Stocks closed slightly higher Wednesday as the Nasdaq closed flat after a failed attempt to close higher. Investors are keeping an eye on earnings, which so far have been shaky for big tech giants and companies that typically drive the market. Garrett Phillips, Managing Partner at 3Summit Investment Management, joins Closing Bell to discuss today's close, our current volatile environment, where to invest in the current environment, and more. 


Closing Bell

Stocks Close Slightly Higher, Nasdaq Enters Bear Market Territory

Let's turn back to the major indexes again, the NASDAQ ending at a new low for the year after yesterday, seeing its worst day since 2020 near the start of this pandemic. The Dow was up about 62 points, but the NASDAQ lost close to two points, Not even down 1/10 of a person, but still technically Lower on the session after falling nearly 4% yesterday. And joining me now to discuss the market action is Garrett phillips managing partner at three Summit Investment Management. Garrett, it's good to have you, What's your reaction to the market news and what's been a very volatile april? Thanks kristen. Uh the you know, the markets today, it's very interesting. The one thing I noticed is that as the NASDAQ closes flat here after being up for most of the day, you know, we're seeing kind of a repetitive pattern of what we saw the day before yesterday, on monday, we're seeing it again on friday and we're seeing kind of a big intraday reversal we're seeing, you know, today we were up on the NASDAQ, you know, more than a percent, Well over a percent. The same thing happened to us last friday, the market started out up and then there was a big intraday reversal that headed down and when you start to couple that with, you know, other things that we're seeing, we're seeing high volatility. The vix is over 32 today, where it closes, which is very high level for the vix volatility is very high, These intraday reversals, volatility, downward trending prices really seem to be setting us up for coming quarters of negative growth or or receding growth, maybe not negative growth but declining growth in the markets. Uh Certainly when we see the print tomorrow for GDP for the advanced estimate, We're not expecting certainly what we saw in the fourth quarter, I think expectations at 1.1% growth, we think that will come in less. And the feds positioning all sort of point to coming quarters where we have declining growth. How are you trading the stock market Garrett and what are you recommending to clients? I think positioning is really important here. We've recommended and we've positioned in our portfolios about 40% cash for quite some time. So we've been almost holding cash is cash is an asset allocation. We're holding enough that we think there's gonna be opportunities here in the coming months to put that cash to work at better price levels than what we've seen for a couple of months. So we're fairly bearish on the outlook. And I think in terms of stocks because, you know, we don't know everything that's going to happen in the future that if we're positioning our stock portfolio, we'd like to be very defensive with our positioning. And so, you know, mostly we put our clients into E. T. F. S. Because we can express a strategy or we can express the sector. Um And so as opposed to individual stocks, so we're looking at lowering the beta of the portfolio. So we're looking at low volatility E T F S p l V is one that we like. That's the 100 lowest volatility stocks in the S and P. We also like large cap value. Uh You know, small cap has not been good returns, does not look to be good returns projected forward. Uh So MG V is a good large cap value plate. Look, Garrett, we've got to leave it there. We have a busy week of earnings, busy afternoon of earnings as well. That's Garrett phillips, managing partner at Three Summit Investment Management.