JPM US Market Intelligence Global Thematic Views July 2026

Below is a summary of the views which we investigate in this note with the ‘Deep Dive’ section including (i) a detailed rationale for the theme; (ii) key charts; and, (iii) color on positioning.

· GLOBAL TECH – After a prolonged period of strength, the Global Tech/AI theme has come under some pressure in July. This was driven by a combination of:

· Challenges to fundamental narrative incl. growing concerns around competition (resurgence from China AI); pricing/costs; excess compute and challenges to capex narrative.

· De-leveraging (elevated for retail investors & ETFs, and coincided with large end-of-quarter rebalances);

· Elevated positioning (Tech remains stretched, with Global Semis at 98th %-tile for both L/S ratio and Net exposure and Tech Hardware L/S ratio at 86th %-tile, net exposure ~99th %-tile);

· Extent of rally across the theme, as well as Momentum, with Tech a core component of the long leg;

· Seasonality (as of late-June, starting points of gross flows and leverage were at highs, and we’ve seen HF de-grossing every July for the past 5 years);

· BULL / BEAR FOR SEMIS & GLOBAL MONETIZATION

· BULL CASE – (i) Fundamental Story Remains Intact; (ii) Historical Drawdown Creates Entry Point; (iii) Earnings Tailwind

· BEAR CASE – (i) Increasing Competition / Margin Compression Risk; (ii) Vol Shock Potential; (iii) Geopolitical / Rates Headwind

· TRACKING FLOWS IN THEMATICS – We track flows into 16x Secular Equity Themes. The AUMs are relatively small (~$400bn) but are rising fast (20% organic inflows in June, 2.5-3x the rate for broader US Equities). Over the past month, the Themes with the strongest inflows have been AI and Robotics & Automation, while those with weakest inflows have been Space and Blockchain.

New narratives are being reflected an evolving landscape for Global Tech & AI, with key themes to track as Tech progression advances. Below we look at (i) Open vs. Closed models; (ii) Pricing Wars; (iii) Chinese LLMs; and, (iv) Capex Challenges

1. Open (Weight & Source) vs Closed Frontier Models (source here)

Open-weight models are those where the model weights are publicly released. In “Open-weight” models do not release training data and code are often — just the weights themselves (vs open-source). Open-weight models have shown similar competitiveness on general tasks, and tend to be much cheaper. Another advantage is around data privacy, as data