As the second quarter gets underway, investors should continue to look at risk assets — they will just have to be selective, experts told CNBC on Friday.

The stock market posted strong gains in the first quarter, with the Nasdaq recording its best quarterly performance since 2013.

Gabriela Santos, global market strategist at JPMorgan Asset Management, credits the market's strength to the global reflation trade rather than President Donald Trump and his pro-growth agenda.

"It's a pickup in economic data around the world and that is still very much the case. So as we go into the second quarter, that's the main factor we're watching," she said in an interview with "Power Lunch."

Therefore, Santos is still positioned in risk assets, including some of the cyclical sectors that didn't do as well as expected like financials.

And she thinks that the reflation trade can still be strong enough to propel stocks higher even if the Trump agenda fails, although the magnitude of the move will likely be different.

"We expect earnings to continue trending up, the economy to be fine. But we're talking about 5 percent earnings growth here without any corporate tax reform in the U.S.," Santos said. "So we have to be selective and we have to think about international as well."

In fact, she expects international stocks to outperform in the next few years.