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by JumpCrisscross 17 days ago
> the crash (that we all know is coming) will do that. Until then, history teaches that we'll just keep going up and up

Stock prices don't have to crash. They can just stagnate while profits catch up and multiples compress.

Debt binges, on the other hand, tend to go bust with a bang. But after the recent private-credit scare, the AI build-out has been predominantly financed with stock. (I think.)
2 comments
layoric 17 days ago
Hasn't there been a _lot_ of debt to buy up Nvidia GPUs? I follow this stuff somewhat closely and it feels intentionally confusing, so I've likely lost track.
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JumpCrisscross 17 days ago
> Hasn't there been a _lot_ of debt to buy up Nvidia GPUs?

I believe that's been concentrated at the hyperscaler layer, and subsided when the aforementioned private-credit scare reared its head. (I haven't heard a big datacenter debt deal announced in a while. Though of course that doesn't mean they aren't being done.)

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aurareturn 17 days ago
And we're still extremely compute constrained. We need more Nvidia GPUs, RAM, power.
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hn_throwaway_99 17 days ago
> Equity bubbles don't have to crash. Prices can just stagnate while profits catch up and multiples compress.

Is there is historical evidence for that? As someone who used to follow Jeremy Grantham a lot (he considered himself a "bubble historian"), IIRC every bubble he studied always mean reverted, and it usually (maybe always, can't remember) overshot on the downside during the correction.

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JumpCrisscross 17 days ago
> IIRC every bubble he studied always mean reverted

This really depends on how we're defining these things. Let's call a stock-market bubble a period of elevated multiples. That can mean revert by prices decreasing while earnings stay constant or by prices staying constant and earnings rising. (Alternatively, both earnings and multiples can rise and fall.)

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hn_throwaway_99 17 days ago
Yes, for equity prices in particular he talks about P/E ratios (among some other metrics like corporate profit margins), and so you're right, it would be possible for this to mean revert by prices holding stagnant and earnings catching up. However, as far as I can remember (primarily because a big emphasis of his was how unchecked bubbles can cause a lot of damage on the downside) all the historical bubbles he studied (something like 50) always crashed with a big price drop. Not 100% sure though, which is why I was curious if you had any contrary examples.
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