Can the stockmarket swallow SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI?
AI is the greatest money-wasting scheme humanity has ever invented
South Korea stocks fall over 5% as tech heavyweights follow plunge in Wall Street’s AI-linked names
'Big Short' investor Michael Burry says neither SpaceX nor Anthropic is worth $1 trillion
So what do ya'll think is going on? Is it coming? To me it feels like something weird is going on with the markets.
Hormuz oil price yo-yo, SpaceX / OAI / Anthropic race to IPO – I can't be the only one who feels like we are just waiting for the bubble to pop?
I don't have the language to describe it, but it's as if there is a bigger question now about what money and wealth even is in the age of ETFs and index funds. Of course nobody holds cash anymore, but it is as if these funds have been fully setup as the new "household savings".
People's life savings and retirements depend on a complex arrangement of investments and schemes that are connected into the stocks and indexes of publicly traded companies globally.
This is interesting because these markets are a kind of public good that is regulated by the authorities, but also has properties of both public and private sector. Index funds are backed by a flywheel of required buying from pension funds etc, and are also able to be manipulated by regulators.
On the Bitcoin side there is negative sentiment that even complete normies have "outperformed" Bitcoin price without having to know anything. The recent BTC sell-off is arguably people trying to get in on the AI action.
But fundamentally, Bitcoin is money - it is real savings without counter-party risk. As I said to someone recently - what do the numbers mean if you don't have custody?
What does SN think? Is Bitcoin just waiting around to to be the place people rush into when the AI ponzi blows up? Will AI transform the world and justify trillion dollar valuations? Is household wealth in the stockmarket simply the new future which the state will never let fail?
Americans are waiting to be told what to do.
If there is enough of the general public looking at stocks, they might become primed for different types of news segments which acknowledge the gains being denominated in dollars, the government influence, etc. They could also just get pointed to different stocks, though.
I'm curious, older stackers, did people always refer to their investments as "savings," or is that a recent development?
When I was a kid in the 60s and 70s Savings Banks and other non profit mutuals were the only banks allowed to provide housing mortgages.
Commercial banks were required to only finance purposes which were productive.
The neoliberal deregulation of banking removing those distinctions was a significant factor in the increasing misuse of fiat debt based capital issuance which has caused the price of housing to explode and the ability to save, implode.
Back then in the 60s-70s savings were still seen as safe and secure means of wealth accumulation while investments were seen as applying those savings to risk in order to hopefully achieve a higher rate of return.
Neoliberlai financialisation has completely blurred the distinction between savings and investment.
The stock market in Korea currently feels like the 2017 ICO crypto bull run. Everyone is playing, grandmas in the subway are buying SK Hynix and Samsung on their Kiwum account from their phone. Pseudo-intellectuals run their YouTube channels, arguing last week that this is a 5-year supercycle, yet, after a 5% drop, they suddenly change their story to "it's going to pop any day now".
I could probably just ignore it, but the wife, yesterday was looking at a guy using a red pen, writing on top of Excel sheets and charts. She's anxiously awaiting the market open~~
I'm no expert, but bubbles seem to be forming and popping all the time. Is AI stuff bubbly? Yeah, mostly in that valuations and debt credibility are circularly derived, as assets in the chain (GPUs/data center builds) are inevitably self-referentially priced, and it all hinges on future cash flows of frontier AI companies that may not materialize.
There are lots of bubble pop bandaids though: FAANG has been sitting on huge piles of cash and governments are feverishly intertwining themselves like in the banking sector. If cash keeps coming in, it won't pop, and cash will keep coming in so long as LLM intelligence doesn't hit a hard asymptote.
You're asking all the right questions, imo. I don't have any answers, but I share your concerns and curiosity. I personally think it's likely smart to hedge. There is a lot of interest in keeping the bubbles inflated. Could it go on another 5, 10, 30 years? Or will it all be over before the end of the decade? Will be looking back to this time from 2030 wondering how everybody could have been so deluded?
ETFs, equities, fiat money, even real estate are all more or less financialised derivatives of state power, fiat debt leverage and bankers where you the ordinary person do not hold direct custody and control.
I hold most of my liquid wealth in sats (and some gold) because they are not controlled by the bankers and governments.
Zooming out on the AI bubble- this is what the west/USA is hoping can reverse or stall its constant loss of productive competitive advantage over China.
That hope and bombing Chinas energy supply trading partners into submission along with sponsoring Israels genocide and Greater Israel Project.
Only buy Bitcoin if you want to be part of building an alternative to the Zionist fiat debt slavery bankers cartel that owns your government!
Wealth is not just a numerical sum, but just as much a measure of freedom and integrity.