From AI Liquidity to Real-World Capital Spending

Prepared by Edmond de Rothschild’s CIO office, this January 2026 strategy note frames the coming year as a shift from financial excess toward a broad, real-economy CAPEX cycle driven by AI, reindustrialisation, and state priorities. 

• Liquidity is migrating from markets into tangible investment, pressuring Big Tech balance sheets and signalling peak index concentration.

• AI infrastructure spending favours second-order beneficiaries such as semiconductors, power grids, cybersecurity, and automation rather than the Magnificent 7 themselves.

• Banks emerge as central transmission mechanisms for deficit financing and investment, supported by policy, yield-curve dynamics, and balance-sheet leverage.

Where does performance accrue when capital finally turns into matter rather than multiples?