Does anyone think we're not in a bubble?

21,702 Views | 191 Replies | Last: 5 days ago by dmart90
TTUArmy
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pfo said:

The devaluation of the dollar has made everything we buy and invest in seem too expensive. The end of QT and lower interest rates should result in increased liquidity and high prices for both goods and investments. It's not that land and gold and stocks are that much more valuable, it's that the dollar is that much less valuable..

Truth.

It's a constant search for economic and market equilibrium. If everything becomes too expensive for the average consumer, due to purchase power destruction via inflation and/or stagnant wage growth/loss of employment, then there is little or no market for goods and services.

Generally, the economy would have a natural cycle to cleanse malinvestment out of the system. The house always creates an opportunity to rake their chips in before average investors have a chance to get out of the market through liquidity traps. And we have forces which have a strong desire to guide the rate of descent at which the cycle cleanses to lessen the impact on favored institutions; often prolonging the cleanse and subsequent recovery. With each cycle, those forces protect institutions that created the malinvestment which would otherwise be flushed out of existence.

And the cycle repeats...

Additionally, all of the dumb hullabaloo of 2002 and 2008, with Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Franks feel good bullcrap policy to "protect consumers" was filled with gaps and loopholes that were easily circumvented by the usual suspects that create these bubbles. Don't look to DC for remedies though they will be forthcoming when the markets have a violent, guttural spasm.
MemphisAg1
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AG
Another interesting article:
Quote:

Something ominous is happening in the AI economy - The Atlantic

https://stocks.apple.com/A22zeiJ40Rca1rtJKV25AQw
TTUArmy
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MemphisAg1 said:

Another interesting article:
Quote:

Something ominous is happening in the AI economy - The Atlantic

https://stocks.apple.com/A22zeiJ40Rca1rtJKV25AQw

Incestuous, isn't it?

If AI is the wave of the future, I suspect government, ie. citizen taxpayers, will be heavily involved in making sure all of these AI companies do not fail. It will be a matter of national security...because China, Russia, India, etc will gain the upper hand on the US.

Cost-wise, those countries are making it incredibly hard for the US to compete already. China is producing nuclear-based electricity to run their data centers at 1/6th the cost US AI companies are paying. In this race to stay ahead of everyone else, we need to sideline the EPA entirely and just start rolling nuclear-based electrification plants all over the country.

Otherwise, we may as well spin up a Duolingo account and start learning Mandarin. That old Sci-Fi series "Firefly" is starting to look more plausible all the time.
MemphisAg1
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AG
Yeah, when you dig deeper the stench becomes stronger. The big names (Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, etc.) aren't putting their capital at risk to build the infrastructure for AI (power generation, data centers). They're being offloaded to SPVs, such that if demand doesn't materialize, the SPV goes under and the stranded investment cost gets pushed back onto rate payers (ordinary citizens) instead of the Big 7.
YouBet
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AG
MemphisAg1 said:

Another interesting article:
Quote:

Something ominous is happening in the AI economy - The Atlantic

https://stocks.apple.com/A22zeiJ40Rca1rtJKV25AQw


Massive government bailout written all over this. It's Too Big to Fail Tech Edition.

This is a bubble and I don't think it's arguable. What we should maybe do is redefine it as a different kind of bubble? The housing crisis was a consumer bubble, if you will, and this bubble is being spooled up for strategic security reasons in addition to the normal speculation. So maybe this is a new kind of hybrid bubble due to that. Regardless, all of the pieces are in place to call it one.
MemphisAg1
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AG
Completely agree. The hard part is predicting when the bubble bursts.

I don't have a clue and would be wrong if I tried.

Ray Dalio in this interview describes the conditions that would cause it. Basically, when people have to redeem some of that stock wealth to pay for margin calls, wealth taxes, or other unexpected demands on liquidity -- combined with a realization that the earnings aren't there to justify the extreme valuations -- it will start a selling cycle that we've seen many times before in history. Ray is actually very interesting if you have time to watch the video.

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/12/08/dalio-you-want-to-look-for-the-*****ing-of-the-bubble.html?&qsearchterm=ray%20dalio
Sims
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AG
TTUArmy said:



Cost-wise, those countries are making it incredibly hard for the US to compete already. China is producing nuclear-based electricity to run their data centers at 1/6th the cost US AI companies are paying. In this race to stay ahead of everyone else, we need to sideline the EPA entirely and just start rolling nuclear-based electrification plants all over the country.

To the degree that grid electricity is fungible, the point doesn't really hold.

China's grid is approximately 4.4% nuclear whereas the US grid is approximately 18%.

Now, if you said, China was saying screw environmental concerns, we're gonna build a coal fired power plant for every data center...then yes, I would agree with you that it's becoming an unlevel playing field. (China is close to 60% coal and the US 16%).

Where the point holds up would be non-grid, modular, nuclear generation. If they're doing that, then it's pretty fantastic and from a regulatory standpoint I would imagine they are lightyears ahead of the US (in terms of deployment at scale).

Natural gas is really the bridge between current electrical production and future state nuclear and the US is far and away in a better place than China.
MemphisAg1
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AG
Here's a view that says expected S&P500 return over the next decade is zero, based on current forward PE. That's a pretty decent correlation in the data points. Makes sense intuitively given current evaluations which are pretty extreme by historical standards.


https://www.apolloacademy.com/expected-returns-in-public-equities-over-the-coming-years/
MemphisAg1
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AG
More food for thought...
Quote:

There are lots of ways of valuing stocks, and pretty much all of them make U.S. shares look the most expensive since the dot-com bubble. The forward price-to-earnings ratio, price to cash flow, the "Fed model" calculation of the extra reward offered by stocks compared with bonds and the cyclically adjusted PE ratio all scream that stocks are expensive.

Shares in Cisco Systems, the dot-com-era champion that became the world's most valuable company at its peak in March 2000, this week reached that level again for the first time. It's a cautionary tale of how far stock prices can depart from reality.

https://www.wsj.com/finance/stocks/the-eerie-parallels-between-ai-mania-and-the-dot-com-bubble-f99be6fe?st=SG8z3v
YouBet
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AG
Damn I thought Cisco went under back then. Didn't realize they were still around.
MemphisAg1
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AG
I was just coming of age about 35 at the time to get into stock picking. Lost just enough money to learn a lesson on speculation but not anything material to set me back. My dear old dad got caught up in it approaching 65 and lost quite a bit more right as he was heading into retirement.

A few years later I remember a CEO of a Fortune 100 I worked for mention that he never invested in things he didn't really understand or know how to value. He didn't try to chase the hot item of the day. I recall later how he made a killing in the Great Recession of 2008/2009 by being a bit of a contrarian.

Those two observations have helped to keep me balanced with risk vs. reward. There's no doubt in my mind that stocks are over-valued. The only question is when do valuations regress to the mean? Abruptly? Slowly? I have no idea and would be wrong if I tried to predict it.
YouBet
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AG
Well, I avoid all of that by doing very little stock picking. The handful of individual stocks that I own are blue chip or in O&G.

My one real flyer I made a killing on, so I'm not going to push my luck on another flyer.
PDEMDHC
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AG
Great video. Had to search it as the hidden word broke the link.
Brian Earl Spilner
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AG
MemphisAg1
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AG

Quote:

The broader market performance suggests that the fears are mostly contained within the AI infrastructure space.

"It definitely requires the ROI [return on investment] to be there to keep funding this AI investment," Matt Witheiler, head of late-stage growth at Wellington Management, told CNBC's "Money Movers" on Monday. "From what we've seen so far that ROI is there."

Witheiler said the bullish side of the story is that, "every single AI company on the planet is saying if you give me more compute I can make more revenue."

This is what is feeding the bubble. These AI companies are overlapped on the size of the real market. It's big. It's tangible. It's right in front of us. If we can just invest more... now... we get ours.

The problem is, your competitors are saying the same thing. We've seen the same thing in so many industries over the course of time. Human nature propels it.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/16/cnbc-daily-open-debt-worries-continue-to-weigh-on-ai-related-stocks.html
MemphisAg1
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AG
Interesting perspective from this investor who makes the case we're in the advanced stages of an AI bubble due to:
  • over-valuation
  • over-ownership
  • over-investment
He does not think the AI industry is over-leveraged; he says they have the FCF to support debt payments.

He also notes the one catalyst over the course of time that has popped bubbles is when interest rates move up.
We're starting to see divergence between short term and long term rates, arguably because the bond market is concerned about US unwillingness to confront inflation (by pushing near term rates down) and our unwillingness to get a handle on our escalating debt.

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/12/15/we-are-in-the-advanced-stages-of-an-ai-bubble-says-rockefelleras-ruchir-sharma.html?
dmart90
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AG
MemphisAg1 said:

Yeah, when you dig deeper the stench becomes stronger. The big names (Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, etc.) aren't putting their capital at risk to build the infrastructure for AI (power generation, data centers). They're being offloaded to SPVs, such that if demand doesn't materialize, the SPV goes under and the stranded investment cost gets pushed back onto rate payers (ordinary citizens) instead of the Big 7.

The circular "investing" here is a perfect example of crony capitalism. It is indeed incestuous. They are moving money around so the people in the club keep making more bank.
 
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