Author: David｜Deep Tide TechFlow
At the beginning of 2026, AI scared the capital market.
It's not that AI is ineffective, it's that AI is too effective. So effective that every time a new product is launched, the stock of an entire industry crashes.
For example, throughout February, Claude's parent company, Anthropic, released four AI products in quick succession.
AI can now automate enterprise workflows, and SaaS software stocks have crashed; AI can now automatically scan for code vulnerabilities, and cybersecurity stocks have crashed; AI can now help banks rewrite outdated code from the last century, and IBM's stock plummeted 13% in a single day, wiping out $31 billion in market value, a record since the dot-com bubble of 2000. Panic is contagious. Duolingo, an online education platform, saw its stock price plummet from an all-time high of $544 last May to below $85 by the end of February this year, wiping out more than 80% of its value. The iShares Software ETF is down 22% year-to-date and 30% from its peak... A trader told Bloomberg that software stocks have been consistently sold off, with a headline like "AI will disrupt XX" triggering a mini flash crash. Money has flowed out of these companies, but it needs somewhere to go. Investing in AI is one option, such as buying Nvidia, computing power, and infrastructure... but this path is already crowded and increasingly expensive. Some people started thinking about another question: Is there a type of company that AI can't kill no matter how it evolves? HALO, firing the first shot in the fight against AI anxiety. In early February, a man named Josh Brown wrote an article on his blog. He is the CEO of an American asset management company, a frequent guest on CNBC, and a well-known figure in the financial world. In his article, he coined a term: HALO. Heavy Assets, Low Obsolescence. In other words, heavy assets, low risk of obsolescence. The meaning is simple: buy companies that AI can't eliminate no matter how it evolves. This guy also provided a very simple identification method: the only criterion for identifying HALO stock is, "Can you type a few words into the input box and come up with the company's product? If not, it's HALO stock." He gave an example. Delta Airlines and Expedia are both in the travel industry. This year, Delta rose 8.3%, while Expedia fell 6%. What's the difference? AI can help you find the cheapest flight, but you still have to board a plane. Delta has airplanes, Expedia only has a search box. He also stated that this is the simplest investment logic he has ever seen. For the past 15 years, Wall Street has favored asset-light companies. Software companies have no factories, no inventory, zero code copying costs, and incredibly high profit margins. But now AI has arrived, and what AI excels at replacing are precisely these companies that make money from code and information asymmetry. The tables have turned, and it's now the turn of "heavy" assets to be valuable. Within weeks of HALO's emergence, Goldman Sachs released a formal research report titled "The HALO Effect"; its data showed that from the beginning of 2025 to the present, Goldman Sachs' portfolio of "asset-heavy" stocks has outperformed the "asset-light" portfolio by 35%. Following this, Morgan Stanley's trading desk began using HALO to recommend targets to clients; the term also appeared in research notes from Barclays and Bank of America. Axios, the Wall Street Journal, and CNBC all reported on it extensively... A term casually coined by a blogger has become the biggest trading theme on Wall Street in 2026. What does this show? It's not that Brown is so brilliant; it's that everyone is genuinely panicked. So panicked I need a single word to tell myself: Don't be afraid. AI has disrupted many things, but there's still a type of company that's safe. The world is a massive asset-heavy market. Do you think HALO is just a narrative? The capital markets have already started voting. From the beginning of 2026 to the end of February, the S&P 500's energy sector rose by over 23%, materials by 16%, consumer staples by 15%, and industrials by 13%. At the same time, the information technology sector fell by nearly 4%, and the financial sector fell by nearly 5%. Meanwhile, the seven major US tech stocks collectively faltered. Of the seven—Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla—only two have seen gains this year. Investors are concerned about whether these companies, which burn through hundreds of billions of dollars annually to build computing power, can actually recoup their costs. What specific companies saw their stock prices rise? McDonald's, Walmart, ExxonMobil... hamburger vendors, supermarket owners, oil refiners. AI can write poetry, program, and litigate lawsuits, but it can't fry French fries or extract oil. Budweiser beer has also risen 48% since last year; after all, you can't drink AI. Therefore, HALO represents a reversal of the valuation logic in the capital market under the anxiety surrounding AI. The last time such a reversal occurred was in 2000. Back then, investors frantically fled tech stocks, flocking to "boring" sectors like energy, industrials, and consumer goods. The Nasdaq plummeted from 2000 to 2002, losing nearly 80% of its value, while the S&P energy sector rose nearly 30% during the same period. But there is a key difference. The dot-com bubble burst because the internet wasn't profitable; the story couldn't continue. This time, things are a little different: AI is too capable, frighteningly so. AI technology failures don't cause panic; it's the successes that are causing panic. This is almost unprecedented in the history of capital markets. Even more ironically, AI companies themselves are becoming increasingly asset-heavy. Goldman Sachs specifically mentioned in its report that companies that most adhered to the asset-light model in recent years are becoming the largest capital spenders in history. The five major tech giants are projected to spend $1.5 trillion on capital expenditures from 2023 to 2026, with over $450 billion in 2026 alone—more than all their previous investments before the AI era combined. Where did all this money go? Data centers, chips, cables, cooling systems, power generation facilities. All of these are heavy and expensive things in the physical world. So you see an absurd picture: AI shatters other people's asset-light models, and then becomes asset-heavy itself. Those companies that claimed to disrupt the old world ultimately found that what they needed was exactly the same as the old world: factories, electricity, pipes... Wall Street chased "light" for 15 years, only to find that even AI itself cannot escape "heavy." While Americans flock to McDonald's, Chinese order through 1000QB (a Chinese Q&A website). Meanwhile, across the strait, we offered a completely opposite answer. Bloomberg published a report in late February with the headline: "The Chinese Market is Resisting Global AI Panic Trading." One summary in the article struck me as particularly insightful: "The US market focuses on what AI can take away, while the Chinese market focuses on what AI can help." The same technology, two completely opposite sentiments. While American investors were coining the term HALO and hiding in McDonald's and Walmart, Chinese investors were snapping up AI application stocks. JPMorgan Chase gave MiniMax and Zhipu a buy rating in February, while Goldman Sachs issued new buy recommendations for Biren Technology and Muxi Integrated Circuits at the same time. Analysts at Bank of America stated that AI agents and their commercialization could be the biggest investment theme in the Chinese market in 2026. No one is worried that companies like Tencent and Alibaba will be killed by AI; the focus is on whether they can make more money using AI. Goldman Sachs stated in its January report that Tencent is the biggest beneficiary of AI applications in the Chinese internet sector, with every business line—gaming, advertising, fintech, and cloud—being accelerated by AI. Why are the reactions on both sides so completely opposite to the same wave? US tech stocks have become too expensive over the past decade, so expensive that even a slight impact from AI on their profit margins would cause their valuations to collapse. Chinese tech stocks, on the other hand, have just climbed out of a two- or three-year trough and are already cheap; for them, AI is an incremental growth rather than a threat. But stock prices alone cannot explain everything; the bigger difference lies in the underlying environment. Just as the HALO narrative was gaining traction in the US stock market, China had just experienced its most AI-intensive Spring Festival in history: Volcano Engine secured the exclusive AI cloud partnership with CCTV's Spring Festival Gala, Doubao achieved exclusive cooperation with CCTV's Spring Festival Gala; Qianwen secured the title sponsorship of the Spring Festival Galas on four major satellite TV channels: Dragon TV, Zhejiang TV, Jiangsu TV, and Henan TV; Tencent Yuanbao distributed 1 billion yuan in red envelopes, and Baidu Wenxin distributed 500 million yuan. Alibaba went even further, with a 3 billion yuan "Spring Festival Treat Plan," and its "Qianwen Helps You Order Milk Tea" service delivering 1 million orders in 3 hours... The four major companies combined spent over 4.5 billion yuan on AI marketing during the Spring Festival. Ten years ago, this spot was occupied by WeChat and Alipay giving away red envelopes during the Spring Festival Gala. Now it's Doubao and Qianwen. AI companies aren't using the Spring Festival Gala as an advertising platform; they're using it as a popular science stage to introduce AI to the mass market. The same fire, lit on dry wood, is a disaster; lit on wet wood, it provides warmth. In the same AI wave, American capital is fleeing companies disrupted by AI and flocking to companies "unkillable by AI"; Chinese capital is chasing companies that can effectively utilize AI. While some are chasing, others are fleeing. I think the fleeing side has overpriced its potential. The current situation is that AI's capabilities have been reasonably priced, but its destructive potential has been overpriced. Funds flowing into HALO stock are imagining who AI will kill and then running away in advance. They've flowed into McDonald's, Budweiser, Walmart, etc. These companies are certainly good, but how much of their gains this year is due to performance, and how much is a premium for fear? The pendulum of Wall Street has always been prone to overcorrection. In 2000, everyone thought everything on .com was valuable; in 2002, everyone thought everything on .com was a scam. Now, everyone thinks beer and tractors can withstand AI. When this consensus becomes widespread enough, the next overcorrection won't be far off. As for myself, here's my perspective: AI is indeed getting stronger; there's no point in arguing about that. But the distance between "getting stronger" and "killing an industry" is much farther than most people realize. Every technological revolution follows the same script: first panic, then excessive flight, and finally, the things that were fled from haven't died; in fact, they've become cheaper due to the panic. The internet didn't kill Walmart; Walmart learned e-commerce. Mobile payments didn't kill banks; banks learned to make apps. What AI will truly kill are companies that shouldn't exist in the first place—companies with no product barriers, whose growth relies entirely on financing, and whose survival depends entirely on information asymmetry. These companies don't need AI to kill them; the economic cycle will. Therefore, the question may never be "Will AI disrupt the world?" We should all ask ourselves: Does the company you invest in have the ability to turn AI into its own weapon, rather than its own obituary? Those who can answer this question don't need HALO.
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