‘The speculative America, buying chips and building data centers on the hope that it will pay off, is at odds with the growing disappointment in LLM performance.’ garymarcus.substack.com/p/two-takes-... by @garymarcus.bsky.social

‘When it became apparent that expert systems could not climb further, AI research entered a so-called “AI Winter” in the late 1980s. Grants dried up, companies shut down, and AI became a dirty word.‘ time.com/7340901/ai-h...

‘The amount of cash retail investors poured into U.S. stocks so far in 2025 is up 53% from $197 billion a year earlier and 14% higher than the $270 billion hit at the height of the retail trading frenzy in 2021.’ www.reuters.com/business/ret...

“Even in a world of 2 per cent global GDP growth, we would expect sizeable deficits in the copper market over the next year.” www.ft.com/content/0bb5...

Year in a word: AI bubble www.ft.com/content/3e41...

Peak ETF Mania? Flows, Launches and Volume Shatter All Records www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

‘The US strategy could be costly, not only in terms of higher electricity prices, potentially limiting the return on investments in AI, but also increased water stress and potential food insecurity.‘ www.ft.com/content/73e0... by @ianrharnett.bsky.social

‘More than two-thirds of this year’s tech initial public offerings are trading below their listing prices, a poor reception that is casting doubt on the prospects for companies hoping to hit the market next year.’ www.theinformation.com/articles/poo...

‘The private equity industry’s backlog of 31,000 companies valued at $3.7 trillion exceeds last year’s record of 29,000 companies valued at $3.6 trillion. “There are so many companies that are stuck.”’ www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/b...

The market cap-weighted average trailing p/e of the 20 largest stocks in the market is 55.9 haymaker.substack.com/p/haymaker-d...

In the past ~50 years, times when: -Residential detracted from GDP contribution -PCE added at least 1% to real GDP growth -Unemployment rose QoQ -U3 was sub-6% (remove the deep recession periods) Bulls can point to 1995/96, bears to 2007 and arguably 1989.

“I think it is misleading to try to encapsulate everything in the idea of one bubble, because there are at least three bubbles worth talking about in terms of valuations, investment and technology.” www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/b...

‘Fiscal and inflation worries are putting upward pressure on long-term interest rates across the G3, and these concerns are not going away anytime soon.’ www.apolloacademy.com/rates-higher...

"In 2000, this low in defensive stocks coincided with the top in global TMT share prices in both absolute and relative terms. This could be a sign that global risk appetite has become as overextended as it was in early 2000." via @bcaresearch.bsky.social

Another indication of a sharp deceleration in household spending this holiday season. h/t @thedailyshot

‘I’m hearing that a few projects have run into so many issues that customers pulled out of binding agreements before construction has finished due to serious issues with the developers’ progress. If these murmurings grow louder, it will make everyone nervous.‘ www.theinformation.com/articles/dat...

‘While the whole auto complex has been running ahead of CPI over the last several years, auto insurance inflation is on a whole different level, with a 5-year average pace of price gains at 13%.’ www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...

‘People rightly spend a lot of time worrying about whether AI will ever be smart enough to destroy us. But what if it has already started?‘ www.ft.com/content/d228...

Makers of Everyday Essentials Once Offered Investors Safety. Do They Still? www.wsj.com/finance/stoc...

‘Investors flocked to bullion in 2025, in particular gold-backed exchange-traded funds, driven by President Donald Trump’s trade war, his threats to the independence of the US Federal Reserve, geopolitical tensions and concerns over ballooning government debt.’ www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

‘Gold has surged this year, boosted by worries about inflation and the prospects for major currencies. That includes the dollar which has been weakened by concerns about Pres. Trump’s upending of the postwar economic order. Geopolitical risks are also bullish for gold.‘ www.wsj.com/finance/inve...

Arthur Levitt: “One day, perhaps sooner than most think, regulators will unearth a fresh set of scandals involving Wall Street’s research. People will justifiably ask why the financial sector keeps making the same mistakes. But regulators deserve much of the blame.” www.wsj.com/opinion/the-...

‘Buoyed by tech, the long-term valuation ratio of the S&P 500 is now at an all-time high. This metric has exceeded previous peaks that preceded major drawdowns, such as in the summer of 2000 before the dotcom crash or in January 2022.’ www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

‘Big Tech’s dominance of AI infrastructure is shrinking as a host of other players pile into the arena — with global economic consequences.’ www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...

‘SoftBank is racing to close a $22.5b funding commitment to OpenAI by year-end through an array of cash-raising schemes, including a sale of some investments, and could tap its undrawn margin loans borrowed against its valuable ownership in chip firm Arm Holdings.’ www.reuters.com/business/med...

'Apollo Global is building up cash, cutting leverage and selling out of riskier corners of debt markets as top executives gird the firm for what they expect to be market turbulence.’ www.ft.com/content/b315...

‘Bad credits pushed KKR’s nonperforming loan ratio to around 5% in September from 3.5% in January. 14.4% of the fund’s income derives from loans that pay interest “in kind” rather than in cash, a sign that its borrowers are struggling to keep current.‘ www.wsj.com/finance/inve...

“There are so many more competitive options that aren’t charging fees and aren’t subscription based. The value prop has to be incredible for some of these subscription-based models to justify these subscriptions.” www.theinformation.com/articles/mic...

‘Throw out your business school investing textbooks. The rules of markets are changing in the face of the AI revolution, strategists argue.’ www.axios.com/2025/12/22/a...

‘For Japanese investors, domestic JGBs are now more attractive than hedged Treasuries, Bunds, and Gilts from a yield perspective.’ thedailyshot.com/2025/12/22/o...

“Artificial general intelligence (AGI) is key to justifying investments, yet its implied timing has been delayed, despite rising data centre spending.” theideafarm.com/wp-content/u...

“2025 will be known as the year of the peak bubble, and also the moment at which Wall Street began to lose confidence in generative AI... the Oracle craze early in September and what has happened since will in hindsight be seen as the beginning of the end.” garymarcus.substack.com/p/six-or-sev...

NEW POST: ‘Bubbles Are Everywhere You Look’ thefelderreport.com/2025/12/20/b...

All those folks pretty certain that a stimulus boost is coming in 1H26 are likely to be disappointed. My free blog app post of the week for those interested about why: bsky.app/profile/bobe...

“The Trump administration’s effort to narrow the US trade deficit means fewer dollars will flow overseas, reducing the need for those funds to be recycled back into US securities.” www.ft.com/content/c26f...

‘US equity funds saw the largest weekly inflow of the year and the second-largest on record.’ www.dailychartbook.com/p/821 via @dailychartbook.bsky.social

‘When the rewards for prudence erode and the traditional path—a college degree, buying a house, working at the same job for decades—starts to become more and more difficult to achieve, economic risk becomes the baseline option instead of a choice.’ www.wsj.com/personal-fin...

GUPTA: “.. At $830B valuation .., you’re paying 44x revenue for a company that loses money on every dollar it makes. “.. This is no longer a bet on AI. This is a bet that OpenAI becomes a platform company with multiple revenue streams that don’t currently exist ..” @aakashgupta.bsky.social

From @profgalloway.com 2026 predictions: “The Data Center Bubble Bursts” “.. the greatest AI hallucination yet is the assumption that in the next few years we’re going to build anywhere near the required grid and power capacity.” www.profgalloway.com/2026-predict...

“I don’t think Anthropic and OpenAI will find the anchors for these IPOs now that the AI trade is rolling over. The window to list is closing. If they start to run out of cash, things can get nasty, because there is a lot of Japanese style cross-financing.” themarket.ch/english/loui...

‘Even as high-yield (i.e., junk) bond defaults are running near recession levels, credit spreads (the difference between high-yield and U.S. Treasury bonds) remain close to record lows.‘ haymaker.substack.com/p/haymaker-d...

Latest Chase spending data now tracking *below* 2024 levels after showing pretty good growth for most of the year. Suggests a soft holiday spending season so far.

’There was actually a very big cautionary signal on AI this week which doesn’t seem to have garnered that much attention — despite coming from an unexpected place: China.‘ www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...

‘Salesforce executives have been telling customers Agentforce sometimes works better when it doesn’t rely so much on LLMs. The backtrack could have implications for thousands of companies using the technology.’ www.theinformation.com/articles/sal...

‘The free lunch will come to an end for artificial intelligence in 2026. Over the past decade, developers from Google, opens new tab to Alibaba have been devouring copyrighted material without permission or payment. Make no mistake, however: the bill is coming soon.’ www.reuters.com/commentary/b...

“I’ve never seen a consensus as large as what we’ve seen, I would say the last three, four months on the balances. It’s like an iceberg floating against us.” www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...

‘The Fed finds itself relaunching QE when it claims it’s still in inflation-fighting mode—with all the potential implications for rates and inflation that asset purchases bring. It’s hard to shake the suspicion the Fed is losing control of its balance sheet policy.’ www.wsj.com/opinion/the-...

‘For now, at least, a weak yen and other data suggest Japanese investors are still plowing money overseas. In the year through November, Japanese investors bought a net $102b of overseas securities such as stocks and bonds versus the net $4.4 billion purchased in 2024.’ www.wsj.com/economy/cent...

‘OpenAI is aiming to raise as much as $100 billion as it seeks to pay for ambitious growth plans in a market that has cooled recently on the artificial-intelligence boom.’ www.wsj.com/tech/ai/open...

“Investors have never before been in such agreement about the biggest market risk for a year ahead than they are now: Deutsche Bank survey. 'AI/tech bubble risk towers over everything else.'” www.dailychartbook.com/p/820 via @dailychartbook.bsky.social