Markets have been volatile, with stocks swinging to sharp gains last week after steep declines. A chunk of those gains came Friday , when the Dow rallied more than 700 points, while the S & P 500 and Nasdaq each popped around 2.3%. Still, there’s uncertainty around inflation and interest rate hikes , with a Wall Street Journal report showing some Fed officials were concerned that hikes could go too far. Investors will look to corporate earnings and forward guidance during this peak reporting season, with tech firms set to report this week. John Petrides, portfolio manager at Tocqueville Asset Management, said, “The question is, what’s going to be the future guidance for those companies since they dominate the index?” He pointed out that the top five holdings of the S & P 500 are all big-cap tech: Apple , Microsoft , Amazon , Alphabet and Tesla . “Some of them, if not all of them, are larger than the entire energy sector,” he told CNBC’s ” Street Signs Asia ” on Tuesday. “These companies that are reporting over this week, will determine where the market is going to move on a go forward basis for sure.” Petrides highlights three plays investors can get into amid the choppiness. He said the three themes his firm is going for now are: income, energy and small-cap stocks. Income One great asset to earn dividends from is real estate dividend trusts, said Petrides. “The REITs have had one of their worst calendar years in quite some time. And it’s kind of head scratching to us because a hard asset, a building that a REIT owns should be a great inflation play.” He pointed out they pay “very strong” dividends that are above between 5% and 7%. “So we like that space in general. As you have higher inflation, you have stable cash flows and rent coming in and you get a big dividend,” Petrides said. Fund pick: Vanguard REIT ETF . Energy Petrides highlighted one “interesting play” in the energy market — Master Limited Partnerships (MLPs), which trade like stocks but are really a partnership interest. MLPs have general partners who run the day-to-day operations of the business, which can include pipelines for transporting oil and gas. So-called MLPs are attractive because they offer yields that can exceed 7%. They’ve also experienced strong gains this year on higher energy prices. “We know the commodity prices are high. This is the place of the market where you’re moving commodities from point A to B and … the U.S. is sitting on a lot of natural gas, obviously exporting a lot of that in terms of [liquified natural gas], so moving the commodity through the pipes, those pipes collectively did pay off big dividends to investors,” said Petrides. Fund pick: Global X MLP Energy ETF . Small caps Petrides said small-cap stocks have been “one of the best-performing” asset classes on average since the 1950s. “So clearly, you’re taking the long term play there. And we think value is still attractive despite its relative outperformance to growth,” he added. Some small-cap stocks can be described as value stocks, which are shares that appear to trade at a lower price relative to their fundamentals. Fund pick: Vanguard Small Cap Value ETF — CNBC’s Darla Mercado contributed to this report.
