Chief Analyst at TradingKey;
14 yrs as analyst in funds and investment banks;
Covering AI/Tech/Consumer/Internet;
Daily insights, hot takes are my own.
I've been an investment banking analyst for over a decade. I used to cover the internet sector, and recently I've learned a lot about AI from you. But I'm a bit puzzled: when you analyze the AI industry, you proactively break down forward-looking issues like supply chain chokepoints and competitive dynamics. However, when analyzing internet companies like Reddit, why do you focus mainly on financial report data instead of examining forward-looking factors such as platform competition, creator ecosystems, and so on
As an investment banking analyst with over ten years of experience, I hold a different view.
Looking back at the dot-com bubble from over 20 years ago, I find that there are still many differences.
For example, regarding the investment in fiber optics back then, the vacancy rate was still close to 90% three years after the bubble burst.
This route of "infrastructure first, applications later" is used by many to argue for today's "AI bubble".
But it is completely different.
There are two important reasons for the overinvestment in fiber optics: 1. Digging roads is very expensive, while laying fiber optics is very cheap, so companies that dug roads would always put extra in, regardless of whether it's needed right now; 2. Fiber optics in the backbone network have economies of scale, but the last mile does not. However, if the last mile is not well-laid with fiber optics, the speed of the backbone network will hit a bottleneck.
Under these two effects, a massive surplus appeared in the backbone network's fiber optics.
Today, AI is still outputting strong capacity and solving bottlenecks and chokepoints. This has barely started.
After this Meta incident came out, the drop is definitely not over yet. If you are doing short-term trading, just run and buy back later; if you are long-term, just keep holding.
Stock markets within the Confucian cultural sphere generally have higher volatility, which is determined by the underlying culture. Having worked as an analyst at several investment banks for over ten years, I can clearly feel that fund managers from different countries ask very different questions