelling a slow-motion disaster for bulls, months of whiplash across equities, fixed income and commodities have rewarded strategic indifference and punished overconfidence. Strategies that spread risk across assets are outperforming by near-historic margins, a shift from the concentrated bets that favored the likes of Big Tech stocks in recent years. 

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A Societe Generale multi-asset portfolio, tracking equities, government bonds, corporate credit, commodities and cash, is on pace for its strongest first-half performance since at least 2008. Even the classic 60/40 stock-bond mix — written off during the pandemic-era disruption as obsolete in a world of uncertain inflation — has proved relatively resilient. Meanwhile, a popular multi-asset strategy known as risk parity is up about 6%, by one measure.

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This holiday-shortened week offered fresh validation for cautious investors. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell warned of “elevated uncertainty” around economic growth and said new tariffs could reignite supply-side price pressure. Disappointing economic data and ongoing clashes between Israel and Iran added to the case for investors to stay vigilant about both the business and market cycle.

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In a market this divided, perhaps the only reasonable stance is to refuse to take a side, favoring instead a principled neutrality in portfolios built for all-weather conditions.

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“For every indicator out there that shows the economy is strong, I can give you one that shows it’s slowing,” said John Davi, chief executive of Astoria Portfolio Advisors. “Uncertainty is definitely higher.”

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In a year when international stocks, gold, and even Bitcoin have outpaced the S&P 500, investors are being rewarded for looking beyond the familiar. Davi’s firm’s multi-asset ETF, with gold as its top holding, is up more than 10% — a result, he said, of building a portfolio “meant to survive uncertainty, not predict it.”

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Trading in the biggest asset classes this week reflected the stunted returns that — despite the April rebound — have made a virtue of going further afield at a time of economic and political anxiety. The S&P 500 ended lower on the week and sits just 1.5% above where it began in January. Ten-year Treasury yields are broadly flat this week, while a broader index of government bonds has returned 3% so far this year.

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Instead, diversified portfolios have been powered by assets long eschewed during the era of Magnificent-7 exceptionalism. Developed-market equities excluding the US and Canada have climbed 14% year-to-date, while the Bloomberg Commodity Index has surged 8% this year, while gold has soared nearly 30%.

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“I find that when it comes to owning things outside the US, from the US investor point of view, there’s a lot of reluctance,” said SocGen’s Manish Kabra. “The only time you are really diversified is when you have assets that you don’t want to own.”