Investment Committee - June 2026

From Demand to Execution

The Dominant Theme

The defining shift this month is not in the AI thesis but in its phase: the trade has moved from demand validation to supply execution, and the market has begun to get selective. The late-cycle regime is confirmed — inflation sticky near 3.8%, growth real but concentrated, and still powered by a single engine: AI capital expenditure. Our base case remains that this "inflation-with-growth" theme persists, with modest upside should disinflation resume. When the group trade is over, execution and revenue visibility — not narrative — determine the winners.

Macro & Central Banks

• ECB: A 25bp hike in June is confirmed and fully discounted, with one further hike of the same size possible before year-end.

• Fed: Now under Kevin Warsh's new chairmanship, the Fed is expected to hold, hawkish. We see no cuts; decisions stay data-dependent and the bank's rhetoric will matter more than near-term action.

We frame positioning across three scenarios. Our baseline — the most likely path — sees capex holding, energy contained and central banks on hold. The upside case is a Hormuz de-escalation that softens CPI and brings a first Fed cut into view, which would warrant adding cyclicals and real estate. The downside is oil breaking above $110, forcing hawkish action and European stagflation. We currently sit between baseline and downside: cash buffer built, gold and commodities in place, duration short.

Rates & Fixed Income

Yields eased modestly but the higher-for-longer backdrop holds: the US 30-year tested but did not break 5% (~4.99%), the 10-year sits near 4.48%, and the Bund is back around 3.01% ahead of the ECB hike. Greek paper at ~3.80% remains highly attractive on carry. The flag to watch is credit spreads, at the tightest of the cycle and visibly decoupled from sovereign yields — a divergence that rarely persists.

Equities & AI Divergence

The market is rewarding execution. Hyperscaler correlation has collapsed from ~80% to ~20% as focus shifts from capex commitments to revenue visibility — Dell (+32% — its best day ever — on AI-server revenue +757% YoY), HPE (+23%), and Marvell (+32.5%, with a ~$2B Nvidia investment) led. In funding markets, Google is raising ~$80B via equity rather than debt, with Berkshire taking a ~$10B stake at a discount.

Two structural risks. First, breadth: new highs are driven by a handful of names, with little broad participation. The pace of the April–May advance is among the fastest on record, and historically such moves have come either out of recessions or ahead of a major top — a backdrop that warrants caution rather than chasing. Second, mega-IPO rotation: SpaceX (~$1.77T, listing June 12), Anthropic (~$965B, targeting October) and OpenAI together aim for ~$4T in value. Should they qualify for index inclusion, passive funds would be forced to sell existing mega-cap positions to buy the newcomers — real pressure on incumbents in a fully-invested tape.

A note for investors buying ETFs. A cap-weighted index is, in effect, a momentum strategy in disguise: as a stock rises, the index automatically holds more of it, so your largest exposures are simply the names that have already run the most. That feels comfortable in a bull market, but it quietly concentrates the portfolio into the most expensive, most crowded stocks — typically just before they correct. With index concentration at historic extremes, equal- and fundamentally-weighted approaches are a sensible way to own the same market without that built-in bias.

Energy, Commodities, FX & Crypto

• Oil is normalizing toward ~$96 after peaking near $115 in May; the risk premium persists but extreme swings are fading. Hormuz normalization is only partial.

• Gold was off ~1.5% but our view is positive — a clean hedge against sticky inflation and a softening dollar.

• Currencies: the dollar is firm in the near term on higher-for-longer rates and safe-haven flows, but we continue to expect structural erosion over the longer run (reserve share has fallen from 72% in 2000 to below 57% today). We avoid overexposure to it, favouring gold, the Swiss franc and other non-dollar hard assets.

• Crypto had a negative month (BTC/ETH ~-16%), behaving like risk equity rather than gold; notable was MicroStrategy's first Bitcoin sale since 2022, breaking Saylor's long-held "never sell" stance. The SEC's approval of on-chain perpetuals (via CBOE) is constructive for Coinbase and Galaxy.

Greek Market

May was exceptional at home. PPC (ΔΕΗ) delivered an outright success in its rights issue — a €4B target comfortably exceeded, a book ~10× oversubscribed, and the stock ~20% above issue price. Separately, the dual listing of Safe Bulkers marks a historic moment for Greek shipping on the Athens exchange.

Portfolio Decisions

Our mandate remains one of controlled resilience — prioritising capital preservation over directional bets late in the cycle. In practice that means a short-duration fixed-income core, gold and commodities as hedges, a deliberate cash buffer, and an equal-weighted bias in equities to avoid the concentration trap described above. Against that backdrop, this month's moves were about trimming risk, not adding it. We used this month to reduce equity risk in Asia as an exercise in trimming overall equity exposure — closing Japan (Nikkei at historic highs, extreme sentiment, no clear catalyst) and reducing India (oil-driven rupee pressure, unfavourable macro). The proceeds move to cash; we are not strengthening existing themes with them, holding the buffer until a compelling risk-adjusted opportunity appears.

Emerging Theme: Longevity & Aging Reversal

We see a structural inflection point comparable to where AI sat in 2019 — with real revenue, not just narrative. GLP-1 revenue reached ~$71B in 2025, the first FDA-cleared human reprogramming trials began this January, and AI is compressing drug-discovery timelines. The opportunity is large and early. We will allocate a small sleeve to capture the theme directly; CubeWiz has already flagged potential targets for the committee to review.

Conclusion

The cycle is late, but not over. Growth persists, carried by AI capital expenditure, even as the market grows more discerning about who actually monetises it. Our response is consistent with the controlled-resilience posture we have held all year: stay invested in the structural winners while leaning defensive, and keep dry powder ready for a better entry. We are watching three signals closely — narrowing market breadth, the rotation pressure that mega-cap IPOs would unleash, and credit spreads that have decoupled from sovereign yields. Against that backdrop we are trimming risk rather than adding it, while beginning to build early exposure to the next structural theme in longevity.

Authors: Kostas Metaxas, Yiannis Sapountzis, Kostas Asimakopoulos