The air begins to leak out of the overinflated AI bubble
The air begins to leak out of the overinflated AI bubble
Shares in AI companies have powered a huge runup in the stock market this year, but users are beginning to question whether the craze will fall flat.
You're viewing a single thread.
Permanently Deleted
Also bubbles don't "leak".
I mean, sometimes they kinda do? They either pop or slowly deflate, I'd say slow deflation could be argued to be caused by a leak.
We taking about bubbles or are we talking about balloons? Maybe we should change to using the word balloon instead, since these economic 'bubbles' can also deflate slowly.
Good point, not sure that economists are human enough to take sense into account, but I think we should try and make it a thing.
Permanently Deleted
You can do it easily with a balloon (add some tape then poke a hole). An economic bubble can work that way as well, basically demand slowly evaporates and the relevant companies steadily drop in value as they pivot to something else. I expect the housing bubble to work this way because new construction will eventually catch up, but building new buildings takes time.
The question is, how much money (tape) are the big tech companies willing to throw at it? There's a lot of ways AI could be modified into niche markets even if mass adoption doesn't materialize.
Permanently Deleted
You do realize an economic bubble is a metaphor, right? My point is that a bubble can either deflate rapidly (severe market correction, or a "burst"), or it can deflate slowly (a bear market in a certain sector). I'm guessing the industry will do what it can to have AI be the latter instead of the former.
Permanently Deleted
One good example of a bubble that usually deflates slowly is the housing market. The housing market goes through cycles, and those bubbles very rarely pop. It popped in 2008 because banks were simultaneously caught with their hands in the candy jar by lying about risk levels of loans, so when foreclosures started, it caused a domino effect. In most cases, the fed just raises rates and housing prices naturally fall as demand falls, but in 2008, part of the problem was that banks kept selling bad loans despite high mortgage rates and high housing prices, all because they knew they could sell those loans off to another bank and make some quick profit (like a game of hot potato).
In the case of AI, I don't think it'll be the fed raising rates to cool the market (that market isn't impacted as much by rates), but the industry investing more to try to revive it. So Nvidia is unlikely to totally crash because it'll be propped up by Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, and Microsoft, Apple, and Google will keep pitching different use cases to slow the losses as businesses pull away from AI. That's quite similar to how the fed cuts rates to spur economic investment (i.e. borrowing) to soften the impact of a bubble bursting, just driven from mega tech companies instead of a government.
At least that's my take.
Permanently Deleted
The broader market did the same thing
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/SPY/
$560 to $510 to $560 to $540
So why did $NVDA have larger swings? It has to do with the concept called beta. High beta stocks go up faster when the market is up and go down lower when the market is done. Basically high variance risky investments.
Why did the market have these swings? Because of uncertainty about future interest rates. Interest rates not only matter vis-a-vis business loans but affect the interest-free rate for investors.
When investors invest into the stock market, they want to get back the risk free rate (how much they get from treasuries) + the risk premium (how much stocks outperform bonds long term)
If the risks of the stock market are the same, but the payoff of the treasuries changes, then you need a high return from stocks. To get a higher return you can only accept a lower price,
This is why stocks are down, NVDA is still making plenty of money in AI
There's more to it as well, such as:
- investors coming back from vacation and selling off losses and whatnot
- investors expecting reduced spending between summer and holidays; we're past the "back to school" retail bump and into a slower retail economy
- upcoming election, with polls shifting between Trump and Harris
September is pretty consistently more volatile than other months, and has net negative returns long-term. So it's not just the Fed discussing rate cuts (that news was reported over the last couple months, so it should be factored in), but just normal sideways trading in September.
We already knew about back to school sales, they happen every year and they are priced in. If there was a real stock market dump every year in September, everyone would short September, making a drop in August and covering in September, making September a positive month again
It's not every year, but it is more than half the time. Source:
History suggests September is the worst month of the year in terms of stock-market performance. The S&P 500 SPX has generated an average monthly decline of 1.2% and finished higher only 44.3% of the time dating back to 1928, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
S&P 500 up this September officially
Woo! We're part of the 44% or so. :)
45% now since the data only goes back 100 years
Its all vibes and manipulation