(Bloomberg) -- As worries build around the artificial intelligence trade, investors are starting to seek shelter in a more pedestrian corner of the stock market: companies with sturdy finances.
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An investing style that buys quality stocks has gained 3.8% in the past two months, the best-performing group among eight factors tracked by Barclays Plc. The bank's long-short quality basket gained 1.9% on Thursday, when a selloff in chipmakers pushed the Nasdaq 100 Index down 1.6%.
AI-obsessed traders largely abandoned quality stocks last year, pushing one valuation metric to near a record low, data compiled by Barclays show. Now the style is springing back to life amid rising worries around AI and the Federal Reserve's interest-rate path.
Investors have benefited from tailwinds including AI capital spending and easy monetary policy, but "a lot of those effects are beginning to fade now," said Alex Altmann, Barclays' global head of equities tactical strategies. Should the investment cycle weaken, quality becomes "your port in a storm."
Semiconductor stocks, this year's best-performing corner on Wall Street, slumped 4.3% on Thursday, widening their decline from a June record to 19%, as worries swirled around whether massive artificial-intelligence investments will justify lofty valuations.
Quality, Wall Street shorthand for companies with strong balance sheets, high returns on equity and consistent earnings growth, has been advancing amid weakness in the momentum trade, showcasing a reversal in the market where worries around AI keep upending investing playbooks.
In fact, by one measure, quality has become an anti-momentum bet. The factor's 90-day inverse correlation with momentum has risen to -0.63, among the highest readings in Barclays' history. A reading of -1 means the baskets move in opposite directions.
Barclays' quality basket includes names like DexCom Inc., Williams-Sonoma Inc., Kohl's Corp., Fastenal Co., Seagate Technology Holdings Plc, Planet Fitness Inc., Morgan Stanley and Moderna Inc.
More gains could be ahead for the strategy, if history is any guide. The factor's rout earlier this year pushed a valuation metric that compares its enterprise value to sales to the bottom-11th percentile of observations going back 20 years ago. Prior instances when the multiple was this low have preceded gains over the next six months 92% of the time, data compiled by Barclays show.