A top-rated wealth manager encourages investors not to abandon stocks after S&P 500's record high

• Sherry Paul, UBS Financial Services senior portfolio manager, told Bloomberg that investors should not shy away from stepping into the stock market even as it reaches new highs.

• The S&P 500 closed at a record on Tuesday. Paul said it's typical for retail investors to "feel nervous when markets hit new highs," but encouraged them to move past that.

• The wealth manager said these four factors will affect how investors should structure their portfolios: earnings, a vaccine, inflation, and liquidity and the stimulus package.
• Read more on Business Insider.

Sherry Paul, UBS Financial Services senior portfolio manager, told Bloomberg on Wednesday that investors should not shy away from the stock market even as the S&P 500 has reached an all-time high. The benchmark index closed at a record high on Tuesday and has rallied more than 52% from its March low.

Paul said that it's typical from an "emotional and behavioral finance standpoint" that retail investors feel nervous when markets hit new highs. "It actually scares people," she said, adding: "I want to encourage investors to kind of move past that and to take a rational view of where we are seeing returns and ample opportunity." Shy investors who have been "sitting in cash" should start stepping into the market right now, Paul said.

However, Paul said these investors should accept the reality that there are four things that will drive a market higher — and lower — depending on how they fare. These factors are earnings, a vaccine, inflation, and liquidity and stimulus.

Read more: Stock market wizard William O'Neil famously turned $5,000 into $200,000 in just a few year's time. Here's the 7-part model he uses to sniff out winning stocks.

Investors should keep an eye out for these factors, because news on them will affect how investors should structure their portfolios, the wealth manager said. Paul emphasized investors shouldn't "abandon the asset class of equities" but instead restructure the equities they're owning and the sectors they're emphasizing.

The wealth manager who has been named a Forbes Top Women Wealth Advisor said "there's room to move" in the stock market, "because we have a concentration in the performance in certain sectors, and frankly in certain stocks."

"There's plenty of opportunity for investors to step into this market to look for value and to reset their portfolios," Paul said.