“Sell America” has emerged as a popular rallying cry for market pundits who are balking at President Donald Trump’s tax bill and wide-reaching tariff plan.
But in its newest outlook, Morgan Stanley is taking the opposite approach, recommending a handful of US assets for the next 12 months.
The firm is specifically focused on US stocks, Treasurys, and investment-grade corporate credit, recommending an overweight portfolio positioning for each.
Even a complex and ever-changing macro environment isn’t enough to challenge its view.
“Global growth is slowing, but macro is not the markets,” Morgan Stanley wrote in recent research.
The firm argued that riskier assets can rally in the face of slowing growth, while Treasury’s can benefit from the multiple interest rate cuts the firm expects in 2026. The S&P 500 has shown this to be true, reaching new record highs at a time when the economy has been far from stellar.
One driving force behind Morgan Stanley’s US bullishness is a popular acronym: TINA, short for There Is No Alternative.
“There are few large, liquid equity or fixed-income markets that can match the US at the moment,” the firm wrote.
But there’s one area Morgan Stanley sees depreciating further: the US dollar, which just capped off its weakest first half of the year since the Nixon administration.
A combination of slowing economic growth, political uncertainty, and rising fiscal concerns have been largely responsible for the dollar declining versus global peers.
“The one notable US asset we dislike is the USD, which we think can depreciate significantly with US growth and yield differentials versus RoW fading,” the firm said.
Experts such as Mizuho’s Vishnu Varathan have attributed pressure on the US dollar to factors such as the pending One Big Beautiful Bill, a budgetary package that threatens to significantly increase the US deficit by $3.3 trillion over the coming decade.
“An unsustainable debt path is a key motivator of the ‘Sell America’ narrative that has compromised USD and USD assets, Varathan said.
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