After a strong start to the year, US stocks were brought back to reality in February, as major US indices posted their second negative month in three. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500, and the Nasdaq Composite all fell in February. And while March is often a positive month for stocks, this year could bring more turmoil due to sticky inflation, a potential recession, and fears of a regulatory crackdown in China. Above all, however, is likely to be a path of interest rate hikes, with market pros nervously eyeing the Federal Reserve’s next rate decision on March 22 amid expectations that more interest rate hikes could be in store. The Fed in February raised the federal funds rate by 0.25 percentage points, taking it to a target range of 4.5%-4.75%, the highest since October 2007. Alexander Morris, chief investment officer at F/m Investments, said the Fed continued to “The big loom,” when Michael Landsberg, chief investment officer at Landsberg Bennett Private Wealth Management, said he believed the Fed would raise rates by more than 75-to-100 basis points. Anastasia Amoroso, chief investment strategist at iCapital, believes the “biggest market risk” right now is the Fed raising the terminal rate to the 6% to 6.5% range. “I think we could probably end the year with more than 6% rates given continued inflationary pressures and an economy that appears to be absorbing 5% rates very well,” he said in a note to CNBC on Friday. How to trade So where should investors put their money in this background? One clear area is fixed income, with Ma Yung-Yu, chief investment strategist at BMO Wealth Management, calling the asset class a “welcome relief and benefit for portfolios.” “We like short-term treasuries, and we like short-term corporate investment grade bonds. You get 5% [yield] in short-term treasuries, more than material investment companies, and it is a pretty nice stable return that you can look for. We think that fixed income really has a useful place in the portfolio right now,” he told CNBC’s “Street Signs Asia” on Wednesday. Meanwhile, Amoroso said he advises clients to use the price reset in the private market to increase exposure. “With all the dry powder that is on the sidelines, all companies have a lot of cash to distribute to strategic M & A, “he said. “Does it produce the best vintages for private ventures? Times like this. It was a downturn year. “David Dietze, managing principal at Peapack Private Wealth Management, believes that investors should “remain firm” in the stock. He noted that the stock price “from a high” – and the market has never failed to recover to a new It is also “historically a better time to keep faith” in times of negative market sentiment, he added. “It is impossible to time the market. At some point, the labor market will weaken, and that may weaken the Fed’s resolve to keep the rate up. There are many pockets of the market where valuations are not challenging,” Dietze said in a note to CNBC on Wednesday. Meanwhile, Jim Lydotes, portfolio manager of the BNY Mellon Global Infrastructure Income Fund, said investors should look for certain characteristics when investing in “High level of equity income which provides some certainty of returns, a very defensive business model that is separated from the economic cycle, and importantly, a business that can take higher prices to catch inflationary pressures,” he said.