VanEck

Stay invested in AI and the physical buildout behind it, ignore bubble noise, and diversify across commodities and longer Treasuries as stock-bond correlations shift. Key Takeaways AI is the trend to ride, in our view, with overweight positions in compute bottlenecks and real assets to capture the physical buildout. Bubble concerns can drive short-term sentiment, so we believe investors should focus on tuning out the noise.

Important Disclosures This is not an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation to buy or sell any of the securities, financial instruments or digital assets mentioned herein. The information presented does not involve the rendering of personalized investment, financial, legal, tax advice, or any call to action.

Flávio Bolsonaro's first-round lead sent Brazilian stocks surging. We explain why rates and fiscal policy matter more than the winner. Key Takeaways Markets priced in a more disciplined fiscal path as Bolsonaro’s lead came with strong conservative Senate and governor results. Rates should fall regardless of the winner, but how far depends on a credible fiscal plan. Our São Paulo meetings showed a cheap, lightly owned market, which helps explain the size of the move.

Electricity demand is forecast to climb more than 40% by 2035, while oil and gas capex sits well below its 2014 peak and major copper discoveries have slowed to a trickle. Key Takeaways Long-run demand for energy, copper, and grain has risen steadily for six decades, and electrification is adding a new layer of load on top of it. Processing of critical minerals is concentrated in a handful of countries, with China dominating copper, cobalt, lithium, graphite, and rare earths.

The semiconductor industry is having its strongest year in recent memory, but the gains are not evenly distributed. AI infrastructure spending has become the dominant force reshaping the market, concentrating growth in a handful of segments while automotive, mobile, and consumer electronics navigate a very different environment.

European rearmament and Bank of Japan rate normalization dominated VEFA's September rebalance, reversing last quarter's energy-driven trade. Key Takeaways Industrials led all sectors in net positions added with +5.6% portfolio weight, driven by European rearmament and capex recovery. Japan swung from last quarter's biggest reduction to this quarter's biggest addition on AI chip demand and rate normalization.

Miners hold the scarce asset as US power demand outruns supply, while Metaplanet’s 14.7% option pool shows how DAT insiders capture shareholder dilution. Please note that VanEck has exposure to bitcoin. Key Takeaways Power, not chips, is the binding constraint: NVDA, AMD, and AVGO are expected to need roughly 30GW of US capacity through 2027 against annual additions of 15 to 25GW, and only ~2% of the interconnection queue reached the grid in 2025.

Anthropic CEO published a letter calling for an AI slowdown. We explain how the industry reacted, and what this means for investors. Key Takeaways Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay Saturday called "We Must Pace the Frontier," asking AI labs to slow how fast they improve their most advanced models. Sam Altman (OpenAI) and Elon Musk backed him within hours, and chip stocks fell, with SMH down 5.5% and SMHX down 5.1% over the past week (NAV, through 9/15).

Investors have put $28 into bond funds for every $1 into commodities. Commodity holdings sit near 0.9% of fund assets, leaving most portfolios with little exposure to the physical economy. Key Takeaways Investors have put roughly $28 into bond funds for every $1 into commodity funds since 1997. Commodity allocations have never topped 2% of fund assets and sit near 0.9% today. Passive index funds have quietly cut real asset exposure, with energy falling from roughly 18% of the S&P 500 to near 4%.

Beyond the 2026 midterm elections, our investment teams are focused on dollar trajectory, fiscal pressure and the Fed’s next move. With the November midterm elections approaching, one theme runs through nearly every asset class: the deficit problem isn’t going away, regardless of which party emerges on top. In Jan van Eck’s Q3 2026 Investment Outlook, he said that investors should stay invested but be increasingly selective.