Don’t we hear all the time that previous bubbles always occur when everyone is so sure that the market can’t crash. But this time around, dare I say a majority of people are cautious and think it’s a bubble. Now does that mean we can apply the inverse logic and say there is no bubble because the majority can’t be right since if it’s right then the wealthy elite can’t make money? What are your thoughts on this?

It feels like the “public” can never be right on something like this.

I've been told by friends and family about how AI is the future, blah blah, all that stuff. I'm just a final year student, who never really thought much about it. I mean, I'll use a chatbot once in a while when I'm stuck or need quick answers / idea generation, but that barely scratches the surface. I don't have too much interest in AI as a career. I would like to go into software development after graduation, maybe I'll return to the place I interned at (software company).

The thing is, if this AI bubble, thats become the biggest thing in tech right now really does pop. I'm not entirely sure on the effect it has on me, and what I can do about it.

TL;DR Title

During the 2008 financial crisis the housing bubble burst because of mortgages to unqualified borrowers, complex financial products like mortgage-backed securities (MBS), and lax lending standards. So, a faulty system depending on we, the people, paying off mortgages and loans that were not being paid back. Seems a logical cause for a bubble to burst.

Before, the dotcom bubble bursted because of extreme overvaluation of companies, which were not performing up to the expectations, so the revenue wasn't there.

Now there is obviously an AI bubble as has been pointed out many many times, but currently the companies involved are still meeting their expected revenue goals (looking at NVIDIA, Meta, Google even though that is not strictly an AI-related company, their current valuation is also due to their AI developments). Of course, investing in each other and buying each other's products, causing stocks to rise, is super inflatory, but is not punished so far. It seems.

Now, a geopolitical conflict involving a certain chipmaker to not be able to produce would likely pop the bubble overnight. Given the current geopolitical situation and the people involved, this is not unlikely in the coming years. But as long as this doesn't happen it appears to be business as usual, and the AI-race will continue.

Now, comparing this to earlier bubbles, the pattern is similar. An industry is pumped to the moon, a bunch of people make an insane amount of money, the bubble bursts and most people get screwed over with a few winners. The question is always: how high will it go when the companies are profitable and how deep will the lows be?

As a retail investor who is not trading daily, this situation is extremely difficult and hard to predict when also just having a regular 9 to 5 job. I know I won't be able to predict it, so it is a risk analysis whether the current valuations will be the future lows OR if big companies with PE ratios of 50 are already a selling sign for the retail investor. This would even apply to ETFs like VWRL, since their share of NVDA is also high. The whole market will likely go down when this bubble bursts, just some companies more than others. given earlier arguments, I feel like going short here is stupid. Thereby, world governments are hedging inflation (buying loads of gold), which also has geopolitical implications. Now I believe in the mantra that time in the market beats timing the market but probably needing the money in 3 years or so, the current situation is a spicy sauce. It seems like hedging inflation (e.g. buying gold and funds like Berkshire) is not a bad move.

I've got quite a bit in the S&P 500 and have enjoyed the gains, however I feel like diverting a large portion of that into some ETFS that avoid so much exposure to the tech sector being that AI is still far from profitable. It's a pretty obvious bubble, there's just a lot of hope fueling it.

Disclosure: I'm a buy and hold investor so I don't trade based on economic reports, technical indicators, or public sentiment.

But for discussion purposes, I think the markets are generally at crazy valuations. When I mean crazy, I mean unprecedented, off-the-charts crazy.

I've been lurking at Value Investing and follow a few personal finance YouTubers, and most of them are alarmed.

For example, the CAPE ratio is at an all-time high. The normal average is 15 and we just broke 40!

So are we in a bubble and is it about to pop?

Not here for the daily "Freak tf out, it's joever" vs "No Bubble exists" debate.

My question is simply, as a noob retail investor; If the big AI investors see a major downturn due to whatever reason, or a bailout happens for openAI (arguably it already is happening with the BBB).

What would be the winning move on the stock market, if any? Keep riding S&P? Buy land, water and gold? Crypto? Bonds? Just any other sector? I see a lot of talk but I don't understand what it would actually mean in actual effect. Enlighten me plz

Seeing an increase in “what if the AI Bubble pops” lately. So I did some digging. The oldest post I could find on the question was two years ago (link below). Since then, VTI has grown 42% and VOO 47%.

Those who stayed on the sidelines or sold out of fear missed out on an incredible growth. Understand the recency biased today. It’s possible there’s a bubble. It’s possible a correction is coming. No one knows the time, depth or breadth of it. We Bogle because even those corrections are compensated by periods like the last two years. Staying out of the market means you might miss the bad times, but you’re definitely going to miss the good times.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bogleheads/s/2gAsAlkWEj

The investment requirements are so large that equity financing alone won’t do. The balance sheets of many of the major players have been altered significantly. Looking at Meta’s annual statement before ChatGPT was released to the public in November 2022, it had over three times as much cash as debt on its balance sheet. Last quarter it had 15% more debt. Microsoft had 30% more cash than debt pre-ChatGPT. Now it has almost 20% more debt. Amazon, which has traditionally had a more leveraged balance sheet, now has over 50% more debt than cash

I was still under the impression that all the faangs had more cash than liabilities, I wasn’t aware that had flipped

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-12-31/everyone-s-watching-stocks-the-real-bubble-is-ai-debt

https://archive.is/mwmia

I feel the real winners of the AI boom won’t be the AI companies themselves, but the infrastructure that supports them. Instead of betting on long-term, uncertain plays like nuclear or small modular reactors, I’m leaning toward power grids and cooling systems. It’s less about hype and more about owning the essential backbone that everything depends on and as well they being first to get orders. My picks are SMCI, BE, NVT, NBIS ; what do you guys think?

I keep seeing this comparasion on Reddit, but I believe it'swrong to compare the two and expect a crash as big as the one in 2000.

The big difference is that the companies today actually make money. Microsoft, Google, Nvidia, Meta they all have real products, billions in profits, and millions of users. Think of Google Maps, YouTube, Windows, Office, Android, Instagram etc. These are all solid products with billions in profits and massive user bases. Can you replace them? No. Will they go away anytime soon? Also no. Even if the AI trend slows down, these companies still have strong foundations and cash flow from their non-AI products.

During the dot com bubble, most companies had no profits and were running on hype alone. Not to mention how technology wasn’t even a big part of people’s lives back then. Most people were just getting online for the first time, and the internet was still something new and weird, used mostly by nerds.

Sure, valuations are high and there’s some overexcitement, but that doesn’t mean the market is heading for a total meltdown. A correction? Probably. A repeat of 2000? Highly unlikely.

Disclaimer: I apologize in advance for the redundancy of this post. I see threads about the AI bubble in every community related to the stock market and many people seem annoyed by them. I guess it's because they mostly focus on trying to time the crash or even announcing it's happening right as they post, without really exploring what the best hedge against a potential bubble burst might be.

So today we all know there is an AI bubble: every mainstream media outlet, platform and social network is filled with posts about the circular investment of Open-AI, Oracle and Nvidia as well as the massive capex of every company in the AI sector. I am not saying the bubble will burst, maybe one of the companies doing AI research will create an AGI or make a major breakthrough in the coming months or years that could justify the capital invested in them. But what if not, or not quickly enough ?

Like most people who invest on the stock market I own shares of companies with significant exposure to the AI boom. With the current instability in the US economy and politics, gold skyrocketing and the US dollar declining I'm looking for a hedge against a potential crash. I'm considering taking a small long-term put position against a company in the AI sector.

So here's the big question :

Who do you think would be the biggest loosers if the AI bubble burst ?

I’m 28 yo heavily invested in AI stocks. I’m thinking about diversifying my portfolio into other sectors because valuations are too high and the market might explode if AI doesn’t deliver incredibly-high expectations. Which defensive stocks do you own and why do you own them? I was thinking about buying Coke. Thank you for your input.

We are witnessing the one moment in history where the entire corporate world pulls the ladder up behind itself to slowly become hyper-efficient money making machines without the need for employees or paying wages. The only way to become part of the action is to buy part of the company

But it wont burst as such. People will lose their jobs and their ability to invest. Eventually people start selling out of desperation because they have no means of making money.

Eventually it will stabilise at a point where corps only leak money through taxation (probably to pay for UBI) and dividends as a sort of Hawking radiation

I've seen a lot of people talk about Ai being a bubble lately, warning that the hype is outpacing the real value. But here's the thing: we all know investors usually make decisions based on solid research, and they're in it for the big returns. So, if AI is really just a bubble, why are so many of them still dumping billions into it ?
If these investors truly believed AI was overhyped and destined to fail, wouldn't they have backed off by now ?
Instead, we keep seeing massive,continuous investments. Doesn't that signal that they see something we don't....like a huge future payoff ?

So, what's really happening here ? Is the constant flow of capital a sign that AI has serious long term potential that the critics are missing ? Or are investors just so caught up in the FOMO and chasing the next big thing that they're ignoring the risks ?

I'm still in the process of learning about all these different scenarios, and i don't claim to have a wide knowledge on the subject. But i wanted to hear what people in this sub especially those more experienced in investing and the market think about AI. Do you see it as something groundbreaking, or more of a high risk bet ?

I'd love to get some insights from those with more experience in this area. Also if anyone has any book recommendations,resources or other knowledge sources that could help me broaden my understanding of these topics, I'd really appreciate !

(Note the flair: Humour on the weekend. Please don’t read, if you are easily triggered. too late!

Sam Altman says he’s ‘0%’ excited to be CEO of a public company as OpenAI drops hints about an IPO: ‘In some ways I think it’d be really annoying’

December 19, 2025, 12:38 PM ET

OpenAI may be building up to one of the largest initial public offerings ever, but CEO Sam Altman says he is not necessarily looking forward to helming a public company.

“Am I excited to be a public company CEO? 0%,” Altman said in an episode of the “Big Technology Podcast” published on Thursday. “Am I excited for OpenAI to be a public company? In some ways, I am, and in some ways I think it’d be really annoying.”

OpenAI is laying the groundwork for an IPO, with a Thursday report from The Wall Street Journal putting early talks of a valuation at $830 billion. In a more lofty estimate, the company could be valued at up to $1 trillion, Reuters reported in October, citing three sources. According to the Reuters report, chief financial officer Sarah Friar is eyeing a 2027 listing, with a potential IPO filing in late 2026.

Altman told “Big Technology” he didn’t know if his AI company would go public next year and was mum on details about fundraising, or the company’s valuation. OpenAI did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment.

Despite his hesitance to lead a public company—which are often under more scrutiny, greater regulatory oversight, and are associated with less influence from founders—OpenAI’s IPO wouldn’t be all bad, Altman noted.

“I do think it’s cool that public markets get to participate in value creation,” he said. “And in some sense, we will be very late to go public if you look at any previous company. It’s wonderful to be a private company. We need lots of capital. We’re going to cross all of the shareholder limits and stuff at some point.”

An IPO would pave the way for OpenAI to raise the billions of dollars needed to compete in the AI race. Founded as a nonprofit in 2015, OpenAI just completed a complex restructuring in October that converted it into a more traditional for-profit company, giving the nonprofit controlling the company a $130 billion stake in it. The restructuring also gave Microsoft a reduced 27% stake in the company, as well as increased research access, while simultaneously freeing up OpenAI to make deals with other cloud-computing partners.

More ‘code reds’ to come

OpenAI’s urgency to compete with rivals was apparent earlier this month when Altman declared a “code red” in an internal memo, following the surge of interest after Google rolled out its new Gemini 3 model in just one day, which the company said was the fastest deployment of a model into Google Search. Altman’s “code red” was an eight-week mandate to redouble OpenAI’s own efforts while temporarily postponing other initiatives, such as advertising and expanding e-commerce offerings.

The blitz appears to be paying off: Last week, OpenAI launched its new GPT-5.2 model, and earlier this week, it released a new image-generation model to compete with Google’s Nano Banana. Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s CEO of applications, said the update wasn’t in response to Google’s Gemini 3, but that the extra resources from the code red did help expedite its debut.

As OpenAI tries to address slowing user growth and retain and grow market share from its competitors, Altman conceded a code red will not be a one-off phenomenon. The all-out effort is a model that’s been employed by Google, and also Meta through Facebook’s more extreme “lockdown” periods. He downplayed the stakes of a code red, matching what sources told Fortune equated to a focused, but not panicked, office environment.

“I think that it’s good to be paranoid and act quickly when a potential competitive threat emerges,” Altman said. “This happened to us in the past. That happened earlier this year with DeepSeek. And there was a code red back then, too.”

Altman likened the urgency of a code red to the beginning of a pandemic, where action taken at the beginning, more so than actions taken later, have an outsized impact on an outcome. He expected code reds will be a norm as the company hopes to gain distance from the likes of Google and DeepSeek.

“My guess is we’ll be doing these once, maybe twice a year, for a long time, and that’s part of really just making sure that we win in our space,” Altman said. “A lot of other companies will do great too, and I’m happy for them.”

https://fortune.com/2025/12/19/sam-altman-0-percent-excited-ceo-of-public-company-openai-ipo/

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Planning ahead if AI bubble bursts. Got cash on sidelines. Planning to stock pick when stocks crash. Currently 50% in Stock 50% in cash.

Trying to be greedy when others are fearful.

Chime in your picks. Some of the tickers below does not look wright to me. ChatGPT probably throwed them up based on past interactions. ur thoughts plz.

Ticker Name

ADBE Adobe Inc

AMT American Tower Corp

CCI Crown Castle Inc

EQIX Equinix Inc

CRM Salesforce Inc

NOW ServiceNow Inc

MSFT Microsoft Corp

AMZN Amazon.com Inc

ASML ASML Holding NV ADR

AMAT Applied Materials Inc

LRCX Lam Research Corp

GOOGL Alphabet Inc Class A

TSM Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd ADR

MU Micron Technology Inc

AVGO Broadcom Inc

Today's US stock market performance wasn't what the bulls wanted. On what appeared to be a high-volume day, many stocks left an ugly candlestick on the charts. I've been arguing all week about a bubble in Nvidia, and the performance of Google's Gemini 3 further reinforces that argument. Google proved it can build incredibly large language models (LLMs) without Nvidia chips, meaning other companies can too, which will reduce Nvidia's (NVDA.O) profits. The problem is that Nvidia itself accounts for 8% of the S&P 500, so halving the stock's value would directly cut 4 percentage points. Add to that all the other bubbles in the AI ​​sector, and there's a possibility of a shakeout. Another change in the past few weeks has been the Federal Reserve. Powell opposed a December rate cut, and the market has now priced it in from near certainty to just 36%. A less dovish Fed is never good for the market; it's a drag. In short, I'm not too worried about the Fed, but for AI, the situation is always "a hair's breadth away."

People’s fear of tech ETFs today feels overblown. Many avoid them because of talk about an “AI bubble” or because tech makes up a big part of the S&P 500. They often compare it to the dot-com crash, but that’s not the same in my opinion and there is why:

Back then, companies were small, investors had little information, and rules were weak. Today, tech giants are global, highly regulated, and have multiple revenue streams. Microsoft earns from Azure and Windows, Amazon from cloud and logistics and these are not U.S-only businesses, they operate worldwide.

So why the fear? These companies are transparent and strong. If something big happens, tariffs or pandemics, it affects all sectors, not just tech. And now, every business uses technology. Microsoft today is nothing like Pets.com in 2000.

So why all of this fear on Tech ETFs? What else can be the leading theme next decades if every invention requires tech? War needs tech, Health needs tech.

From what I've seen it seems inevitable that the AI bubble will burst. I'd like to find and short the stocks/companies or ETFs that seem least likely to consolidate and ride out that dip. Can you recommend any companies that are new, gimmicky, especially overvalued, or ETFs mostly composed of those companies?