Latest from BCA Research

We remain tactically bullish due to the combination of geopolitical risks in the Middle East easing and the ramping up of the AI boom. In this month’s chartpack, we articulate the reasoning behind both sanguine views.

The fragile balance in the Ukraine war has broken – the conflict can escalate and take investors who are focused on Iran by surprise.

AI demand remains strong, but the capex boom is creating a growing divide within Tech. Hyperscalers combine superior margins, capital efficiency and financing capacity with multiple paths to monetize AI investment. Neoclouds rely more heavily on leverage and scarcity economics, potentially making them more vulnerable should capacity expand and compute pricing normalize.

Special Report

Outside semiconductor stocks, EM/China profitability has been well below both their US peers and the levels that prevailed during the EM structural bull market in the 2000s. Over a 3- to 5-year horizon, EM/China relative equity performance versus global will be range-bound.

Special Report

China does not produce too much. It spends too little. The only viable way for China to reduce investment without raising unemployment is by lowering national savings. Doing so is likely to be politically challenging, however. This suggests that China will suffer from subpar growth and deflationary pressures for the foreseeable future.

MoF and the US Treasury stepped in together to defend the yen, but even joint intervention cannot reset the fundamentals still weighing on the currency. Washington's pursuit of its own incentives, meanwhile, offers another glimpse of a more activist US Treasury.

Our Portfolio Allocation Summary for August 2026.

Last month we "stuck our neck out" and reaffirmed our bullishness towards risk asset. This month, we have confirmation that the risky bet is paying off. Iran and the US remain materially constrained from total war. The AI capex thesis is holding up and slowly mutating into a price war that will only boost adoption and necessitate more investment. We open a new AI-related trade (long hard disk makers) and go long gold. 

Gold and goldminers have corrected 25% from January highs. With our commodity team bullish gold, we are getting long GDX. Goldminers offer a gold-linked hedge against macro outcomes that would likely be damaging for equities, while improvements in profitability, capital discipline, and balance-sheet quality make the sector attractive in its own right, and it is largely independent of AI risk.