Where to invest $10,000 right now, according to 6 top Wall Street minds
With the Federal Reserve resuming its rate-cut cycle, now is an ideal time to update our quarterly Where to Invest $10,000 series.
Americans are sitting on tons of cash — almost $20 trillion worth, to be exact, including $7 trillion in money market funds. Over the last few years, holding cash has paid off, with money market funds, certificates of deposit, and Treasury bills yielding substantial returns.
But now, as the Fed slashes rates again, those low-risk yields are starting to fall, and investors are starting to think about how to put their money to work in other opportunities.
How to deploy their cash “is the most frequent question we are asked by household investors and their advisors today,” Jared Woodard, head of the Research Investment Committee and head of ETF strategy at BofA Securities, told Business Insider.
So, where should your money go? There are plenty of flashy options right now. AI stocks. Gold. Bitcoin. But after a long run of stellar gains, are they still good investments?
We asked six market pros where they think the best places are to invest $10,000 right now.
Jared Woodard, head of the Research Investment Committee and head of ETF strategy at BofA Securities
A NY Waterway ferry sails in the Hudson River in front of the skyline of lower Manhattan and One World Trade Center in New York City on October 22, 2025.Gary Hershorn/Getty Images
Woodard shared three investment ideas to capitalize on falling rates. The first is small-cap value stocks, which are very rate-sensitive.
“Everyone already owns lots of large-cap growth. Sometimes in investing, you have to ‘do the opposite’ of the consensus, e.g., own small, undervalued stocks to diversify your large growth stocks,” he told Business Insider in an email. “Smaller companies are big beneficiaries from the Fed cutting cycle because 45% of their debts are in short-term instruments that can be rolled over to take advantage of lower interest rates.”
Second is emerging market debt, which also benefits from lower rates. He pointed out that returns on EM debt have beaten EM stocks on average going back to 1997.
Third are gold miners, which should deliver robust dividends following the recent surge in gold demand.
“Historically these companies can suffer from boom/bust cycles, but today our colleagues highlight greater capital discipline among miners,” he wrote. “They are generating substantial free cash flow, which should allow them to continue returning capital to shareholders via dividends and share repurchases.”
He listed three ETFs to tap into these trades: the iShares US Small Cap Value Factor ETF (SVAL), the BondBloxx JP Morgan USD Emerging Markets 1-10 Year Bond ETF (XEMD), and the VanEck Gold Miners ETF (GDX).
Ben McMillan, CIO at IDX Advisors
People walk by the New York Stock Exchange on October 20.Spencer Platt/Getty Images
McMillan said to ride the so-called debasement trade by putting half the money into gold and half the money into bitcoin.
Both assets are up big time in 2025 as investors look to hedge a falling US dollar, weakness in other fiat currencies, and rising global sovereign debt.
While they’ve both fallen in recent days, McMillan thinks the rally has room to run as central banks snatch up both gold and bitcoin, and as government debt soars.
“We have a lot of these conversations where everybody’s looking at the numbers, saying it’s had a great run. Yes, it has,” he said. “I’m not saying it’s going to be a smooth ride — there will be volatility. But the structural tailwinds for this trade are the strongest we’ve ever seen in US history.”
“Those are two sides of the same coin,” he said of gold and bitcoin. “The beginning of the end of dollar hegemony.”
One way to gain exposure to the assets is through funds like the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD) and iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT).
David Kelly, chief global market strategist at JPMorgan Asset Management
Brokers work at the stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany, on October 9, 2025.DANIEL ROLAND/AFP via Getty Images
Kelly, on the flip side, doesn’t like either gold or bitcoin much. That’s not to say he doesn’t see further downside for the US dollar ahead amid higher government spending.
A better way to bet on this, he said, is through European and UK stocks. They’re much cheaper than US stocks and offer larger dividends.
“They carry PE ratios in the mid-teens as opposed to the low 20s for US equities,” Kelly said.
Plus, if the dollar does fall further, you’ll get an extra return on UK and European stocks, as they’re denominated in euros and pound sterling.
“The dollar has come down maybe 9% year to date, but it could come down some more. In fact, our long-term outlook is that the dollar will come down a lot more,” he said. “And as it comes down, it should amplify the return for me as a US investor on those international investments.”
Kelly said he’d split the $10,000 down the middle. Two examples of funds that offer exposure to these trades include the iShares MSCI United Kingdom ETF (EWU) and the Vanguard FTSE Europe ETF (VGK).
Jason Hsu, founder of Rayliant Global Advisors
A woman with a purple umbrella walks past the New York Stock Exchange on October 13.Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Still looking for an AI trade here? Hsu has you covered.
“My thesis is we’re probably in the 5th inning in terms of this AI run,” he said. “Certainly there’s FOMO, bubble, high valuation, and all of that, but we’re 5th inning, which means I don’t see danger.”
Hsu, who holds the following stocks in a fund he manages, said he’d put $6,000 of the funds into Chinese AI stocks and $4,000 into US AI stocks. For the Chinese portion of the funds, he’d put $4,000 into online marketplace firm Alibaba and $2,000 into Xiaomi, which produces electric vehicles.
“What I’m looking at are AI-related tech companies in emerging Asia. That’s largely gonna be a lot of the big Chinese tech firms that are trading at one-third to one-fifth of US tech valuations, and they’re coming out with things that rival” US products, he said.
On the US side, he’d put $2,000 into Super Micro (SMCI) for its AI servers and relatively small size still. The other $2,000 he’d put into Microsoft, given its exposure to OpenAI.
“I know that’s a big, boring, giant name, but it is so tied in with OpenAI, and OpenAI is still kind of at the center of everything AI,” he said. “It has probably the highest probability to be the winner in this space.”
David Lefkowitz, head of US equities, UBS Global Wealth Management
A trader works at his desk on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in New York on October 7, 2025.TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty Images
Lefkowitz also thinks the AI trade still has legs despite concerns about a bubble. He highlighted “companies leveraged to the build-out of infrastructure — whether on the semiconductor side or some of the industrial companies related to providing industrial infrastructure, power, transformers, and so on.”
While he couldn’t share individual stocks, he said the tech, communications services, and utilities sectors offer the best exposure to this trade.
He also mentioned healthcare as a way to counterbalance the tilt toward AI.
“It adds diversification to the portfolio because it’s been a laggard, and there’s been a lot of policy uncertainty that seems to be nearing its end,” he said. “There are also pockets within healthcare — like managed care — that have had some issues, but we think those will start to normalize next year. That’s a laggard part of the market that offers nice diversification benefits to the more AI-levered recommendations we have.”
Examples of funds with exposure to the above trades include the Vanguard Information Technology Index Fund ETF (VGT), the Communication Services Select Sector SPDR ETF Fund (XLC), the Vanguard Utilities ETF (VPU), and the iShares U.S. Healthcare ETF (IYH).
Tony Despirito, global CIO for fundamental equities at BlackRock
People walk past the BlackRoc building at 50 Hudson Yards during a rainstorm on August 04, 2024 in New York City.Craig T Fruchtman/Getty Images
DeSpirito said he’d look for beat-up names to put money into.
“One of the themes I look for is what I call ‘trough on trough.’ That means a company where earnings are at trough levels — so there’s good earnings growth ahead — and the multiple is also low relative to history,” he said. “You get two ways to win: through earnings growth and multiple expansion. Those have been some of my best investments.”
He highlighted a few cheap parts of the market he sees right now, the first being health maintenance organization (HMO) stocks — essentially firms offering insurance plans. We’re at a low-point in the underwriting cycle, he said, meaning underwriting is going to get stricter, leading to larger profit margins.
He said Elevance Health is an example of an attractive HMO, trading at 11.5 times earnings.
Second, he likes firms tied to housing turnover, or increasing numbers of people moving, as interest rates come down. For example, plumbing firms benefit from higher turnover, as fixtures are frequently replaced. Fortune Brands is a cheap stock well-positioned to capitalize on this, he said.
Finally, he likes stocks that trade at a so-called “headquarter discount,” meaning they’re cheap simply because they’re based outside of the US.
“For example, BP and Shell trade at significant P/E discounts to Exxon, despite being similar businesses,” he said. “British American Tobacco trades at the same price as Altria, but it’s got more next-gen products (vapes, nicotine pouches) growing at 15% a year, plus an Indian subsidiary that trades at a higher multiple.”
