A top fintech strategist says the stock market’s defining theme still has years left to run, but investors may need to look beyond the obvious winners.
In a new CNBC interview, SoFi’s Liz Thomas says she expects the artificial intelligence trade to broaden out
She predicts that investments will move away from the obvious picks-and-shovels semiconductor plays and rotate to builders who turn AI into usable products and services.
“Well, so earlier this year, when I came out with my 2025 outlook, I talked about software being the next conduit, mostly in the semiconductor space. So if you think about AI as a longer-term theme, and themes being somewhere between let’s say three, five, or even 10 years long, we’ve still got a big runway in a lot of these other names that have not really benefited yet from the theme as much as semis have.”
Trivariate founder Adam Parker echoes Thomas’s sentiments about AI’s long-term investment potential. The Wall Street strategist predicts that tech and AI will witness multiple bullish and bearish cycles but will remain in a macro uptrend for the coming years.
“And so we’re two years and four or five months into what is going to be a decade-long trend… I think we’re going to be cyclical, but much higher as we go out one, two, three, four, five years, you have to own an exposure in an equity book versus the S&P 500…
I think the challenge will be, and it always comes up even when you summarize that story, is at what point will investors be concerned about return on the capital spending? And when will that kind of weigh on equities, and how we transition from the obvious beneficiaries to the productivity beneficiaries are still more on the come second half 2026 and 2027?
And that will happen. But I don’t think we’re there yet. And I think you have to own a bunch of tech in your book, and I’m really not that surprised. I mean, the reaction itself is obviously big, but I’m not surprised you’re going to see upward trends for a lot of these exposed companies.”