For two years, the AI trade was simple. Buy the companies building AI - and now there is a second AI trade, almost the opposite of the first.
HALO stands for "heavy assets, low obsolescence," and Josh Brown, the co-founder and CEO of Ritholtz Wealth Management, coined it in February.
The idea is plain. Some businesses run on hard, physical things - trucks, pipelines, power lines, distribution centers - that AI cannot delete, so if AI is the disrupter, those companies should be the safe harbors.
Brown's examples have worked this year, with FedEx and ExxonMobil up close to 30% in 2026 and Coca-Cola up around 17%. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have both rolled HALO into their 2026 research notes.
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On Thursday, Roundhill Investments launched the Roundhill Halo ETF, ticker LOHA. The fund screens the largest U.S. companies for businesses tied to physical assets and infrastructure, drawing from industrials, transportation, mining, and similar sectors.
Top holdings include Cummins, AutoZone, TFI International, CSX, JB Hunt, and Lennox. Some of those companies have been around for more than a century.
Roundhill CEO Dave Mazza said the companies share two traits. They need real-world stuff to make money, and they last.
Brown joined Roundhill on a limited advisory basis after he saw the ETF filing, and his pitch was direct: "There's nothing you could type into an LLM that's going to change what they do, at least not in a negative way."
Big software names like Adobe, ServiceNow, and Salesforce have drifted to 52-week lows as investors rethink which software companies are exposed to AI replacement. The HALO basket sits on the other side of that trade.
Roundhill has built fast-moving thematic ETFs before, and the firm has the receipts. Its DRAM memory ETF, launched April 2, pulled in $9.8 billion in 43 days - the fastest start of any ETF on record, per VettaFi - and that fund is up 85% since launch.
The HALO names also benefit from a second story. Many of them - trucking, autos parts, HVAC, freight rail - are levered to industrial activity and supply chains, which AI tools may speed up but cannot replace.
Mazza pushed back on the idea that launching an ETF marks the top of a trade, saying it instead unlocks the stocks for investors who could not access them as easily before.
The HALO pitch is not a bet against AI, but a way to stay invested in a market AI is rewiring. Brown's framing puts it plainly: lean away from the most disruptible companies, and toward the ones that need a wrench more than a prompt.
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