New World Invesment Research

This Apollo chart tracks SOFR futures across four maturities (Jun 2026 through Jun 2028), and the recent price action is impossible to ignore. After drifting upward through most of late 2025, all four curves have turned sharply lower in January-February 2026. The convergence of these curves is particularly striking; the view is that cuts are coming sooner than previously expected — because the narrative has shifted from “the economy is strong” to “we are all becoming unemployed,” which is obviously driven by the expectations of an AI productivity boom and workers’ displacement.

However, there is still no data or evidence in the present time and in historical perspective to conclude that AI will be as disruptive and as beneficial for productivity as the market suggests. While rotation between workers and AI-driven machinery/capital will take place in some industries, AI will likely be a ‘helper’ tool rather than a ‘replacer of labour.‘ Moreover, the adoption of AI will take much more time than currently implied by the market.

The bottom line is that 2026 has all the chances to first see spiking inflation rather than unemployment.