H2 2026 Market Outlook

Markets are at all-time highs, earnings are holding up, and yet almost no two investors
agree on what comes next. Not because the cycle is confusing, but because it has entered
genuinely uncharted territory where real yields, geopolitical shocks, AI commercialisation
and a rotating leadership beneath the headline index are all pulling in different directions
at once.

In past editions of this outlook, the Global X Investment Strategy team has spoken with one
voice. For H2 2026, that approach would paper over something more useful: the fact that
reasonable, well-informed investors are landing in genuinely different places. The direction
of the market is not the debate. The debate is where within it to be positioned, how much
risk to carry, and which structural themes have the most runway left.

So this edition presents three distinct strategist perspectives, each grounded in the same
research and data, but each expressing a different risk posture and thematic emphasis.
Readers can align with the view closest to their own conviction, mix across all three, or use
the tension between them as a framework for their own thinking.

Here are the key Global X themes shaping our H2 2026 outlook.

AI is transitioning from a capex story to a commercialisation story, and the value chain from silicon to infrastructure remains the most compelling structural opportunity in equities.

Portfolio balance through domestic income, GARP and SMID exposure offers a more durable path through H2 than concentrating in the market’s most crowded trades.

Commodities offer both growth exposure and inflation protection at a point in the cycle where AI thematics appear extended, energy markets remain stressed, and the case for central bank gold accumulation is set to re-emerge.