There are only a few weeks left until the Stocks and Shares ISA allowance for the 2019/20 tax year runs out. This means investors are running out of time to make the most of the allocation before they lose it on 5 April.
The good news is, is after recent market declines, investors are now spoilt for choice when it comes to investment options.
Stocks and Shares ISA investments
Since the middle of February, the FTSE 250 index has plunged by more than 30%. This decline has caught many investors by surprise. Only a few weeks before the index started to sell-off, it had reached one of its highest levels in five years. Now it’s back to where it was in 2016.
The thing is, barring a major economic depression, the UK economy is much stronger today than it was all those years ago. Most of the FTSE 250’s constituents are also financially more robust than they were back in 2016.
This suggests the market might have got ahead of itself. Granted, some companies are already feeling the pain of the coronavirus outbreak, and their share prices now reflex this. However, other businesses have seen their stocks sell-off despite supportive fundamentals.
Supportive fundamentals
Take infrastructure investor HICL Infrastructure for example. Shares in this company are off around 17% since mid-February. Investors have been selling the stock despite the government’s commitment to up spending on infrastructure by tens of billions of dollars over the next few years.
Meanwhile, shares in veterinary pharmaceuticals group Dechra have fallen nearly a third over the same time frame. The virus outbreak is unlikely to impact the demand for veterinary medicines over the long run. That could make them a great addition to a Stocks and Shares ISA.
Then there’s Tritax Big Box REIT. This is an owner of the so-called big box real estate assets. These help companies facilitate e-commerce logistics. Therefore, while Tritax might not escape the virus outbreak unscathed, the booming demand for e-commerce and delivery services will provide some cushion. Supermarkets are already warning they might struggle to keep up with demand if current trends continue.
While it looks as if some companies will see reduced demand for their services, due to the coronavirus outbreak, others are unlikely to suffer the same impact. As such, now could be an excellent time for investors to snap up a share of these businesses.
I’m particularly interested in infrastructure assets and diversified investment funds as investments for my Stocks and Shares ISA. Infrastructure is particularly attractive because infrastructure investors make decisions with multi-decade time horizons. This suggests the current market upset will be just a blip on these businesses’ track records.
With infrastructure spending now also at the top of the government’s agenda, it’s highly likely this sector will continue to produce attractive returns for investors for many years to come.