Chamath: “I got it totally wrong. This election was a complete and total repudiation about the state of the economy. The economy is broken.”
“What I don't think I understood clearly enough, and I think that this election has made it extremely clear, is that since COVID, we have moved past political ideology.
And I want to say this again, I do not think Democrats or Republicans matter. That is my real takeaway after this election.
There is a central bloc of people that vote on the prescient issues of our time. What are these people voting for? I think what they are shouting now, they were trying to signal, and now they are shouting, is a broad-based belief that the economy has completely decoupled from reality and is broken.
The economic reality in America is broken.
There is a small percentage of people, the four of us on this pod and all of our friends, who are the asset owners of America, and we have benefited in every weather condition.
When rates were zero, we benefited because we were able to build our businesses with very cheap capital. When rates were high, we benefited because we had pricing power. And in every condition in between, we've all managed to continue to accumulate and grow assets, but we are few and far between.
And then there's everybody else who are wage earners, and the structural capacity of the American economy to support and grow wage earners is broken.
I don't think this has anything to do with socialism. I don't think the far left won particularly more than they were expected to. I don't think the far right won particularly more than was expected.
This was a complete and total repudiation about the state of the economy. The economy is broken.”
Chamath explains how a data center slowdown turns the hyperscalers into kingmakers and squeezes the neoclouds and foundation models:
“Now, they’re doing smart deals because that’s what made sense. But I think what the incoming governors are going to say is these things are off the table. And instead, we want to have directly measurable economic impacts before we even entertain this.”
“I think what it means is we’re going to see a slowdown. And I think what that does is it benefits the hyperscalers because they have existing capacity. I think it’s very bad for the neoclouds because they’re renters. And it’s pretty bad for the foundational models because they are so short this capacity and they need it to grow. So to the extent that these frontier models are so much better than everybody else’s product, they are the ones that need this capacity. It sets the hyperscalers to be a kingmaker, and they have this interesting game theory now.”
[Jason: “Can you just say who the hyperscalers are, just so people understand the difference between them?”]
“Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Google, SpaceX. And what they’ll be able to do is make a decision. Path number one is continue to rent in the way that you’re doing it today. So the status quo, rent to some customers, large corporates, right? Rent to the neoclouds, rent to the foundational models. That’s what they’re doing today. Everybody does that.”
“But then there’s the path less traveled, which all of a sudden becomes really interesting. You could decide to take all of the incremental compute and advantage your own products. So Google has a ton of capacity coming online. They could say, I’m going to give it to Gemini. What does that do? It actually allows Gemini to catch up in quality relative to the foundational models.”
“Why? Because if you constrain the amount of assets that can actually generate compute, and a smaller surface area of it is available to the leading companies, those leading companies will have to pay more, the user experience will decay, and then other products can have time to catch up.”
“And now that is important, because Anthropic and OpenAI are in a very fast recursive loop. They’re on a 60 to 90 day loop in improving their models. So now all of a sudden, without an infinite amount of supply coming online, you can slow these folks down.”
Labor markets continue to see gains, but is this yesterday’s news?
Today's nonfarm payroll figure came in stronger than expected at 165,000 jobs gained in October, with upward revisions of 84,000 for the prior two months. The unemployment rate remained fairly steady at 4.1%.
For some time, we've characterized the labor market as a period of "low hire/low fire" jobs growth, whereby firms are neither hiring many new workers nor laying many off. Indeed, average monthly jobs growth over the past 6- and 12-month periods has been 83,000 and 74,000, respectively. Today's stronger numbers are encouraging, but they need to be considered within the context of broader economic growth.
Interestingly, we find ourselves in an environment where economic growth and labor market gains appear to be decoupling in profound ways. Real GDP growth accelerated to 3.4% in the third quarter, yet labor market gains have been more modest over the last several months. An outsized portion of the growth we're witnessing derives from capital expenditure related to the AI infrastructure buildout. Consider that investment in computers and peripheral equipment, representing just 2% of overall GDP, accounted for more than a third of GDP growth over the last 12 months.
From a monetary policy standpoint, as long as we remain in this solid economic environment, with inflation running well above the Fed's 2% target, labor markets are unlikely to be top of mind for policymakers. Meanwhile, the profound AI investment cycle continues to drive broad economic and corporate earnings growth. Yet an increasingly concentrated group of companies is creating and capturing an outsized share of the benefits, leaving the broader equity market highly sensitive to changes in just a handful of names. In recent days, we've begun to see greater equity market volatility amid concerns over potential future regulation.
Today's payroll data was interesting and confirmatory of an economy that has been operating at a breathtakingly strong pace. But it's also a comprehensive read on labor relative to yesterday's economic conditions. Markets today are much more focused on the future of AI spending, capital allocation and rebalancing activity, as well as how a new political framework will influence growth, fiscal conditions and the operating environment for different industries.
How, then, should one position fixed income portfolios? In our view, the regime has shifted and fixed income yields reside at historically attractive levels. Real rates are positive across the globe, while the equity risk premium remains paper-thin and equity market concentration creates fragility and volatility that investors don't need to accept. We think a diversified, income-oriented portfolio can deliver equity-like returns today with dramatically less volatility, drawdown and concentration risk. Recent market activity seems to reinforce that view and we think that should continue well into 2027.
If I followed my emotions, I probably would have covered my shorts yesterday. But thankfully I have enough experience to know that my stops are better than my feelings. For that reason, I am still short $SPY and $DIA against a few longs, including $TEVA and $IBB, which are both profitable.
I will post when I cover my shorts... profit or loss.
FEDWATCH:
“.. Data center and defense spending increasingly compete for the same chips, power, and industrial capacity. .. So the real slowdown could be a double whammy: defense spending and data centers.”
@Marcomadness2