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We’ve entered a new investment world this year, a split-screen world marked by simultaneous strength and fragility, clarity and contradiction.
Our global strategies continue to do what they were built for: adapt, stay open to new leadership, and remain grounded in the macro forces shaping the next cycle.
To make sense of those forces, we turn to our 7 Super Trends for 2026 – the structural themes that define the opportunities and risks ahead for global investors in 2026 and beyond. Last time, we started with Super Trends 1 & 2, the rise of the rest and fiscal firepower. We’ll continue our outlook for 2026 with Super Trends 3 & 4.
Artificial intelligence is entering a more consequential and durable phase. The first wave of AI excitement was narrow, driven by a handful of mega-cap companies in the hardware and cloud ecosystem. But the next wave will be much broader, more practical, and more visible across the real economy.
Corporations are now deploying real capital into automation, robotics, workflow optimization, software tooling, and data infrastructure upgrades. These are not speculative investments; they are productivity-driven initiatives designed to address labour shortages, rising wage costs, and operational inefficiencies.
This shift is happening across sectors that historically lagged in digital adoption – healthcare networks optimizing diagnostic throughput, logistics firms reducing routing inefficiencies, industrial manufacturers automating low-value processes, and financial institutions modernizing risk and compliance workflows.
After a decade of sluggish productivity growth, the conditions for a genuine acceleration are finally taking shape.
AI is moving from promise to application, from hype to measurable economic impact. Capital expenditure linked to AI is now broadening across regions as well – Japan, Korea and Taiwan are investing heavily in digital infrastructure and automation capabilities.
The winners of this era will not only be chipmakers and hyperscalers; they will also be the companies that adopt AI effectively, embed it into their operations, and amplify human productivity. These “enablers and adopters” will define the next phase of the cycle.
As AI’s second act unfolds, its contribution to global growth will become more tangible – not through valuation multiples, but through real world productivity improvements.
Investment Implications
After a decade of chronic underinvestment in productive capacity, the world is undergoing a global race to reindustrialize. Structural forces – decarbonization, supply chain reshoring, national industrial strategies, and rising geopolitical tension – are driving a powerful shift from digital-first investment toward physical economic rebuilding.
Governments are now directing enormous amounts of capital toward energy systems, transport networks, grid infrastructure, manufacturing capacity, and engineering capabilities.
The pandemic shattered the austerity reflex and created political space for ambitious fiscal programs that prioritize resilience over cost-minimization.
This renewed focus on the real economy is reversing many of the deflationary impulses that defined the 2010s. As fiscal firepower meets rising industrial demand, capacity constraints are emerging in everything from metals to shipping to specialized labour. These bottlenecks are not temporary – they are features of a world reinvesting in itself after a long period of neglect.
For investors, this represents a clear regime change. Real assets, commodities, infrastructure, and income-producing sectors are regaining their central place in diversified portfolios. Physical investment cycles tend to be long-lived, supply-intensive and globally coordinated – the exact opposite of the intangible-driven tech surges that dominated the previous decade.
This multi-year capex boom extends well beyond AI and into the material foundations of the global economy. It is the most significant reallocation of capital toward real-economy assets since the postwar period.
Investment implications
Next time: Super Trends 5, 6 & 7: The great rebalance, currency cold war, and the safe haven shakeup.
Tyler Mordy, CFA, is CEO and CIO of Forstrong Global Asset Management Inc., engaged in top-down strategy, investment policy, and securities selection. This article first appeared in Forstrong’s Insights page. Used with permission. You can reach Tyler by phone at Forstrong Global, toll-free 1-888-419-6715, or by email at tmordy@forstrong.com. Follow Tyler on X at @TylerMordy and @ForstrongGlobal.
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Content © 2025 by Forstrong Global. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part by any means without prior written permission is prohibited. Used with permission.
The foregoing is for general information purposes only and is the opinion of the writer. The author and clients of Forstrong Global Asset Management may have positions in securities mentioned. Performance statistics are calculated from documented actual investment strategies as set by Forstrong’s Investment Committee and applied to its portfolios mandates, and are intended to provide an approximation of composite results for separately managed accounts. Actual performance of individual separate accounts may vary with average gross “composite” performance statistics presented here due to client-specific portfolio differences with respect to size, inflow/outflow history, and inception dates, as well as intra-day market volatilities versus daily closing prices. Performance numbers are net of total ETF expense ratios and custody fees, but before withholding taxes, transaction costs and other investment management and advisor fees. Commissions and management fees may be associated with exchange-traded funds. Please read the prospectus before investing. Securities mentioned carry risk of loss, and no guarantee of performance is made or implied. This information is not intended to provide specific personalized advice including, without limitation, investment, financial, legal, accounting or tax advice.
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