dot-com bubble vs. a possible AI bubble.

From the famous "Dean of Valuation", Professor Aswath Damodaran, of NYU Stern School of Business,

“And that’s the real big difference between the dot-com boom and bust and the AI boom. We don’t know whether there’ll be a bust. History suggests there will be a bust.

The dot-com boom and bust had no huge capital expenditure in that cycle. In fact, there was very little traditional CapEx, or even R&D, driving it. People started apps. They basically started going on it.

This has been the biggest infrastructure run-up I think I’ve ever seen in business. You can go back and compare it to the automobile business 100 years ago. The amount of money that’s being put into AI CapEx is immense, which means that when the correction comes, the pain will be more intense.

And herein lies the second problem. The dot-com boom and bust was almost entirely equity-funded. You think, so what? Well, when the bust came, those shareholders lost 60%, 70%, 80%, or 90% of their money. You felt sorry for them, but the loss was restricted to the shareholders.

The problem with the AI CapEx boom is that not only is it immense, but a big chunk of it is funded with debt, and the debt is coming from private capital rather than banks. There’s a very real chance that if there’s a correction and companies start having problems, that problem is going to show up as distress and default, and that really doesn’t stay restricted. It spills over into the rest of society.

I’m not saying it’s going to be 2008, but 2008 is an example of what happens when lenders overreach, when they lend money at too low a rate, and the correction comes. The pain spills over.

So that is my concern with this big market illusion: the potential societal cost of having to deal with debt coming due that you’re unable to pay. It’s much more painful than your share price dropping 90% and you feeling the pain."

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From "Excess Returns" YouTube channel, (link in comment)