US markets are hardly reeling but the country's famed financial strength has been questioned in 2025. The dollar no longer looks unbeatable, and the uncertainty created by President Donald Trump's tariff policy and the more general geopolitical risks have investors worried they may be overconcentrated.
Home bias, especially when it's a world superpower, is hard to overcome. But at Schwab IMPACT 2025, one of the biggest shifts in advisor conversations centered on diversification, not just across asset classes, but specifically beyond the United States. According to Ed Lopez, Head of Product at VanEck, the trend is being driven as much by geopolitics as by markets.
Among the themes advisors are asking about, Lopez said, are private markets, AI and its knock-on effects, and "emerging markets and de-dollarization." De-dollarization, in particular, is leading to investments in gold, emerging markets, and even Bitcoin.
Asked what's pushing that topic forward, he pointed to a series of geopolitical wake-up calls that have propelled de-dollarization and prompted central banks to diversify their reserve currencies away from the U.S.
He cited Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the U.S. response. "You saw what we could do in terms of blocking out certain countries from the SWIFT system… I think that led countries to wake up and think maybe we need to have our reserves diversified."
That, he added, is why central banks have been "buying tons of gold" in recent years.
A weaker dollar on a relative basis also creates openings. "It means there could be opportunities for emerging markets, emerging-market equities" and especially bonds, he said.
For many U.S. investors, the challenge is overcoming home bias. "The markets here are pretty good so it's not too bad," Lopez said. But concentration risk, particularly in the "top seven, eight names" of the S&P 500, has become harder to ignore.
"If you want to diversify, protect that portfolio a little bit better," he said. Emerging-market debt may offer stronger fundamentals than many developed markets. "The countries have better fundamentals… lower deficits and central banks that are making the right logical decisions."
VanEck has seen advisors respond. Lopez highlighted the firm's emerging-market local-currency bond ETF and a recently converted strategy now operating as the VanEck Emerging Markets Bond ETF.
Unlike strategies limited to hard-currency debt, he said, it can allocate "wherever the best valuation is," in hard or local currency, or across governments and sovereigns.
Lopez also addressed the growing interest in private markets. With fewer IPOs and more growth locked up in private structures, he believes there are quality names in the private markets. But he warned that "publicly registered funds may not necessarily be the right way to do it" given illiquidity risks.
Instead, VanEck has focused on liquid access points such as its alternative asset managers ETF, an idea that originated with advisors questioning whether private-fund returns justified their complexity. In some cases, Lopez said, "the alternative asset managers are actually doing better than some of the funds."
On active ETFs, VanEck is agnostic. But Lopez noted that fast-evolving themes, such as crypto, can benefit from active oversight.
He also highlighted an under-the-radar issue in sector ETFs: diversification rules that cap exposure to runaway tech names. "Some of the tech names keep running… the ETFs that allocators use cap them down because they have to."
VanEck's new True Sector suite aims to solve that by pairing sector ETFs with individual equities to restore full market-cap exposure.
Lopez's final message to advisors was simple: look under the hood. "Be very cognizant of how you get exposure to what the ETF is saying you're going to get access to… really understand how they get that exposure."
With geopolitics, currency shifts and private-market dynamics reshaping global opportunities, Lopez said advisors who broaden their lens now will be best positioned for the next phase of market leadership.
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