Deciding where to invest your money is never an easy decision. With ongoing political and economic uncertainty regularly creating market volatility, there’s always the risk that you could lose money in the short term.
However, looking past the short-term noise, there are a number of companies within the FTSE 100 that appear to have bright long-term prospects. Here’s a look at two I’d be happy to invest my money in today.
Reckitt Benckiser
Reckitt Benckiser (LSE: RB) is a health and hygiene company that owns a powerful portfolio of leading brands including Dettol, Durex, Nurofen, and Finish. A global giant, the company has a market capitalisation of £46bn.
Reckitt is not the type of stock that will double your money overnight. However, I do believe it has the potential to generate attractive total returns in the years ahead. In my view, Reckitt has a sound business strategy that should reward investors in the long run. Not only is the group boosting its emerging markets exposure, but it is also highly focused on its e-commerce and digital strategy. For example, in China and India, where e-commerce is growing at a prolific rate, the group is ‘hyper-targeting’ consumers through digital strategies in an effort to turbo-charge its sales. It appears that star fund manager Terry Smith shares my bullish stance, as Reckitt is a key holding in the top-performing Fundsmith Equity fund.
After rising to above £80 in mid-2017, RB shares have pulled back over the last 24 months and I think this has created an attractive long-term buying opportunity. At the current price of £66, the shares trade on a P/E ratio of around 19, which I believe is quite reasonable for a company of Reckitt’s quality. Note that Morgan Stanley recently raised its price target for the stock to £78, which implies upside of 18% right now.
Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust
Another growth stock within the FTSE 100 that I like at present is the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust (LSE: SMT) which, as its name suggests, is actually an investment trust rather than a regular individual company. But don’t be fooled by the name – this trust has nothing to do with mortgages and these days it is very much global, rather than Scottish.
SMT is essentially a low-cost equity fund that is focused on innovative growth companies across the world. So, if you’re looking for exposure to growth themes such as e-commerce, cloud technology, online streaming, and video gaming, I think it could be a great addition to your portfolio. Top holdings in the trust currently include the likes of Amazon, Tencent, Netflix and Spotify Technologies.
Performance here has been very good over the last five years with the trust NAV rising 172% to the end of April versus 86% for the FTSE All-World Index. That’s a substantial outperformance, which suggests that portfolio manager James Anderson knows what he’s doing. With ongoing charges of just 0.37% per year, I think SMT is a great way of gaining exposure to some of the world’s fastest-growing technology companies.
