The Rise of "HALO" (Heavy Assets, Low Obsolescence) Stocks: The Anti-AI Capex Play (May 2026)

The Rise of "HALO" (Heavy Assets, Low Obsolescence) Stocks: The Anti-AI Capex Play (May 2026)

In late May 2026, a powerful new valuation and investment theme has taken hold of global equity markets: "HALO" (Heavy Assets, Low Obsolescence) stocks. Coined by Ritholtz Wealth Management CEO and co-founder Josh Brown in February 2026, the HALO framework identifies companies that are structurally immune to artificial intelligence disruption because their business models rely on physical assets, real-world infrastructure, and essential analog services.

This theme has rapidly transitioned from a conceptual framework to institutional adoption and a dedicated investment product, reflecting a major rotation away from highly valued, potentially disruptible software companies.

The HALO Framework and the LOHA ETF

As enterprise software giants like Adobe, ServiceNow, and Salesforce test 52-week lows due to fears of AI-driven margin compression¹ and competitive disruption, investors are rotating into businesses with high physical barriers to entry.

To capitalize on this trend, Roundhill Investments launched the Roundhill Halo ETF (ticker: LOHA) on Thursday, May 14, 2026. The fund tracks an index that screens the largest listed U.S. companies for businesses whose value is focused in physical assets and infrastructure that AI cannot replace, spanning sectors such as industrials, transportation, mining, and energy. Josh Brown joined Roundhill on a limited advisory basis for the product's launch.

Key holdings and performance highlights in the HALO category include:

• Outperforming Giants: FedEx (FDX) and ExxonMobil (XOM) are both up close to 30% since the beginning of the year, while Coca-Cola (KO) has gained nearly 17% YTD.
• Top LOHA Holdings: Top holdings in the new ETF include Cummins (CMI), AutoZone (AZO), TFI International (TFII), CSX (CSX), JB Hunt (JBHT), and Lennox (LII)—many of which are durable, century-old industrial and transport businesses.

"There's nothing you could type into an LLM, that’s going to change what they do, at least not in a negative way. They’re probably all beneficiaries of AI. Let’s not be invested in the most disruptible companies. Let’s look for the companies that are AI resistant." — Josh Brown, CEO of Ritholtz Wealth Management, on CNBC's Halftime Report (May 14, 2026)

The Flip Side: The Memory Bottleneck (DRAM ETF)

While HALO stocks represent the "AI-resistant" physical world, the pure-play AI infrastructure boom is experiencing its own physical constraint: memory chips.

On April 2, 2026, Roundhill launched its Memory ETF (ticker: DRAM), which has shattered all industry records by amassing $9.8 billion in assets under management in just 43 days—the fastest-ever asset accumulation for an exchange-traded fund, outpacing even the spot Bitcoin ETFs. The fund is up over 80% since inception, driven by the realization that high-bandwidth memory (HBM) is the primary physical bottleneck of the AI data center build-out.

Historically a highly cyclical, boom-and-bust industry, memory is experiencing a structural re-rating. Dave Mazza, CEO of Roundhill Investments, estimates that the supply-demand imbalance in HBM and DRAM could extend into 2028.

"Investors are waking up to the fact that the biggest bottleneck in the AI build-out is actually memory chips. There’s an incredible amount of supply and demand imbalance with memory which is one of the reasons why the stocks have been performing so well." — Dave Mazza, CEO of Roundhill Investments, on CNBC's ETF Edge (May 11, 2026)

Citi Research's Drew Pettit notes that unlike previous speculative tech bubbles, this price momentum is backed by extraordinary fundamental earnings revisions:

"The price momentum has earnings momentum backing. So, this is the place where we have seen the best earnings revisions this year in the United States and globally. If we’re up 300%, but your earnings expectations are up six-to-eightfold for the next few years, it still comes back reasonably priced to us." — Drew Pettit, Director of U.S. Equity and ETF Strategy at Citi Research (May 11, 2026)