Inflation continues to be one of the most pressing concerns on both Main Street and Wall Street. And with little relief expected in the short-term, people who haven’t already padded their portfolios with inflation investments still have time to don a little protection.
For context, America’s inflation rate was already red-hot by May 2021, when it surpassed 5.0%. By the end of the year, the consumer price index’s growth had reached 7%.
Consumers were punished still further in 2022 as Russia invaded Ukraine, sparking (among other things) a massive run-up in crude oil prices that has domestic gasoline prices still rising to this day. CPI growth hit a 40-year high of 8.5% in March, it pulled back only slightly to 8.3% in April, and it could persist as a problem for many months more.
“By now, we are well aware of the supply chain issues and imbalances that caused goods inflation to rise over the last year,” says Liz Young, head of investment strategy at SoFi. “The big headline makers have been prices of used cars & trucks, household furnishings, and various food items, for example.”
But she notes that services data is becoming a larger driver of high inflation. “The reason this matters is that services inflation is a stickier component,” she says, “and one that could prove more difficult to contain.”
Thus, as much as most of us would like to be past this issues, we still need to protect our portfolios from rising prices. Those looking for the best inflation investments can find them in a number of asset classes – equities, sure, but also real estate, commodities and, to a certain extent given the Federal Reserve’s recent hawkishness, bonds.
Here are 11 investments to inflation-proof your portfolio. This list of both stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) offer varying degrees of protection against high inflation, and in some cases could continue to do well even once consumer prices cool down somewhat.
Data is as of May 12. Average price targets and analyst ratings provided by Koyfin.
UMH Properties
- Sector: Real estate
- Industry: REIT (Residential)
- Market value: $1.0 billion
- Dividend yield: 4.1%
UMH Properties (UMH, $19.18) is a real estate investment trust (REIT) specializing in housing communities located across the U.S. And it’s currently on Wedbush’s Best Ideas List.
Wedbush’s BIL is a list of Wedbush’s highest-rated companies, chosen by Wedbush analysts and vetted by Wedbush’s investment committee. If a stock falls more …….