Episode number two of ours Satellite investment ideas 2026. A new year has just begun and market participants, customers and investors are looking for investment ideas; they try to “predict” what could happen in the next twelve months on stock exchanges, rates, currencies and raw materials.
How economic and geopolitical events may or may not influence the hypothesized market framework. It has been amply demonstrated as this exercise is extremely difficultthat some new element always arrives that none of the thousands of human minds working in the field had even hypothesized.
Despite this necessary premise, let’s try to give some advice that deliberately does not concern the part core of the portfolio (where the suggestions of asset allocation are found in abundance and where we don’t think we can bring much added value), but of ideas that we will define as “satellite”more specific, perhaps less consensus, which can help to find something alternative, to stimulate the intellect of our readers.
So what do we like about the markets with a view to 2026? Today we talk to you about 3 ideas on stocks and raw materials.
➢ Healthy Living theme: in the wake of the growing tendency to pursue a healthy lifestyle (nutrition, sport, therapies) and in the face of a market that does not reward this important megatrend. We are all witnesses of this important trend in our lives which we could summarize in the motto “living longer, better and more sustainably”. There are companies large (Danone, Hain Celestial, Novo Nordisk, Herbalife), medium (Technogym, Patagonia, Verallia, THG Nutrition) or small (Oatly, NaturalBoom, EcorNaturaSì, Simply Good Foods) which in our opinion will benefit from this trend.
Today the market does not evaluate them “well”, it is not very interested in the topic, it sees more problems than solutions to this radical change underway. To understand how important what is happening is, we could cite the recent booklet published in the USA byUSDA (department of agriculture, food safety, resource protection) which has put on paper the dietary advice for Americans, the majority of whom have been eating too much and poorly for decades.
To understand how little the stock market appreciates this theme today, just look at the performance of the world stock index (MSCI World) compared to funds and ETFs that invest in the Healthy Living theme: the graph made with Bloomberg highlights highlights the incredible 110% average delta performance over the last five years. How to expose yourself to the idea, which being an equity investment must necessarily have an investment horizon that goes beyond the year 2026? We highlight 3 funds (CPR Food for generations more on health / healthcare, Robeco Healthy Living and Pictet Nutrition more on nutrition) and an ETF (Rize Sustainable Future of Food, more on pure play and which also invests in medium/small companies).
➢ Emerging equity markets topic: investment opportunities in emerging countries which today are more interesting in terms of valuations and which they represent only 11% of the MSCI ACWI index (world stock index which includes all countries), a value which for various reasons has remained low in the last decade (lower average growth of countries, lackluster profits, strength of the US dollar, excessive power of US equity as a weight in the index). The medium/long term outlook for EM appears similar to June 2000 and therefore much better than developed market equities (USA in particular). At that time, having allocated more capital to EM led to great advantages in terms of performance in the following decade (Msci World -7%, S&P500 -26%, Msci Emerging Markets +240% over the period 6/2000 > 6/2010).
Today the MSCI EM index (equity on emerging markets) is made up for three quarters of the 4 Asian giants (China, Taiwan, India and South Korea) with residual parts for South America, Africa, etc. In our opinion, therefore, alongside a classic fund or ETF on emerging shares (the choice is yours, there are so many) we could think of adding two promising components such as Chinese tech stocks and Latin American stocks.
As regards the former, we believe that the gap with the American technological giants is narrowing, just look at the fact that China is already ahead of the US in terms of downloads of open source AI models or in terms of the use of AI in robotics. The AI ecosystem is different from the American one but is extremely dynamic, with lower training costs than in the US and the ability to scale innovations more quickly and also a lower cost of energy thanks to nuclear and large-scale renewable energy. Valuations of Chinese technology are lower than those of American big tech. There are various instruments including UBS and HSBC ETFs.
As for instead the shares of the LATAM areawhose valuations are attractive compared to developed markets, we believe that the opportunities lie in the fact that these are economies that have become important on the energy side of the future (copper, lithium, precious metals, agricultural commodities), which have a more stable political context (the political shift to the right, according to investors, strengthens the prospects of the region’s financial assets) and which today see a low presence of foreign investors (values which can only rise from the twenty-year lows reached in 2025).
The instruments with which to invest in this case could once again be ETFs, with for example the Amundi MSCI Emerging Markets Latin America and various funds (Gavekal, Pictet, Aberdeen, Nordea, JPM offer valid products).
➢ Agricultural raw materials: every year we try to find a commodity that has fallen to historically “low” values and on which there may be some new reasons that emerge and change the trend. In the past two years we have recommended precious metals and in particular gold first and then palladium, obtaining good results, thanks also to a good dose of “luck” with other elements, not necessarily foreseen by us, which have accelerated the rise in prices.
Today it seems to us that agricultural raw materials can fall into this category in particular grains (soybeans, oats, wheat, wheat) which make up the main part of the index, which fell by 50% and more from the highs of 4 years ago. They have therefore remained far behind precious metals (natural, given the role of the latter as a reserve of value which has weighed heavily in recent years), but also compared to industrial ones.
Agricultural commodities usually move based on the performance of harvests and therefore depend much more on supply than on demand, which instead grows quite regularly and constantly over time.
And it is precisely on the supply side that in 2026, after years of abundant harvests and absence of particular climatic problems, which a less favorable situation could be seen; in fact, meteorologists have predicted a year in which the phenomenon of “El Niño” it could be quite strong. We do not wish climatic disasters and damage to crops on any agricultural producer, but it seems like a sensible bet to insert an ETC on agricultural raw materials. There are various ones, even on individual raw materials that are perhaps not very represented in the general index (such as Persimmon, Coffee or Cotton), but we opt for the “general” one, however choosing the version of Wisdomtree (Agriculture Longer Dated Etc) which uses medium/long term futures which improve the efficiency of the product.
To conclude, let us remember that these are some investment ideas for this 2026 (and possibly for the years to come) which help to diversify and which are to be combined with other more traditional “core” ideas, and therefore are to be implemented on a limited part of the portfolio.
