Morgan Stanley expects that after DRAM year-on-year price gains approach 700% in 3Q26, the memory cycle will transition into a late-cycle phase in 4Q26, and WFE growth will fall to 14% by 2028; however, ASML remains a Top Pick due to EUV logic demand, Synopsys was upgraded to Overweight due to physical AI opportunities, Soitec benefits from multi-rack optical interconnect architectures, Infineon was downgraded to Equal-weight due to limited near-term catalysts, and Besi had its target price cut due to HBM hybrid bonding delays.

In Morgan Stanley's base case, a ten-year AI diffusion period would only slightly raise peak unemployment, and wealthy CHIC households holding 87% equity assets would become net beneficiaries; but if rapid diffusion over six years coincides with asset declines, unemployment could rise by 4.1 percentage points. Goldman Sachs simultaneously lowered 2026 US aggregate DPI growth to 4.0% and pre-savings DCF to 3.0%, expecting improvement in 2027 as inflation falls back, though the lowest income quintile still significantly lags, preferring names such as ORLY and ULTA.

Morgan Stanley expects that by 2030, public and permissioned blockchains will coexist and converge in payment settlement, and technology adoption does not automatically translate into token value capture; currently tokenized real-world assets exceed $300bn and DeFi TVL is about $88bn, but institutional adoption requires combining permissioned access. In a five-year balanced scenario, Bitcoin will become a mainstream satellite allocation, while stablecoins, despite supply exceeding $300bn, have filtered monthly payment volumes of only about $63bn.

JPMorgan notes that mainland China secondary home weekly transactions improved significantly, up 22% year-on-year, but primary home online signings fell 12% overall, and the exit from the pre-sale system may accelerate sales declines in 2027; Hong Kong home prices are up 12% year-to-date, reaching the upper end of the full-year target, SHKP's Tuen Mun project win is expected to yield margins above 20%, and institutions prefer Longfor bonds with recurring rental income and stocks such as China Resources Mixc Lifestyle; they also maintain a positive view on Hong Kong banks, with 7 loan growth accelerating to 7.7%, preferring Standard Chartered as its ROTE expansion outperforms HSBC.

Morgan Stanley views AI data centers as the strongest structural theme for copper demand (next-generation racks use about 1.5 tons of copper), but high copper prices are driving aluminum substitution for copper, and 2027 may be the first year of substitution in China's air conditioning sector; the scrap copper retirement cycle will add 300-500kt of supply annually over the next 10-15 years. On lithium, Huayou Cobalt's Zimbabwe plant has shipped, but Durban logistics have become a bottleneck; JL Mag Rare-Earth capacity utilization is expected to exceed 90%, driven by 3kg of magnetic material demand per humanoid robot unit.

Bank of America went long 5-year US Treasuries after labor and inflation softened and prefers 30-year swap spreads, noting that the Treasury's raising of the long-end buyback cap adds about 660 hundred million dollars of capacity, but 2027 debt ceiling management is a funding risk; in Europe, it expects the ECB to cut rates in 6 2027, Italian sovereign spreads are resilient but debt sustainability is questionable; in Asia-Pacific, sticky inflation in Australia leads to expectations of a 25bp RBA hike in 9, and a faster BoJ rate hike path in Japan supports curve flattening.

JPMorgan believes concerns about a peak in the shipbuilding cycle are exaggerated, with newbuild prices down only slightly by 5%; Hanwha Engine receives an Overweight rating (target price W70,000) as its 1H26 backlog reaches 4.4x sales and dual-fuel accounts for 80% of the backlog, and HMS maintains Overweight due to its exclusive MRO position; Goldman Sachs adds that data center demand extending through 2028 validates Vertiv's capacity expansion, and Ford BlueCruise subscriptions rising 40% along with Rivian's L3 plans indicate physical AI is translating downstream.

JPMorgan tracks cumulative price increases of 8.94% across more than 300 building materials, but energy inputs are 22% higher year-to-date, estimating cost trends pressure industry earnings by 15%; Nomura shows China's 2Q26 pharmaceutical sales fell 3.9% year-on-year, but biotech firms such as Akeso surged; 8 CPI rose to 0.8% driven by oil and gold while core PPI was only 0.40%, and the PBoC is not expected to cut rates broadly this year; Bernstein notes NIH spending fell 15% month-on-month, failing to validate a life sciences tools recovery; Nomura finds Nanjing luxury malls weakening but Van Cleef & Arpels maintaining double-digit growth, with new middle-class hedonic consumption tending toward restraint.