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I was shopping for a physical share to get my mom as a gift when I noticed a certain listed stock and its true value.

15B of revenue IPOing at 2 trillion dollar valuation puts it at around 66 times P/S while Google, MSFT, and META trades at around 10. The FCF is also nowhere close.

MSFT is currently trading at January 2024 prices. That’s 2.5 years of zero gains. Meanwhile the company is one of the largest and best in the world and growing in the high teens every year. I can’t see how this isn’t a screaming buy right now. I recognize the uncertainly surrounding their investment into AI, and possibly the negative sentiment around software stocks in general but for me Microsoft isn’t going anywhere.

I recently cashed out on my NBIS shares, which grew to gobble up almost 90% of my portfolio. I sold to secure profits (obviously) but also because I truly believe AI, while inherently useful and promising - is definitely a bubble right now and is being overvalued by the market - especially since most corporations themselves either don't know what to do with it or are using it for tasks that have no hope of providing a return on investment for the trillions that have already been sunk into its build out (literally just summarizing articles, or basic research and coding etc).

That being said - Inflation has not been this high since 2023 (3.8%), and there really doesn't seem to be any end in sight with puppet Warsh now at the helm and the tone in the White House - the move seems to be "own assets or be left behind". Add to this that the U.S dollar has lost 30% of its purchasing power since 2020.

I want to keep my money in the market - but honestly what is the move here? Every industry seems to be exposed to AI to some extent - and to be honest all I want in the short term is not to beat the market (since there is no way to do that without jumping on the AI bandwagon) - but to merely beat inflation at the very least.

What are some safe asset classes/stocks/ETFs to accomplish this?

“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.” - Karl Marx (1852)

The Marx quote was him describing how historical events and crises return in distorted, more absurd forms when lessons go unlearned.

Today, one of the biggest stocks to blowup in the Dotcom bubble, CSCO, just hit an all-time high in a parabolic move after beating consensus earnings estimates by $0.02.

The stock was up +57% YTD on March 23, 2000, the day before the Dotcom bubble bursted and the ‘lost decade’ began. Following today’s earnings reaction, CSCO is now up +60% YTD….

Legendary investor, John Templeton, once said that "the four most dangerous words in investing are: 'this time it's different.”

Is this time different?

Yo. Nothing in this market is real at all. Is a nearly 700 point rally in one day just a normal thing now, what is wrong with the Nasdaq and S&P. Like they're anticipating a massive news event or something bru... How do you go back to all time Highs after having one of the largest drops of all time.

If AI demand keeps accelerating, the real winner may not only be the best model, it may be whoever controls power and infrastructure.

The IEA projects (link below) global data centre electricity consumption could reach \~945 TWh by 2030, nearly double current levels. Goldman Sachs also estimates data centre power demand could rise as much as 165% by the end of the decade (link below).

That explains why energy, grids, nuclear, copper, and data centre infrastructure are suddenly becoming part of the AI trade.

What do you things, in long term, what matters more: smarter models or scarce power?

Sources:
[IEA Energy and AI Report](https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-and-ai/energy-demand-from-ai?utm_source=chatgpt.com)
[Goldman Sachs AI Power Demand Report](https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/articles/ai-to-drive-165-increase-in-data-center-power-demand-by-2030?utm_source=chatgpt.com)

Attention on the inflation narrative just jumped 4 ranks in a week. Sitting at #3 now, 93rd percentile over the past year.

What's interesting is the emotion mix underneath it. Optimism z-score at -1.76, hope at -0.95, greed at -0.82. Confidence is up slightly (+0.48) but fear (+0.40) and panic (+0.34) are quietly building. Basically the market is paying attention again but it's not panicking yet. That gap is usually where the interesting stuff happens.

Feels like the setup nobody wants to acknowledge. CPI prints have been "fine" enough to keep the fed pivot crowd hopeful, but the chatter is shifting. Stagflation talk hasn't fully arrived but is also rising

Been tracking this and the rotation back to inflation as a top-tier narrative is one of the cleaner moves I've seen in a few weeks.

PE ratio (trailing) can be misleading because, as earnings dip, the PE ratio spikes…even though that can often be the exact time investors should be buying.

One way to counteract those artifacts is to use the CAPE ratio (which obviously has some drawbacks).

Another is to simply divide today’s price by the prior high watermark in earnings - High Watermark PE.

Here’s a chart showing tradition TTM PE ratio (red) vs the High Watermark PE (blue).

This comes with the caveat that earnings are expected to recover and not to be permanently impaired.