Many markets are expensive – but there is still value to be had

The wild optimism surrounding US tech stocks may be looking suspiciously bubble-like, but you can still find long-term value.

If you had put $100 into big US growth stocks on 31 December, 2019, you would now have $111. Shares in these companies are currently trading not so much as though Covid-19 doesn’t exist, but as though its existence has been a positive for their businesses (which you can argue – they’re mostly tech stocks) and as though they were not already overpriced in December (harder to argue). Look at the speed and scale of the recovery of many of these stocks since March – and they are the ones most discussed in the media – and you will have only one thought: “There’s a bubble out there.”

There is still value to be had

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.