If there is a 10% chance AI is going to kill us all, then that’s probably bad news for bond markets. There are a lots of things that threaten us, but fortunately most of them are quite unlikely. A 1 in 10 chance we’re all toast is not. Global markets will probably choose to look the other way, but how would your own investment decisions change if you knew the Terminator is about to knock on the door?
Narratives are what drive stock markets. Robots are seen as a massive multi-trillion-dollar Total Addressable Market – with strategic and social implications that will utterly change economies. Musk expects to sell millions every year. The reality is likely to be very different – robotics and society will evolve and probably end up unlike anything we envisage today.
The AI infrastructure build out already dominates credit market funding. Now Nvidia will effectively securitise its chips to its market though a panel of private capital markets firms that lend it credibility. The worry is complex and appealing deal structures will simply hide the risks inherent in AI – and increase the likelihood of a correlated crash when something inevitably breaks.
The AI market has been diving business expectations and markets – everyone believes it will deliver a growth, productivity and profit revolution across the global economy. What if it doesn’t? What if it’s not a leap forward, but just a step-change?
Are we about to have an Emperor’s New Clothes moment and a return to sane valuations? The Tech markets create enormous real value and growth across economies, but like every other bubble in financial history they are hyped to high heaven. In the short run there is money to be made playing the game. In the long run; what is real and what is not matters. The trick is to exit the short-term game before the long run outcomes are apparent to everyone.
There were a number of “Moments” over the Weekend. A Peace Deal in the Gulf was inevitable – but we will see energy supply chains slowly normalise and lower inflationary expectations. Equally important is the US Government switching off Anthropic’s most powerful AI models. Collectively, these two events could have enormous consequences in terms of global power and hegemony.
Markets can’t wait for the Iran war to end – so they can get back to speculating trillions on the AI revolution. The hyperscalers expect to reap monopoly scale rents from owning AI closed-weight models and the digital infrastructure of datacentres and chips. But what if households can build their own AI capabilities cheaper and more effectively? Pop!
Past performance is not a guide to the future. Tesla trades on a massive PE because folk believe Elon Musk will repeat his success in EVs across AI, Capacitance, Robotaxis, Autonomous Driving and Robotics. But hype, showmanship, undelivered promises and increasing competition are leaving his ventures in the literal rear-view mirror.
Social media is deliberately addictive? Who knew? While markets barely reacted to yesterday’s Product-Liability award against Meta and Alphabet in California, the growing pushback against Big Tech will see valuation multiples diminish over the long run as increased regulation becomes inevitable. Perhaps it’s time to look at how Tobacco firms have evolved to understand the future value of Social Media parasites?
The future will be set not just by the defence and deterrence discussions last weekend in Munich, but by how global markets react to competition. New Chinese AI drops from DeepSeek and Qwen may challenge US hyperscalers and challenge expectations of global demand and markets.












