About 30 AI-beneficiary stocks now carry roughly half the S&P 500's market-cap weight.
Most investors read a resilient index as broad strength. Chance Finucane, Chief Investment Officer at Oxbow Advisors, told Thoughtful Money that's rotation, not diversification — the other 450-odd stocks are mostly down 20% or more from their highs.
"I think we're pretty concerned about 2027... we would not be surprised if the stock market went down 30% or more."
Chance runs Oxbow's stock and bond strategy alongside founding partner Ted Oakley, whose own read on prior extremes — 1974, 2003, 2009 — still shapes when the firm gets aggressive.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 65 minutes of audio, 7 minutes of reading.
Here are the 5 arguments that matter.
Adam Taggart | Thoughtful Money® · Oct 25, 2026 · 1h 5m · 58m saved
With Chance Finucane, Chief Investment Officer at Oxbow Advisors
Key Takeaways
Oxbow "would not be surprised" by a 30%-or-worse decline in 2027, driven by a base-effect comparison problem, not a specific catalyst
2026's growth and inflation spiked against an easy 2025 comparison; 2027 flips that math into a simultaneous slowdown and disinflation
Oxbow holds just over 2% of its stock strategy in AI-adjacent names — Texas Instruments, ASML, a trimmed Fortinet position and Zoom, not Nvidia or Micron
The Shiller-to-forward P/E spread is at its widest in over 35 years, a gap Chance says has historically preceded serious bear markets
Data-center construction spending is up 70%+ while every other sector is negative, a concentration Chance says could tip the economy alone if it slows
Oxbow would only "break out the Ferrari" after a roughly 50% decline — short of that, it's holding steady and trimming 2026's winners into January
1. A Market Split in Two
Chance opened on a market he says is bifurcated, not broadly strong.
About 30 AI-beneficiary stocks carry roughly half the S&P 500's weight
"When you have these pullbacks in the AI stocks, you're not seeing the whole index go down because all they're doing is rotating into the non-AI stocks. It tells you that everyone's still bullish." — Chance Finucane
He said most of the other roughly 450 S&P names are down at least 20% from their highs, and the resilience of the index headline is a rotation effect, not broad health.
Oxbow's own AI exposure is a little over 2% of its stock strategy
"Almost all of it is elsewhere... a little over 2% of the portfolio in our stock strategy is in what we would call AI beneficiaries." — Chance Finucane
Where Oxbow does hold AI-adjacent names, it picked the steadier ones.
"We took two small positions in semiconductors... but they aren't the high-flying names like the Nvidia or the Micron. They're less volatile, more consistent earnings names like Texas Instruments and ASML." — Chance Finucane
He flagged one holding for a reason beyond its own fundamentals: Zoom's stake in Anthropic.
"We like Zoom as a business that traded at a cheap valuation... but people are using it as a proxy, a way to invest in Anthropic in the public market. We've got to maintain an awareness of that." — Chance Finucane
