U.S. bank valuations have been disconnected from interest rates but the sector continues to move higher, helped by AI-related fees and recovering M&A and capital markets revenue back toward pre-2022 levels.
Second-quarter U.S. earnings were a blowout and early AI capex monetization is showing up through cloud revenue; two large frontier LLMs have run rates over $100 billion, supporting U.S. equities.
The AI infrastructure buildout will be followed by widespread AI services, leading to sustained demand; we want to be long the AI trade through this cycle.