Perspective from the work.

Key Findings

• The expansion held, but the resilience became more uneven. Consumer spending, industrial activity, and capital investment remained stronger than sentiment and hiring would suggest. Broad contraction is not yet the evidence. Dispersion is.
• The hurdle rate moved from finance theory into operating reality. Capital remains available, sometimes abundantly, but increasingly rewards cash generation, balance-sheet strength, and credible incremental returns. Higher financing costs make weak projects, weak assets, and weak strategies harder to carry.
• The bottlenecks moved; they did not disappear. In energy, crude began recovering faster than products, refining, and logistics. In AI infrastructure, constraints continue moving outward from compute toward power, equipment, interconnection, cooling, water, and increasingly capital structure. Value continues migrating toward the constraint.