Chief investment officer Emanuel Datt said March headline CPI rose 4.6% annually, up 0.9 percentage points from February, leaving the Reserve Bank of Australia little room to pause in May.
He said higher mortgage repayments would squeeze non-essential spending and trigger earnings downgrades, while industrials also face weaker demand, higher energy costs and financing pressure.
Datt favoured upstream energy producers and gold as inflation hedges, and said profitable, low-debt technology firms with recurring revenue should prove more resilient than pre-profitability growth stocks.
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