There's good reason to be optimistic about the market these days. Corporate earnings and consumer spending have held up better than many expected, powering the S&P 500 to a gain of around 10%. But a pessimist might point out that growth is uneven, inflation is a tad high, and volatility can still reappear quickly. For this week's Barron's Advisor Big Q column, we asked wealth managers to identify a fund they really like right in the current market environment. And it turns out that those they picked have something in common: In different ways, they can each contribute to a portfolio's resilience. One adds income and diversification; another could cushion inflationary shocks. One fund broadens geographic exposure, while another adds rules-based discipline that may reduce emotional decision-making.

Aleksandr Spencer, chief investment officer, Bogart Wealth: We like American Beacon Developing World Income Fund. It's an actively managed emerging market and frontier market debt strategy focused on sovereign and corporate issuers across the developing world. The fund currently offers a yield of about 9% or more. We like it now because U.S. credit spreads have remained tight, offering minimal compensation for risk. And many areas of the U.S. equity markets trade at elevated valuations. In our view, emerging market debt offers more attractive relative value, supported by higher yields and improving fundamentals across many issuers. The investment case for the fund is driven primarily by income, country selection, and credit research rather than a specific view on the direction of interest rates. That can be particularly valuable in today's uncertain rate environment.

We use AGEYX as a diversifying income allocation. Its return drivers differ from traditional U.S. bonds and equities, which helps reduce concentration risk while providing a differentiated source of return potential. The fund's key risks are that U.S. dollar strength, geopolitical developments, and country-specific credit events can create volatility, which is why active management remains essential.

Alex Shahidi, co-chief investment officer and senior managing director at Evoke Advisors, a division of MAI Capital Management: One idea I find relatively attractive is the FlexShares Morningstar Global Upstream Natural Resources Index Fund. It's an index fund that tracks the Morningstar Global Upstream Natural Resources Index. At its core, this is an investment in stocks of commodity producers. These are companies that extract resources like energy, metals, and agricultural products from the ground. Their revenues are tied to commodity prices, which means they historically have tended to benefit when inflation has risen. They are among the businesses closest to the source of inflation.

That relationship has shown up consistently in the environments that may matter most. In the 1970s, when inflation was high and traditional equities struggled, many commodity producers delivered strong returns. In 2022, when stocks and bonds declined together, they were one of the few areas of the market that generated good returns. More recently, in the first quarter of 2026, they generally outperformed as inflation concerns resurfaced. When inflation surprises to the upside, this is one of the few parts of the equity market that may potentially benefit.

What makes the asset class especially compelling to me now is the combination. You're not just getting exposure to real assets, you're still owning equities, which means you retain the long-term return potential that can come with them. In other words, you can potentially get both sides of the equation -- real asset exposure and the equity risk premium. Of course, the risks associated with equities, and more specifically with commodities, remain.

Mitch Schlesinger, chief investment strategist and senior portfolio manager, Evermay Wealth Management: We like DFAI -- Dimensional International Core Equity Market ETF. This isn't the kind of holding that makes for a great cocktail party story. But we've always believed that steady, repeatable performance matters more than a good story. And on that score, DFAI has delivered. The fund has outperformed the MSCI EAFE Index on a rolling one-, three-, and five-year basis. [The MSCI EAFE Index tracks large- and mid-cap stocks in 21 developed countries but excludes the U.S. and Canada.] That's the kind of consistency we want in a core international holding. Its top holding might surprise you: ASML, the Dutch company that makes the machines behind the world's most advanced semiconductors.

We like that it's not a passive index fund. In fact, we think active managers can add long-term value in the international markets. Dimensional uses a factor-based approach, tilting toward smaller companies, attractive valuations, and businesses with strong underlying profitability. Each of these factors has a long history of outperformance over full market cycles. We think of DFAI as the baseball player who hits singles and doubles all game long, not the one swinging for the fences and striking out half the time. That reliability is why we have it as a core piece of our international equity allocations.

Mark Clark, founder, tax and financial planner, Prestige Advisors: The fund strategy I keep coming back to for many of my clients is built to take emotion off the table. It's called DunhamDC 80 [managed by Dunham & Associates Investment Counsel, a registered investment advisor]. It's a rules-based, systematic strategy whose whole premise is to buy fear and sell greed. It runs on an algorithm Dunham calls the Dykmans Curve, designed by their chief investment officer, Ryan Dykmans, that trims equity exposure as markets get euphoric and adds equities as they sell off. The DC 80 sleeve of this strategy is the growth-oriented version. Its neutral target is roughly 80% equity and 20% fixed income, and it can dial equity down toward 60% at frothy market highs or up toward 100% at market lows.

Warren Buffett famously said be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful; Dunham has turned that into a disciplined process. For the client who wants an actual plan and doesn't want their retirement resting on a single broker's hunch or their own guesswork, DC 80 works as a rules-driven core inside a broader portfolio. The caveats are that DC 80 has a short track record, can lag in a straight-up bull run, and like any strategy, it can lose money. It removes the improvising, not the risk. My core premise is having plans that are built on discipline instead of guesswork.

Write to advisor.editors@barrons.com

This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 08, 2026 15:36 ET (19:36 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.