狮山巡礼
投资杂谈
This transcript, featuring Citadel CEO Kenneth Griffin, offers a sharp commentary on current market exuberance, the risks of sudden corrections, and a cautious long-term outlook on the AI boom, drawing parallels to the dot-com era.
Market Exuberance and the Risk of a Sudden Crash
Griffin opens by stating the market is deep in a bull market, characterized by significant FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). He warns against the naive tendency to believe the market will simply look past major risks.
To underscore the potential for a swift and severe correction, he invokes the Crash of 87. He notes that the market lost almost a quarter of its value in a single day, without a significant, obvious preceding catalyst. The big news stories that dayNancy Reagans breast cancer diagnosis and an inconsequential attack on a US vesselwere not the cause.
I sort of think to sort of say like the market looks past all this, misses the fact that when the market chooses to change its mind, the correction can be extraordinarily quick and extraordinarily painful.
He advises that money managers must constantly wear their risk manager hat, keeping in mind that no matter how exuberant the market is, the cycle can shift in the blink of an eye. Even the 2008 financial crisis had very little forewarning despite the underlying issues in the capital-based banking system and housing market.
AI: The New Dot-Com Bubble?
The current market is being propped up by AI valuation, according to Griffin. While he hopes the technology delivers, he questions the speed and magnitude of the value creation that is currently priced in.
AI is clearly having a moment in the sun today. And the AI community is going to have to demonstrate its ability to deliver literally trillions of dollars of value.
Griffin expresses concern that the dreams of market leaders regarding AI may not take three to five years to play out, but rather twenty or thirty years. He draws a direct and deliberate analogy to the Internet and dot-com moment at the start of the century:
No Doubt About the Technology: Just like the Internet, no one doubts AI will change the world.
Time Horizon: The profound changes from the personal computer have taken fifty years to fully play out. Similarly, the full impact of AI may take much longer than anticipated.
The Sorting of Winners and Losers: The dot-com bust involved a necessary period of sorting of the winners and losers. He recalls companies like Buy.com, Toys.com, and Pets.com that failed, leading to a market largely monopolized by Amazon and Walmart today.
He highlights the rapid obsolescence seen in early computing, citing the rise and fall of spreadsheet software: VisiCalc was overtaken by Lotus 1-2-3, which was then literally disappeared into the dustbin of history by Excel, all in the span of a few years.
In conclusion, Griffin affirms that the long-run future will see incredible advances in the use of computers and technology to improve productivity, but the immediate story of AI may has the same components of ups and downs as the Internet, suggesting a coming period of intense competition and financial reckoning.
