The Motley Fool Interviews Janus Henderson Investors Portfolio Manager Denny Fish

In this podcast, Motley Fool Chief Investment Officer Andy Cross and analyst Asit Sharma talk with Denny Fish about the investing landscape, AI, CES, and building resilient portfolios.

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A full transcript is below.

This podcast was recorded on Jan. 25, 2026.

Denny Fish: We're practitioners, and we go out, we talk to all the industry participants and the CEOs of these companies and the people making these decisions. We just had our entire team down in Arizona for the UBS tech conference and met with pretty much the who's who of technology over that span. It's not slowing down by any means. For those that are skeptical, I would urge you to talk to the practitioners and forget about all the noise on Wall Street right now and follow the data points.

Mac Greer: That was Denny Fish, portfolio manager for the Janus Henderson Investors Global Technology and Innovation Fund. I'm Motley Fool Producer Mac Greer. Now, Motley Fool Chief Investment Officer Andy Cross, and Analyst Asit Sharma recently talked with Fish about the investing landscape, AI, CES, and how to build a resilient portfolio. Enjoy.

Andy Cross: Welcome to another Motley Fool conversation. I'm Andy Cross, alongside here, Senior Analyst and Advisor Asit Sharma. Today, we welcome Denny Fish to the Motley Fool. Denny is a portfolio manager for the Janus Henderson Global Technology and Innovation Fund. He also leads up the firm's technology sector research team. Among many things, Denny, that I'm sure you do at Janus Henderson, thank you so much for joining us, and welcome to the Motley Fool, Denny.

Denny Fish: Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

Andy Cross: Denny, it's great to have a chance to talk to you and Asit, thanks for joining me because there is a lot of overlap in the styles and the stocks and the holdings as we look through the Global Tech and Innovation Fund, among many of the other holdings of Janus that you all have invested in over the years, and we've been big fans just in following along some of the most innovative investors that I know in the tech space. It's great to have a chance to talk to you and maybe we'll just start off, Denny. With an overall thought on the markets and tech investing, we just wrapped up another great year for the markets, especially in large cap tech stocks. Maybe you can start off by giving us your thoughts on the investing landscape to start 2026.

Denny Fish: Absolutely. We continue to be pretty optimistic about the tech market in general. I mean, the fact of the matter is the most important decision investors could have made for the last 20 years starting 2005 ish was to be overweight tech, and there's a reason for that the secular trends that we've experienced. It was Cloud social mobile for example, that really lasted for almost 20 years, laid the foundation for artificial intelligence and probably even more profound than the dawn of the commercial Internet and what we've seen, since the late '90s. When we have that powerful secular theme that's developing that we feel strongly about we're going to be optimistic by our nature, particularly given we take a longer term view. But also, depending on where you're at in tech. I mean, if we rewind last year was a strong year for Tech, so was '24, and so was '23. Been pretty exceptional years. But it hasn't been a rising tide lifts all boats by any means. If I was just going to describe what's happened in the last three years is you were either on the right side of AI or you weren't you were perceived not to be. The AI semiconductor ecosystem has been really, really strong for obvious reasons, and that's because the fundamentals have been very, very impressive, and earnings have gone through the roof. Even though a lot of these stocks are up a bunch their multiples actually aren't up that much and in some cases, their multiples are lower than they were a year ago because the earnings have come through.

I'll tell you one thing that we do, we're practitioners, and we go out and we talk to all the industry participants and the CEOs of these companies and the people making these decisions, and we just had our entire team down in Arizona for the UBS tech conference and met with pretty much the who is who of technology over that span, and it's not slowing down by any means. For those that are skeptical, I would urge you to talk to the practitioners and forget about all the noise on Wall Street right now and follow the data points, and they continue to be pretty strong. We expect the AI infrastructure ecosystem to remain healthy. What's interesting is we did start to see divergence in the mega caps. When we started the year last year Google was dead in the water. Search I was trouble. There's secular issues. Meta was the Golden child with Llama. Meta had a huge run the first six months. Google did nothing. Metas been a terrible stock the last six months, and Google is on their front foot with Gemini. We will expect things to continue to ebb and flow like that this year and see more dispersion, say, for example, the Mag seven. Then software was terrible last year and the reason that it had just a really difficult time was because where revenue growth accelerating earnings going up a lot and AI infrastructure most of the mega caps continuing to show really healthy earnings growth. The software industry as a whole, just what it is, what it is. Without accelerating fundamentals and this perceived threat of AI disruption across both horizontal and vertical software, and so you've seen a really wide dispersion in the software sector in terms of performance. The way I would characterize thinking about 2026, expect AI infrastructure to remain strong, expect the large caps to continue to do quite well, but more dispersion, as we've started to see between them based on fundamentals. Then we actually are starting to get more interested in areas of software, because it's underperformed for effectively three years now relative to semis and AI infrastructure. There's some businesses that are going to be just fine as we get to the other side.

Asit Sharma: Denny, I love that you led with the vanguard of the investment into artificial intelligence so the semiconductors, they've been the first initial push for investment. But as we look beyond the near term, obviously, this is going to flow into other sectors of the economy. Everyone's watching the AI Data Center buildouts, for example, you've developed a really nice framework, I think. It's called enablers enhancers and end users. This is also the framework that's employed by the Janus Henderson Global Artificial Intelligence ETF. We'll just call it JHAI the symbol for short from here on out. But could you explain this framework and how you're using that to isolate companies that could have promise beyond just this year, as we go to three year, five year and beyond periods?

Denny Fish: Absolutely. I appreciate the question. So this product was officially commercialized to the public in August of this year. But I actually seeded this product. Back in August of 2025, so before the ChatGPT moment and actually went to our product committee at the depths of Tech despair in 2022 to convince them that AI was going to be a very, very profound technology shift that we were right on the cuspum. My original thesis at that point in time was that there were going to be three buckets of companies that were going to benefit from AI, and to your point, it's not just Tech, it's the broader economy this is going to be very profound, and we were going to have phases of adoption. We created this framework of enablers, enhancers and end users. What we mean by that is enablers are, as the name suggests, so it's semiconductors, GPUs, ASICs, foundry, semicap equipment, power producers, data centers, data center infrastructure, so a mix of tech, energy, industrials, all the stuff you need to lay down to actually be able to train these models and then actually perform inference as we actually put these agents and applications into production over time. Our view is there's another set of companies, we call these enhancers. These are companies that were strong businesses before AI, and AI is likely to make the businesses even stronger. But the fundamentals and the impact of those businesses are going to lag enablement. Enhancers, I think about software, for example, companies that have developed really strong businesses, have impressive data motes are critical to their customers value teams or business processes, and then can embed AI into those applications to enhance the value proposition to their customers. Also, on the consumer Internet side, for example, companies have very incredible value propositions, but AI is just going to make their engagement stronger and make both their operation stronger, as well, both from a digital and a physical standpoint. That's what we mean by enhancers. I think about software companies and Internet related companies in that bucket. Then end users pick your poison. It could be healthcare. It could be financial services, agriculture, insurance. Our thesis here is that there are going to be companies that are already leaders in their industry that are going to extend their competitive advantage because of their aggressive deployment of AI to not only reduce cost, but also drive revenue lift. We're big believers that we're going to see companies that are going to benefit on both sides of that coin. That's why I'm optimistic about the market. I think there's a lot to be optimistic about, because of what we could see with AI. What we expect is just over the fullness of time, our percentage of the fund that's in each of these buckets is going to ebb and flow based on where we feel we are in the adoption curve of AI. That's why we structured the fund that way.

Asit Sharma: I just wanted to follow up with a question on the lines and how they blur so between enablers and enhancers, the idea that comes to my mind is amazon.com is enabler and an enhancer. Where do the lines blur the most when you're categorizing these companies?

Denny Fish: That's pretty much where it does blur. I would say the hyperscalers, for example, because Microsoft is the quintessential enabler because of Azure. But then they're an enhancer, if you think about what Copilot does for office in their productivity suite and other applications. Those blur the line. But I think where the most values being added right now to the companies is in the enablement phase whether it's Azure or AWS so I would consider those more enablement. But over time, like, clearly, you think about a company like Amazon, we think about really what gets all the attention right now is the digital manifestation of AI, when we think about the open AIs and anthropics and Geminis and how AI is being deployed. That's just the start the physical manifestation of AI through robotics and humanoids, full self driving, automation things like that. That's going to be really, really profound for companies like Amazon that have a massive physical footprint with fulfilment and distribution, and they should get a tremendous amount of efficiencies from that. Like I was talking about this idea of extending durable competitive advantage. Amazon has built up an infrastructure that is just probably insurmountable at this point. Just the sheer amount of capital it would take to replicate that. Then if you're able to do what they've done for the last 25-30 years, which is just reinvest that incremental margin into making the business better, that's what we're going to see, and they're just going to continue to extend their competitive advantage on the physical side, as well.

Andy Cross: Hey, Denny, we are in the middle of the CES time of the year. I just wanted to get some reflections on your thoughts on what you heard coming out of CES this week.

Denny Fish: I think pretty much the biggest thing that we had last year, too and that was Jensen's keynote. The reason that is, is because last year he laid out this idea of three separate types of scaling laws that were important to understand that we're compounding effects on each other and why Blackwell was actually going to be able to support the continuation of scaling laws. This year, it was all about the continuation of that, and now Vera Rubin, which is the next version of their GPU systems. What's really important about that is these systems, they just get more powerful but more efficient, and it's this whole idea of how do we continue to extend scaling laws while at the same time driving down the cost of tokens for those that are actually then using the models. That's exactly what Rubin is expected to do and Nvidia just continues to stack its lead in the GPU space. I think that was probably the most important thing just giving people confidence like, Look, if you thought Blackwell was good, wait till Rubin gets here, so that was big. CES is, 15% Autoshow every year, we continue to see more and more on the autonomous side. I think, I'm in San Francisco and has spent a lot of time in Phoenix, and I've been using Waymo for a long time. I don't get an Uber anymore if I don't have to. You know, I love Waymo. It's an amazing experience. I've used FSD from Tesla. It's not nearly as good, but it's come a long way. Still a long way to go because of the path that Elon's taken with machine vision relative to Waymo. But I was just in London and drove around London in a car by a company called Wayve which is funded by SoftBank, Microsoft, and Nvidia and we cruised around London for 45 minutes. Driver didn't have to take the wheel one time, and London's pretty tricky. I think that's another thing that investors are going to be getting more and more excited about so autonomous was interesting. We're starting to see more on the humanoid and robotic side as well that people are getting really interested in. Once again, I mean, they might have to change the name of CES to, like, CES AI or something. I don't know. [LAUGHTER].

Andy Cross: They already have moved in that direction.

Denny Fish: Exactly.

Andy Cross: Awesome was joking with us on one of our podcasts. Like, where's the consumer part to the CES?

Denny Fish: Totally.

Andy Cross: I can't imagine what the London cabby the uproars they're gonna make of driverless tech.

Denny Fish: Oh, my goodness. [LAUGHTER].

Andy Cross: I mean, when Uber came into London, it was a big deal, and I can't imagine disruption there. I was interesting with the CES with Nvidia as pretty prominent show of their driverless technology than their reaction from Elon on Twitter commenting little tongue in cheek on us already doing that. It does start to another showcase where you see so many of these giants they're frenemies. They're competitors in one way, they're partners in the other, and you've already seen it with the chip providers and Nvidia being big chip providers to the hyperscalars, the hyperscalars developing their own chips and making a lot of progress. Especially in Google and the TPU. I found that very both entertaining but also very insightful on how Nvidia is thinking about building out their stack, especially when you think about robotics.

Denny Fish: Completely. I think that's probably what investors underestimate about a company like Nvidia. I mean, it's just a GPU story right now. There is so much that this company is working on and the amount of cash that they're reinvesting back in the business to advance innovation in areas like robotics and autonomous driving, and the number of investments that they've made in other companies that are also pursuing this. What I also love about Jensen if he sees something, he'll act decisively, and you look at the deal that they just did with Groq, G-R-O-Q which was actually founded by a guy by the name of Jonathan Ross, who was the original inventor of the TPU at Alphabet. I've met with them several times over the years and was actually really excited for them to come public at some point and invest in them as a public investor. But unfortunately, it's part of Nvidia now, so we're invested that way. In some ways, now Jensen's cornering the market a little bit [LAUGHTER] in terms of use cases through a deal like that, as well. It's a fun time to be in tech there's a lot of change. There's going to be a lot of competition. This is where I go back to we're just going to continue to see more dispersion among the large cap companies based on who's extending their advantage and who isn't. Just look at Alphabet and, Meta and what happened in 2025, and I think we're going to see a lot more of that in 2026, '27 and beyond.

Andy Cross: Denny, how do you think about allocation in general, you have some very large allocated positions in both the AI ETF and the Global Tech and Innovation Fund. Then you have some smaller ones. Just talk to us maybe roughly about your thinking around allocation strategies.

Denny Fish: We have this philosophy called resilience and optionality, where we're trying to position 50, 60, 70% of the portfolio resilient. Meaning, these are companies we really think we could own for five years, not saying we're going to because things can change. We think the range of outcomes are not narrow but not wide. The returns are going to be high and they're innovative management teams, and we want to get behind them, we'll run those as big positions. Strong competitive advantages. Good example the head of our portfolio is TSMC. I don't care what happens. I don't know if broadcom wins and Nvidia wins, AMD, whatever. Whatever happens. All roads go through Taiwan and now Phoenix because they're going to have like 12 fabs there. You find things like that that you can get comfortable with but then you got to find tomorrow's winners. Those are generally smaller companies that have wider range of outcomes. We populate then the bottom portion of the portfolio with companies like that, smaller position sizes. We're going to call that part of the portfolio more because we're going to be wrong. But the hope is we find enough of those companies that then graduate to resilient companies over time that can have a meaningful impact on the portfolio.

Andy Cross: That's great. Asit calls that his peanut shell strategy, I think, Asit to borrow a little term from you.

Asit Sharma: You got to get started somewhere. [LAUGHTER]

Denny Fish: Exactly.

Andy Cross: Denny, it's been a really wonderful, far reaching conversation, and you share your many deep thoughts on Tech and investing your experiences in AI, and we really appreciate all that we learned from you. Thank you for joining us here at the Motley Fool.

Denny Fish: It was my pleasure. Thanks, guys. That was great.

Andy Cross: Thanks, Denny. Best of luck to you and the entire Janus team, and we hope you have a great 2026.

Denny Fish: Great, thank you. Likewise.

Mac Greer: As always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talked about, and the Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don't buy sell stocks based solely on what you hear. All personal finance content follows Motley Fool editorial standards and is not approved by advertisers. Advertisements are sponsored content and provided for informational purposes only. To see our full advertising disclosure, please check out our show notes. For the Motley Fool Money team, I'm Mac Greer. Thanks for listening, and we will see you tomorrow.

Andy Cross has positions in Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla. Asit Sharma, CPA has positions in Advanced Micro Devices, Amazon, Microsoft, and Nvidia. Mac Greer has positions in Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Advanced Micro Devices, Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, Nvidia, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, and Tesla. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.