Advances in medical technology and healthcare prompted by the Covid-19 pandemic have opened up investment opportunities, according to Zehrid Osmani, a portfolio manager focused on global equities at Martin Currie, a Franklin Templeton company.
The potential for high growth returns has been created in the medical technology industry across the globe, in areas such as healthcare software and personalized therapeutics, Osmani said during a recent Franklin Templeton web conference on mega-trends in the financial services industry.
Opportunities are also growing in medical niche markets, including remote patient monitoring, genomics and drug development, he said.
Osmani was one of the market analysts brought together by Franklin Templeton in the web conference, called “The Dawn of a New Market? How the Pandemic is Re-Shaping Our Future,” which was part of the firm’s Mega Trends Accelerate webcast series.
“What we have learned from the pandemic will drive the future of public healthcare,” Osmani said. “Governments will channel more fiscal stimuli to upgrade existing healthcare infrastructure in order to make it more resistant for the potential of future pandemic outbreaks.”
Osmani also predicted there will be opportunities in the industrial sectors that embrace digitization and automation and those that adopt greener infrastructure initiatives, particularly renewable energy, efficient buildings, high-speed railway and electric vehicles.
The pandemic prompted an accelerated adoption of environmental, social and corporate governance standards, according to Bonnie Wongtrakool, a portfolio manager and the global head of ESG investments at Western Asset Management, a Legg Mason firm.
As Wongtrakool said, “At Western Asset, we seek the three T’s—transparency, time lines and tracking—to continue pushing corporations forward on ESG issues.” But in order to have consistent progress and stable investment possibilities, she said, “supportive policy and regulation is required to help improve standards. Performance still varies quite widely across sectors.”
Wongtrakool said fears of inflation are overblown. “Typically, higher levels of government spending simply move growth forward. As for monetary policy, while the Fed has vowed to remain accommodative, we’ve seen from the past couple of decades that monetary policy on its own can’t create higher inflation.”
Consumer behavior has changed because of both the pandemic and trends already in place (and likely to remain in place), according to Sara Araghi, research analyst and portfolio manager and head of the consumer sector team for Franklin Equity Group. Consumers have been increasingly concerned about ESG issues for several years.