TL;DR: Writing in This is Money, Ruth Sunderland argues investors are shifting from AI exposure back towards oil, banking and engineering stocks that dominate the FTSE 100. Her supporting figure: the blue-chip index delivered an 85% total return across five years, ahead of the S&P on 80% and the Nasdaq on 75%.

That comparison is the column’s sharpest point, because it contradicts a narrative that has held for most of the AI cycle. The Footsie has been written off as an old-economy scrapyard — light on technology, heavy on extractives and banks. On a total-return basis, dividends included, it has outpaced its American counterparts over five years. Peel Hunt chief executive Steven Fine made the point to Sunderland directly.

Record highs have followed strong results from NatWest, Lloyds, Shell, BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce.

The domestic contradiction

Sunderland’s frustration is that the rediscovery is happening among investors while policy lags. She points to property group Segro accepting a US bid, and to UK pension funds allocating only pennies in the pound to British companies.

Her prescriptions are specific: abolish stamp duty when shares are bought, extend a dividend tax credit to pension funds holding British equities, and use the National Security and Investment Act against the Segro deal on the grounds that its datacentres are strategic assets. That last one connects the two threads — the AI infrastructure Britain is trying to build sits inside companies being sold abroad while the market reprices AI itself.

Looking forward

The column’s wider argument is about what AI optimises for. Sunderland notes that systems engineered to minimise effort risk normalising exactly the behaviour we treat as poor character in people, and worries about what that does to the pursuit of excellence over time. Readers will take that as they find it. The narrower investment case stands on its own: after a cycle in which capital chased projected returns, money is moving back towards companies with real-world assets and profits already on the books. Whether that rotation persists depends on whether the AI reassessment is a correction or something longer.