The Everything Bubble

[Spooky]

47 minutes ago, Milu said:

Can you give some examples of public companies where there is a lot of froth. I hear a lot of people focus on mag 7 stocks as being in a bubble. Most of them are in the 30-40 PE multiple level, on the expensive side sure but expensive shouldn't necessarily equate to bubble. During the dot com bubble, most of the largest publically traded firms Cisco Oracle, Microsoft were anywhere from 60-400 PE multiple. 

 

People say AI is a bubble but most of the AI companies are private. There are lots of areas of the market that are not in a bubble and are possibly quite depressed, retail clothing firms (Lululemon, Crox) for example. 

 

I suppose my question for you is when was the last time you felt that the market was fairly priced, and what actions did you take during that time?

check out the energy company backed by Sam Altman - up 8x this year and a $26 B market cap with ZERO revenue.

[Spekulatius]

10 hours ago, Masterofnone said:

It does seem like 1999 to me too. But it might be 1998! Cisco went from $13 to $75 between October 98 and April 2000!

Well summer 1998 was when Asia imploded starting with Thailand as I recall and many tech stocks went down with it, so the 10/1998 start8nt point may actually be a bear market low point.

[Masterofnone]

15 hours ago, Spekulatius said:

Well summer 1998 was when Asia imploded starting with Thailand as I recall and many tech stocks went down with it, so the 10/1998 start8nt point may actually be a bear market low point.

True. Guess the point is, what part of 1999? Things just kept getting crazier and crazier for month after month. Hard to say where we might be on the detached from reality scale at this point. That period did seem more surreal and extreme compared to the present, with grocery bag-boys giving stock buying advice and stories like KTEL  etc.

[Sweet]

I’m not predicting a bubble, or trying to time the market, but there is nothing I’m tempted to buy, and I have an urge to raise cash.

[EgonKuhn]

17 hours ago, Spekulatius said:

Well summer 1998 was when Asia imploded starting with Thailand as I recall and many tech stocks went down with it, so the 10/1998 start8nt point may actually be a bear market low point.

13 USD in october 1998 was only a short blip on the CSCO road. So maybe still quite some room for the *true* AI boom if we are still feeling the 1998 vibe

[Sweet]

 

[EgonKuhn]

As I recall, the consensus among small private investors at the end of the 1990s was that they could safely buy into virtually any IPO that had anything to do with technology, even if it was just to reap the profit from the meager allocation the following day. Based on what I'm currently observing, I'd say we're still a long way from that.

[73 Reds]

4 hours ago, EgonKuhn said:

As I recall, the consensus among small private investors at the end of the 1990s was that they could safely buy into virtually any IPO that had anything to do with technology, even if it was just to reap the profit from the meager allocation the following day. Based on what I'm currently observing, I'd say we're still a long way from that.

Agreed.  Back then no revenues, no sales and no earnings equaled no value; hence pure gambling (no thanks).  Adding .com to a company name instantly transformed a shell company into a stock worth owning.  The closest thing we have today are Meme stocks and even some of them actually make money.  No comparison whatsoever.

[brobro777]

4 hours ago, 73 Reds said:

Agreed.  Back then no revenues, no sales and no earnings equaled no value; hence pure gambling (no thanks).  Adding .com to a company name instantly transformed a shell company into a stock worth owning.  The closest thing we have today are Meme stocks and even some of them actually make money.  No comparison whatsoever.

 

Yea as much as I wanna short Nasdaq futures at 25k, things are probably gonna grind higher - I remember pets.com

 

haha pets

 

 

[Longnose]

On 10/19/2025 at 4:21 AM, Sweet said:

 

Not sure if this was meant to be pro or against. But i agree here that it is a once in a generation event and we are gonna see some serious expansion and growth. There are real opportunities and you can find ways to hedge yourself against a bubble potential. 

[John Hjorth]

19 minutes ago, Longnose said:

Not sure if this was meant to be pro or against. But i agree here that it is a once in a generation event and we are gonna see some serious expansion and growth. There are real opportunities and you can find ways to hedge yourself against a bubble potential. 

 

@Longnose,

 

 

Does this information available for you on X make this source worthy your quoting here on CofB&F? - Let me just say here, that to me personally, it doesen't.

 

- - - o 0 o - - -

 

What about the relation between this new AI computing being extremely energy hungry, driving up prices on power and energy everywhere in societies?

Edited October 21, 2025 by John Hjorth

[Longnose]

5 minutes ago, John Hjorth said:

 

@Longnose,

 

 

Does this information available for you on X make this source worthy your quoting here on CofB&F? - Let me just say here, that to me personally, it doesen't.

 

- - - o 0 o - - -

 

What about the relation between this new AI computing being extremely energy hungry, driving up prices on power and energy everywhere in societies?

I dont consider anything X to be source material but some people have good insights over there sure. 

 

I haven't dug into the whole energy thing a ton. But i have seen quite a few sources stating how real the challenges are right now for finding energy solutions to fix it.  BE (bloom energy thread is exactly this)  and there are other companies too. Valuations on these things are bonkers but then again there are these random ass companies where Google and openai and others are basically kingmakers when they give these multi billion dollar contracts to these companies to go build them the infrastructure or energy to sustain this expansion. 

 

I'm not playing with lots of these other companies as they are way to hard to predict and the valuations are whack. But I am deep in google at the moment as i think they are going to lead / win this AI expansion. 

[MungerWunger]

On 10/17/2025 at 7:05 AM, winjitsu said:

 

PLTR 400bn mc 400x P/E
TSLA 1.4tn mc 255x P/E
COST 400bn mc 50x P/E
ORCL 850bn mc 60x PE (also jumped 20%+ on the bogus OpenAI backlog -- so yes private market companies are impacting public companies and the overall market)

OKLO 24bn mc, "cashflow positive in 2041"

Quantum Stocks QUBT, RGTI, QBTS etc are around 50bn total market cap, total vaporware 

DogeCoin 28bn mc

 

Just off some names off the top of my head.

 

I stay 80-100% invested but I flex up and down my event-driven / conservative book (dividend payers) compared with my. Right now I'm around 30% towards that book.

 

As the market gets cheaper, I naturally replace it with longs aiming to get 100-115% exposure. Last time I think it was cheaply priced 2022-2023 downturn, swapped my BRK for GOOGL.  

 

 

Trump Administration in Talks to Take Equity Stakes in Quantum-Computing Firms

 

Companies including IonQ, Rigetti Computing and D-Wave Quantum are discussing the government becoming a shareholder as part of agreements to get funding earmarked for promising technology companies, according to people familiar with the matter. Other companies such as Quantum Computing Inc. and Atom Computing are considering similar arrangements.
The companies are discussing minimum funding awards from Washington of $10 million each, some of the people said. Other technology companies are also expected to vie for the funding.

 

https://archive.ph/rWgXF

[Eldad]

11 hours ago, MungerWunger said:

 

Trump Administration in Talks to Take Equity Stakes in Quantum-Computing Firms

 

Companies including IonQ, Rigetti Computing and D-Wave Quantum are discussing the government becoming a shareholder as part of agreements to get funding earmarked for promising technology companies, according to people familiar with the matter. Other companies such as Quantum Computing Inc. and Atom Computing are considering similar arrangements.
The companies are discussing minimum funding awards from Washington of $10 million each, some of the people said. Other technology companies are also expected to vie for the funding.

 

https://archive.ph/rWgXF

Funny that Trump is not a fascist in the way people who are calling him a fascist think (racist, Hitler blah blah blah)

 

But he actually is a fascist in his corporate statist policies.