Equity markets experienced a sharp drawdown, with software stocks at the epicentre. Results from ServiceNow, SAP and Microsoft were fundamentally solid, but growth rates came in marginally below expectations (around 1%). More importantly, however, they showed no near-term acceleration. In the current market environment, this lack of acceleration proved sufficient to trigger a software-wide sell-off, with large-cap names falling more than 10% and correlations across the sector spiking sharply.

2026 started off well for European high yield: spreads have continued to tighten in an almost linear fashion since Liberation Day last year and have continued to do so this year. The next question becomes is there any value left?

I previously stressed that artificial intelligence is not a tooling problem for asset managers, but an operating model problem and that strategy in the age of AI increasingly manifests itself through operating architecture rather than ambition alone. These perspectives inevitably lead to a more difficult and practical question: how does such a transformation actually unfold in a non-AI-native organisation?