The firm spoke about its recent decision to cut some equity exposure, among other moves.

Apricus Finance, an external asset manager, has cut equity and gold exposures to a neutral allocation stance, having seen signs that macroeconomic conditions suggested a need to take a step back.

Worries about high valuations of US tech stocks – particularly those tied to AI – renewed US-China trade tensions, concerns about credit exposures and other forces jolted equity markets in recent weeks. 

“From our observation deck, part of the recent selling has likely been due to portfolio 'realignment’ ahead of the year-end. We, similarly, over the past two months, twice cut equities and gold back to our neutral allocation. We also added some protection on the equity market,” the firm said in a note about its investment views.

“We are comfortable approaching the last few weeks of the year, which could indeed be volatile, with this positioning as we await more clarity, both on the economy as well as the state of the AI play, which has, of course, been a dominant market dynamic throughout 2025,” it continued. “As a reminder, in September, we also coupled our portfolios with a partial downside protection on equities.”

Apricus is neutral on equities, and within this, keeps an overweight stance in the eurozone and Asian ex Japan equities versus the US ex mega caps. It continues to favour exposure to credit versus duration in the fixed income space. It has exposure to investment grade credit, European high yield, hybrids and financials’ subordinated debt. 

On currencies, Apricus is fully hedged on US dollar and Japanese yen exposure, and retains its allocation to gold.

AI – how long can infrastructure last?
The firm addressed a topic that has started to vex investors: how long will AI infrastructure endure to justify the heavy outlays? By some estimates, capex in the artificial intelligence space is slated to be in the region of $450 to $500 billion for 2025-26. Actual returns are far off justifying the outlays, requiring a massive revenue growth becoming reality. (See a related story.)

“Depreciation has been the talk of the AI industry of late, as investors try to determine the useful life of key pieces of equipment. How long will these data centres and their chips be usable or, to put it another way, what is their rate of decay?” Apricus said in its note. “Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet and Meta Platforms, when taken together, represent more than 40 per cent of Nvidia’s sales. They are projected to increase their combined AI spending by 34 per cent over the next 12 months, to $440 billion. The risk is that these numbers could become unreliable if the big AI spenders, in private company OpenAI, have to pull back on their commitments, as Nvidia’s CEO just acknowledged.”

See here for another article about the views of Apricus, published almost exactly a year ago.