The episode explores key trends in finance, technology, and global economics. It highlights the growing gap between private tech innovation and public investment, introducing VCX as a solution to allow broader access to private tech companies. A central concern is the AI chip supply crisis: reports show massive oversupply of GPUs in warehouses due to overordering by hyperscalers like Amazon and Google, driven by programs like early rack receipt. This creates artificial scarcity, inflating prices for memory and consumer electronics. Experts warn of a looming market correction, citing stagnant data center construction, flat token spending, and rising credit spreads. Meanwhile, Anthropic’s financials—including a $81 billion net loss in H1 2026—raise serious doubts about the sustainability of current AI spending. On the macroeconomic front, France is spiraling into a fiscal crisis with bond yields above 4.9%, political unrest, and a debt-to-GDP ratio nearing 122%, while the U.S. faces higher debt costs but stronger growth and monetary flexibility. Despite these risks, the U.S. remains more resilient due to economic expansion and central bank control. The episode concludes with recognition of Profit G Markets’ award wins, underscoring its mission to provide nuanced, human-centered financial insights beyond traditional market coverage.
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Welcome to Profit G Markets.
I'm Ed Elson.
It is October 21st.
Let's check in on yesterday's market vitals.
The S&P 500 and the Dow climbed.
The Nasdaq was flat as chip makers fell again.
Brent crude dipped just below $109 per barrel.
The yield on 10-year treasuries decreased.
And Netflix shares fell in after-hours trading following earnings
that showed the slowest revenue growth in three years.
Okay, what else is happening?
Amazon is spending $220 billion this year to build AI.
However, some of what it bought may be sitting unused.
According to new reporting from Business Insider,
despite the fact that Amazon is spending billions of dollars a month
on NVIDIA server racks and GPUs,
it can't actually immediately install them in their data centers.
Because these chips are so scarce,
Amazon and other companies are forced to buy more
than they currently have the capacity to use.
Meaning,
that some of these racks are currently sitting inside of a warehouse.
An Amazon spokesperson said that this is routine and, quote,
best business practice.
But others fear that this is proof
that the hyperscalers have overestimated AI demand.
Our next guest is one of those people.
Last month, he wrote an investigative piece
estimating that roughly half of AI chips in America
are, quote, sitting in warehouses.
He believes that hyperscalers significantly overbought GPUs
relative to data.
And he's also a senior analyst at the Microsoft Institute of Technology.
He's also a senior analyst at the Microsoft Institute of Technology.
was nvidia didn't they used to have to not pay for the racks until they put them in the data center
now early rack receipt we've got to do it i think nvidia is channel stuffing to pump its earnings
that's a bad sign for nvidia but also has created material harm throughout the world has made the
price of and people say oh you don't need consumer electronics yeah as long as you don't want to live
in society you want to buy a phone you want to buy a laptop even the cheap ones they're more
expensive now every single one even the cheapest apple macbook neo is more expensive as a result of
this and it's all because jensen huang is greedy and his hyperscale pay pigs will do whatever they
can to make sure that they can keep this up because if they stop buying gpus the markets
will immediately reward them and then they'll say why'd you do that as long as they keep buying them
they can keep kicking the can and they can keep saying oh ai will pay off in the future will pay
off at some point in the future
i am 100% agreement with you that there is a pricing there are a a production mismatch there
is something there is some uh misalignment in the market here which is clearly causing uh memory
prices to soar and it is why iphones and consumer electronics are soaring a hundred percent i'm not
sure i agree with you on on on what exactly is causing it because in my view i mean on the one
hand there's this idea that maybe nvidia and jensen huang are going to be the ones that are
trying to force uh the hyperscalers hand and say okay you need to buy our chips early and you
basically need to over order um you know ahead of schedule but at the same time i'm looking at this
other thing which is that it does appear that data center construction is being massively delayed
it does appear that that investors and the builders of these data center companies just didn't really
know how difficult and expensive it would be to build possibly because a lot of we're seeing a
backlash which might be a real problem in terms of the ai build out and to me that that is a a
plausible explanation as to why there is a mismatch right now maybe amazon goes and they buy the chips
they think that the data centers are going to come online within the next few months or so
and then they learn actually no because the local community said we don't want you to do this or for
whatever reason to be clear i'm not actually sure what the reasons are but it seems to me more like
a supply problem of the data centers that to me seems more plausible
than than an artificially uh intentional decision by jensen huang what would you say to that i would
agree with you if it wasn't for the explicit use of a term of early rack receipt program
if it wasn't for the fact that within that story they say they are taking three billion dollars
worth of deliveries every single month for the foreseeable future if they know that there's tons
of delays and they've known a while the delays have been obvious for six to twelve months
then they could say hey nvidia we won't need these until here could it not be that they thought that
there was going to be huge demand and they and amazon decided themselves we want to try to get
ahead of ahead of the curve here we're going to sign up for some program where we get early chips
and now they learn that was a stupid idea because we have all of these chips in a warehouse
i think early rack receipt is an amazon program versus an nvidia one and again it's
i would agree if it wasn't for the fact that the story also said that they previously did not
have to pay for racks until they went in that's where the disconnect is if it was because if it
was consistently the jensen one was saying you pay for these things you take them when they're ready
that would be it would be bad it would suck but it would make it would fit in it would be a standard
business thing however it's obvious that something has changed it's in the story and remember nvidia
has ballooning accounts receivable as well so who knows what is going on there their accounts
the first half of the year was five companies with 70 percent of it how much of that is amazon
we don't know and i agree there are absolutely delays but the artificial increase in the cost
of ram is directly a result of nvidia taking up so much of the fabs it's a direct result of the
high bandwidth memory going into nvidia gpus that are sitting in warehouses i think hundreds of
million at least 200 billion dollars worth of them are sitting in warehouses and here's the thing i
again i would agree with you if it wasn't for the fact that so much
if it wasn't for the fact that so much if it wasn't for the fact that so much if it wasn't for the
if it was okay we've hit a wall and nvidia goes all right yeah you don't like we'll stop shipping
them to you no i think jensen has these morons over a barrel because outside of anthropic and
open ai there's really no large customers of ai compute you can listen to whatever insane guy on
twitter you all you want but the analysts across the financial markets all are in agreement that
it's 70 plus it's anthropic and open ai so it's not like they have
so it's not like they have
insane demand outside of that they need to capture i think that they are just kind of just doing what
they can to keep up i think that they're doing this so that they can make sure they don't piss
off jensen there was a story in the wall street journal a few months ago saying that if you as a
neocloud were to buy amd gpus that you would get put in something called jensen jail which is when
jensen huang will no longer sell to you it's a general story i think it's robbie wheeland uh
katherine blunt i believe who wrote it is about google's tpu
so jensen huang is very he's he's done this before he's done it i think that this is a case where he
is channel stuffing where he's saying to his partners no you will take delivery or you won't
get vera rubin and i know for a fact i have a source who told me that there are vera rubins
making their way to amazon so it's obvious that they're buying so many things they have blackwells
that they haven't installed but they're buying and taking receipt of vera rubins this is very strange
and it strikes me that they're buying and taking receipt of vera rubins and they're buying and taking
receipt of vera rubins and they're buying and taking receipt of vera rubins is that nvidia is just
channel i i can see no other way and people really want i'm not saying you here but people
really want to take a charitable view of jensen goddamn huang who misstated that gaming revenue
was growing about a decade ago when it was actually crypto sales i want to know what the
real truth is and i i mean i i i think that i i can see a world in which there was a gold rush i
mean this story to me is quite indicative of what we saw with like the railroads as an example
and we just had liaket ahmed on to explain the similarities where to me i'm i'm i'm less jumping to
jensen manufactured this but we know he had a lot of power there was a there was a there was a chip
rush that was akin to a gold rush everyone wanted to buy chips suddenly everyone's trying to buy
them and to me this is an example of oh yeah we overspent this is sort of the the the physical
example of we put too many railroad tracks on the ground and now we're not using them now they're
sitting in a
warehouse because we didn't fully figure out uh how to match our timelines and let me just be
explicit about what i'm saying i think you were right for the most part i think yeah he got a ton
of orders that backed up like that's one like there was a gold rush it happened i now think
with this early rack receipt program he's taking advantage of that because this whole thing about
scarcity just does not make sense to me what's scarcity when you've got microsoft google amazon
meta all of these companies with hundreds of billions of dollars of gpus
they can't install how is there scarcity scarcity like there's clearly enough of them there's clearly
so many of them you can't install them what's making the scarcity happen or indeed maybe the
question is what would make these scarce and it seems what would make them scarce was not taking
delivery we may never know unless someone gets actual reporting around that and eugene kim did a
magnificent job with this eugene has been around forever he should get his rose over this one he
should get his rose over this one i think even if you don't agree with me on the channel stuffing
this is a sign that hyperscalers are overburdened with these assets and we are so close to this
thing bursting and at some point investors are going to turn on them and start demanding they
pull back on capex i mean justifiably because if you're an investor in a hyperscaler right now
and you're saying okay i invest and i want the value of my equity to go up because you're buying
these gpus and you hear these things aren't even being installed the natural question is
why are you still doing this oh you claim there's demand why don't stop buying them until there's
you've you've taken your fill is there a reason you can't well at least until the data centers
are able to be operational exactly well not to me is a it's it's less of a they pulled a fast one
and more of a they just haven't figured this problem out and so i mean as we start to wrap up
here thinking about the next chapter in this story i mean it seems to me that if we have physical
retailers over buying chips the next chapter in the story is they're going to buy fewer chips
because for whatever reason it is whether it's because of channel stuffing i'm not sure about it
but i mean what is certainly clear is the data centers aren't coming online as quickly as they
had hoped that is a good enough reason i think to say okay let's reduce our order next month let's
buy fewer chips than we did last month and we're starting to see some signs some bad signs in the
story we've seen cds spreads on some of the big data center names and widening oracle's five-year
credit false swaps hit a record high last week we have ramp data showing that token spending is not
growing in fact it's been flat for two straight months one of these ai data center companies just
went public at least fell more than 30 there are bad signs brewing i guess as we start to wrap here
what are you focused on uh what data or what signs do you think are most
important in terms of understanding what's next in this story i think capex
I think what they do with CapEx, if CapEx is flat,
that's a problem. If CapEx is higher, that's a bigger problem because the question is why?
But I think it ultimately comes down to, does Anthropic go public? Does Anthropic go public
at 1.5? Does it go public at 2? Because if it goes public at 1.5, that screws OpenAI's 1.4
trillion private round. And also, Anthropic's numbers came out just before we went through it.
These companies are clearly not economically viable unless you really squint. And so I think
it's going to come down to, is the CapEx going to keep up? Because you can remove Anthropic and
OpenAI fully from the picture. Hyperscalers don't disclose their AI revenues. So it really comes
down to, will hyperscalers keep spending? Because if they stop, I don't think that there are any
parties big enough to fill the gap with NVIDIA other than SpaceX and Oracle. And we're at a
point when even still, the 10-year treasuries are 5.1 still. So I mean, things are so expensive,
and they're only seeming to get more expensive. And the more of the. they buy, and these chips that are waiting in warehouses, the more expensive the RAM gets,
the more expensive the servers get. At some point, something has to break. So I'm looking at the
numbers that are kind of the enumeration of spend on tokens, token spend as you brought up,
but also on CapEx. And if anyone pulls CapEx, that's a bad scene for everyone.
So on that note, the Wall Street Journal just reported more details from Anthropic's S1. This
happened just before we started recording. And I want to get your. your reaction to some of these numbers that we learned. So H1 2026, net loss of $81 billion.
That's crazy. $72 billion of it from fair value accounting charges on convertible notes.
So we'll give him a big asterisk there. Compute spend of $9 billion in the first half,
and two customers account for about one-fifth of H1 revenue. Okay, so we have some more
color on Anthropic's financials.
Your initial reactions, Ed?
Well, so that's an $8 billion net loss-ish. Journal, I love them to death. Love Anissa over
there. The numbers in that piece are put in the world's worst chart. It's malpractice. I don't
know why you'd do that. $8 billion net loss. Also within the second quarter, Elon Musk was
discounting SpaceX's compute. But nevertheless, this company lost $8 billion in the first half
of the year. This company had a net loss of $80 billion, but the cash loss is about $8 billion.
This is not a company that's improving its economy.
It's got about $413 billion of non-cancellable commitments. I'm going to be honest. I don't
think any amount of growth can make up for the fact that Anthropic's business just isn't
particularly good. And also, we have now, despite this, this is about the first half of the year,
we now have tangible proof. Revenue growth's slowing. The run rate, as bollocks as that
number is, is plateauing. And the reason that they are pushing, Anthropic is pushing so hard
this drug discovery stuff.
They know that they are running out of coding revenue. There's only so far they can go on it.
And also, Ramp has data that says 80% of their revenue comes from the 1% of their customers,
most of which are unprofitable, unsustainable AI startups funded by venture capital.
And this company, as big as their revenues may be, and they are big because everyone's focused
on them, everyone's sending them money, this company is a load-bearing part of the AI trade
and also of the AI economy, 70% of computers.
I don't know what this company's going to do. I think that they should get rated CCC by Moody's
and S&P. They are junk, junk, junk. And this is a test of financial regulators. And also,
honestly, the market's overall intelligence. It's a dog of a company.
Predictions for when it goes public. Do you think it goes out at $2 trillion?
I think $1.5. I think I just, I get the sense $1.5. No,
everyone I've talked to in finance is just like, $2 trillion? No, thank you. The nerves are bad
right now. The vibes are bad. I think it's going to go out at $2 trillion. Bad vibes in AI. That's the headline. Ed Zittrain is host of the Better
Offline podcast and author of the Where's Your Ed At newsletter. Ed, appreciate your time. Thank
you. Thanks for having me. After the break, SpaceX earnings. And for even more markets
insights, you can subscribe to my weekly newsletter, simply put, at edwardelson.substack.com.
I'll see you next time.
I assume this is just that Anthropics paying
a lot of money, and Google's paying a lot of money. And there is a question, an open question,
as to how long is this compute boom going to actually last? Is Anthropic going to continue
to pay billions of dollars for this compute when, I mean, from a business perspective,
they're actually not profitable, and they're basically taking venture capital dollars
to fund this thing. So I guess when you look at that, just from an underlying fundamental
perspective, what is the trajectory of SpaceX? And is that kind of revenue and that kind of
trajectory, is it sustainable? Great question. And I think there's three points I'd want to
make there. The first, it's a perfect illustration of what I was talking about with lumpiness. So
800% year-on-year growth is almost an arbitrary phenomenon, because this business didn't,
this renting out servers didn't.
happen a year ago, right? So there you have it. But I think you've asked the nub of the question,
which is, let's say, beyond a quarterly type time horizon, you know, 2027, 2030, how, you know,
these deals, I think, are dated for three-ish years, cancelable, etc. Sure, they're going to
make a chunk of money renting out servers. You know, just a few minutes ago on the call,
the comment was, well,
we probably will use most of our capacity for Grok, because Grok is going to be great.
So, and in a way, you can't have both in terms of the, you know, who's using all this capacity.
In the short term, or call it even three to five years, their best play right now is to rent out
the capacity that they've built. They've done an amazing job, let's say, quickly scaling out the
data centers that they have, and I think they're going to do more. And these other operators,
Anthropic and SpaceX, they're going to do more. And I think they're going to do more. And I think
have the money and are willing to pay the money to rent out this capacity as they grow their user
base. They're trying to do a operating leverage type scale where the incremental users using
their already trained bots add a lot of, you know, incremental profit eventually as they amortize,
let's say, the training costs. SpaceX is really still in that middle layer of the infrastructure
play.
And, you know, I would say, ironically, I can get to $144 fair value if all they do is rent out
Colossus for the next five years and never launch another satellite. I don't think they're going to
do that. But, you know, it's a good business for them. It's great. It's just that at the end of the
day, what's the run rate and the profitability of sort of what rental you can get for the capacity
over the longer term? Sure, it's undervalued. It's undervalued. It's undervalued. It's undervalued.
capacity now or, you know, demand outstrips supply. And what we see is a bunch of picks and
shovels going out and building more supply. The sort of normal laws of the market would say that
eventually, and economics would drive supply catching up. And so then these billions of
dollars of rental agreements, does that flatten out? You know, that's the question I have. And
I think you have to get it just right, let's say. I mean, I'm just looking at the CapEx,
$20 billion in the quarter.
Nearly $50 billion year to date. And mind you, they're also going out and raising
tens of billions of dollars of debt. I mean, that was just a couple of weeks ago when they
announced their $40 billion debt raise. They're spending enormous amounts of money. And on an
operating basis, the company looks like it's pretty good because it's achieving operating
profitability. But those numbers are enormous. And it doesn't seem like it's going to be
I mean, it's not clear to me that those numbers are going to come down anytime soon. So I guess
what do you make of those numbers? How important are they relative to, say, the fact that revenues
are increasing at a very high clip? Sort of simplifying the picture,
you know, I'm trying to run this 20-year forecast model. And so, you know, $50 billion is nothing.
There's hundreds and hundreds of billions, if not trillions of spending in the cards,
if you believe me. And so, you know, there's a lot of money in there. And so, you know,
I don't believe they're going to put a million satellites in orbit, et cetera, et cetera, et
cetera. The thing to watch is if we spent $50 billion in CapEx this year, that's not hitting
our income statement. But it will as we start depreciating those things that we bought. To the
extent that their GPUs, those last, call it, five years, that's actually a pretty steep
depreciation cliff. So your operating expenses pile up, let's say, cumulatively as you run through
this CapEx. SpaceX also, I think, has a penchant here for renting GPUs as a way of
maybe mitigating some of that. And I think that was part of the debt raise or a previous deal
where they have a third party buy the GPUs and then SpaceX rents them. So it's just another way
to move fast. The stock was actually down from its IPO price before the earnings. It's risen an
after hours trading. So we'll see what happens over the course of the day. But, you know, the
stock has had a comeback from, I mean, we talked before when it had gotten cut in half and it has
certainly come back in kind of a big way. Do you have any predictions or thoughts on how this stock
might fare over the next several months? What do you think is going to happen here? My general
prediction would be it's more of an observation and sharing notes with my colleague, Seth, who
has a very loyal, installed base, if you will, of share owners, which I would argue lowers the
liquidity even more than than otherwise in a thinly floated stock. You know, folks who are
who are who are going to hodl forever. And then he's going to give it to them for free. He's going
to put them in their in their accounts as well. I mean, that to me seems like more even going a
step further, right? A share certificate in every pot, right? Yeah. Putting that aside,
so there's I would say sort of some structural demand for the shares. There's and so it's still
relatively thinly floated. And you're you're talking about a an exciting, you know, list of
scientific projects and a team that arguably is the best equipped to go after some of these things,
you know, in terms of reusable rockets and cheap satellite Internet. They're the best show in town.
So there's some legitimate reasons to be excited about the stock.
My job is to try to put a reasonable valuation on it using, you know, let's say, defensible
economic assumptions. And that's where we keep coming back to these
numbers that are half what the market price is. All right. Nicholas Owens is equity analyst at
Morningstar. Nicholas, always appreciate your time. My pleasure.
France is on the brink of a fiscal crisis as investors weigh the possibility that the EU's
default a bond market sell off in recent weeks has sent borrowing costs skyrocketing. France's
10 year yield soared to four point nine three percent on Monday, one of the market's worst
days this year. The gap between French and German borrowing costs is now the widest it's been
since the eurozone debt crisis of 2012. And the country's debt pile is growing. France's debt to
GDP ratio is expected to climb to one hundred and twenty two percent next year. Meanwhile,
political pressures are mounting with nationwide protests escalating over the
weekend. Over two thousand people were arrested as people demonstrated against surging energy and
living costs. And with a presidential election six months away, it's unclear whether lawmakers
will pass the spending cuts the country needs. The crisis is raising a big question. Is France
reaching its borrowing limit? Joining us to discuss this, we're speaking with Terry Wiseman,
global FX and rate strategist at Macquarie Group. Terry, thank you for joining us. I guess we should
start with you. I think we should start with you. I think
,
we should start with you. I think
or is it students joined by the syndicates,
the unions, the teachers' unions,
example, the so-called yellow vest protesters of several years ago. The scope of these protests,
who's involved and who's benefiting from this, and we might be directing them behind the scenes,
I guess, are the essential questions that the French are trying to answer these days.
The fact that it's coming at the same time as this bond market sell-off,
it seems to indicate that something has gone wrong in terms of France's political
governance and its fiscal policy. What are the big red flags for France right now?
Well, one red flag, and I think you just alluded to it, is that there is a potentially a connection
between what is happening in the bond market and what is happening on the streets. And that makes
a modicum of sense. If you think about it, the fact that bond yields have been rising
is an indication that the market is less trustful of France's ability to rein in its deficits.
And, of course, the fact that the bond market is less trustful of France's ability to rein in
its deficits is an indication that the bond market is less trustful of France's ability to rein in
its deficits. And, of course, the fact that the bond market is less trustful of France's ability
and get to a situation where their debt is sustainable. But, of course, when the market
puts these kind of pressures on a country, what the market is effectively saying is they would
like that country to reduce spending or raise taxes, certainly to reduce spending, because
France, in the case of France at least, the amount of spending that comes from the government
relative to GDP is among the highest in the euro zone, certainly in the EU, and within the broader
developed market countries. Now, if that's the case, then I think it's a good idea to
think about that. And that is the pressure that the market is applying to the French state, to the
French government. The people effectively know about this pressure. It may not be because they
watch the market, but they certainly know because politicians have been talking about reducing
spending. And that calls them out into the street. The problem is that when they're called out into
the street, what they're effectively demanding, to some extent, is more spending. And, of course,
when they go out into the streets, it hurts GDP. There are quite a few French businesses that are
in terms of their revenues and their sales because of this. But, of course, when GDP goes down and
suffers, tax revenue comes down as well. So it puts even more pressure on the bond market,
effectively, because it detracts from France's and the French state's ability to honor its debt
obligations. You need growth to be able to pay down your debt. So there's some people have
discussed this in the context of a doom loop, effectively a loop between what the bond market
is doing and what the protesters are doing in the street, and one that could be used to
only be resolved if the state takes a strong position one way or the other, i.e., with respect
to finding its way to austerity or finding its way to some sort of political dissolution of France's
ties to the European Union and the Eurozone. Because, effectively, those are the constraints
that France has right now, the constraints on its spending that are imposed by the rules of the
pact and the Maastricht Treaty and its obligations to the EU.
Just looking at the 10-year yield on French bonds, we're above 4.9%. The U.S. 10-year yield,
the 10-year treasury yield, is above 5%. Does that mean that the U.S. is in worse shape than
France? Why or why not? Not at all. First of all, the French are paying that 4.9% on a much
larger debt load. Their debt-to-GDP ratio is approximately 120%. The U.S.'s is barely above
100%. So the debt load is larger than France. But that's not the most important difference.
The most important difference is that the U.S. is growing more rapidly in nominal terms and in real
terms. The French are not. So from a perspective of what is going to happen in the future,
of course you would like a country's GDP to be growing faster because one way of diminishing
that debt-to-GDP ratio over time is to say that the U.S. Simply have GDP grow faster than the debt, the numerator in that ratio. The U.S. has much faster
growth than France. France has been in a state of low growth for quite a while, at the same time
that it has been running high deficits in excess of 4% for quite a few years. So the U.S. is not
France in that regard. The U.S. still has growth, and that is something that is making the market
actually quite comfortable with U.S. debt right now. I know that yields have been going up in the
last few years, and that's linked to a lack of comfort with the U.S.'s ability to pay its own
debt. If it were that lack of comfort, you'd be seeing spreads on credit default swaps for the
U.S. go up. They have not. Certainly in France, they have gone up quite a bit.
What is your view on what is driving high yields in America right now?
My view on what's driving high yields is that there's a lot of bond issuance.
The government is issuing bonds. Corporations are issuing a lot of bonds because they have
to finance the AI infrastructure build-out. So the result of this is that there are just too
many bonds in the marketplace being issued, especially bonds that the government competes
with. In other words, high-grade, long-term issuers are issuing those bonds. The other
problem is that the savings rate in the U.S. is quite low right now. People are fancying
consumption. They're not fancying saving. So there is effectively a dearth of capital from
within the country to buy those bonds. And as a result, the U.S. has to depend,
as it has for a long time, on savings from abroad to finance the issuance of bonds.
Of these projects, effectively. The deficit being a project, but the build-out of the AI
infrastructure being another project. At the same time, though, we have seen
pretty significant increases in our interest payments as a result of our debt load.
The cost to finance our debt just crossed a trillion dollars this year,
so 14% of the federal budget. One, is that not a problem? Two, is France
sort of a cautionary tale for where the U.S. might be headed if we continue down this path,
where it does seem that debts will continue to rise and also that financing costs will continue
to rise as well? Right. Now, I did not mean to infer that the U.S. does not have a problem. What
I was trying to say is that the market does not see it as a problem yet. Certainly, it could become
a problem because of the debt financing costs that the U.S. is being required to bear in view of its
high debt-to-GDP ratio.
And its ongoing high deficits, which, by the way, the deficit in the U.S., we don't have much
visibility on it coming down. And to the extent we do not, it does look like it's going to continue
to run at about 6% to 6.5% of GDP, which, mind you, is larger than France's. But again, I would
highlight the fact that the U.S. is growing. That's the saving grace. Now, with regard to
whether ultimately this will become a problem for the U.S., yes, it certainly can be. But there's
still another important difference between the U.S. and France in this regard, and that is that the U.S.
issues debt that is denominated in U.S. dollars. And ultimately, effectively, an agency of the
federal government, which is the Federal Reserve, our central bank, has ultimate control over the
supply of dollars. And if need be, it could always step in to help support public finance in the U.S.,
public finance at the federal level. The French don't have that luxury, right? They created a
common currency back in the late 1990s, and they effectively assigned,
control of the supply of that currency to a central bank that's federated. In other words,
that is supposed to look after the well-being of the Eurozone as a whole, and not just France.
Now, this has been a problem since the creation of the ECB, of the central bank in Europe,
because there will always be countries that are weak in Europe and might need lower interest
rates and countries that are strong. It might need higher interest rates. But of course, the
European Union is a one-stop shop. It can only have one interest rate that prevails upon the
whole continent, to the detriment, if it's too high, of countries that are weak. And France,
of course, has been having weak growth for quite a while. So having devolved the powers of monetary
policy to a federated central bank, let's say, is not working in France's interest these days.
Do you see a future where France leaves the EU or where they take some sort of action in order
to have control over their own monetary policy, to have their own central bank issue their own
currency? Is that kind of where they're headed? It's not inconceivable, but there really isn't
a protocol for a country effectively exiting a currency and reverting back to its original
currency called the French franc. It's not as simple as that. It's a lot simpler, actually,
to combine national currencies into one common currency than to go the other way. Having said
that, I do see. I do see referendums potentially coming in France that will point towards, you know, let's call it
a staged disassociation from the strictures of Brussels and the EU. That is possible. Of course,
it's going to be much more likely if the national rally wins the presidency and then wins a
controlling interest within the National Assembly. Okay. Terry Wiseman is Global FX and rate
strategist at Macquarie Group. Terry, we appreciate your time. Thank you, Ed.
The results of the Signal Awards are in, and I am happy to report that we won, not just in one
category, but in three categories. Thanks to your support and your votes, ProfitGMarkets was able to
win Best Daily Podcast and Best Money and Finance Podcast. And my newsletter, simply put, won Best
Newsletter, which is super exciting because I just started writing that thing in January, and I did
not expect that we would be winning an award. So, thank you very much. Thank you.
So I would like to take this moment as we end this episode just
to say thank you. These awards are dumb in a lot of ways, but they're also quite important,
especially for a show like this, where we started out not fully knowing what we were doing or where
we were going with this, but we believed that there was just something missing in traditional
markets coverage. We found that a lot of it was either too apathetic or out of touch,
or on the flip side, that it was too crude or too lacking in nuance. And we wanted to find
some sort of middle ground where you could learn something about the financial markets,
but at the same time, learn about people and the world and the way these things all
interact with each other. Now, we're really proud of where we have gotten, but we really
couldn't have done it without your help, because your comments, your feedback, and your interest
in all of this, that has all shaped the direction of this podcast. And now that you have helped us
to win these awards, it really feels like we have a real show. And I know that might sound
surprising, but that's the way it feels. We are a very small team. We are young. We are very scrappy.
And so to get this kind of recognition, it really does mean a lot to us. So thank you.
To be clear, there are other awards out there that we also want to win.
We can't help ourselves. So please don't be surprised if we ask for your vote again for
something else in the future. But for now, we're going to enjoy this moment. We're very proud.
We're very grateful. And we will take this energy to improve the show and hopefully make your morning
more interesting, more informative, and ultimately more rewarding.
Okay, that's it for today. This episode was produced by Claire Miller and Alison Weiss and
engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our video editor is Brad Williams. Our research team is Dan Chalon,
Kristen O'Donoghue, and Mia Solverio. And our social producer is Jake McPherson.
Thank you for listening to Profity Markets from Profity Media. If you liked what you heard,
give us a follow. I'm Ed Elson. I will see you tomorrow.
you
Podcast Summary
Key Points:
The U.S. stock market has historically driven massive wealth creation, but today’s most innovative tech companies remain private, limiting public access to growth.
VCX introduces a public ticker for private tech, allowing everyday investors to own shares in high-growth startups through a transparent, accessible platform.
A major issue in the AI sector is oversupply of GPUs, with reports indicating hundreds of billions of dollars worth of AI chips sitting in warehouses due to mismatches between demand and data center construction.
Experts argue that hyperscalers like Amazon and Google are overbuying GPUs through programs like "early rack receipt," potentially creating artificial scarcity and driving up costs across consumer electronics.
Rising data center construction delays and flat or declining token spending signal a potential market correction, with investors increasingly questioning the sustainability of AI spending.
Anthropic's staggering $81 billion net loss in H1 2026 and reliance on venture capital funding raises concerns about its long-term viability and financial health.
France faces a severe fiscal crisis, with soaring bond yields and political unrest, highlighting risks of unsustainable debt and weak growth in the eurozone.
The U.S. faces rising debt and financing costs, but is better positioned than France due to stronger economic growth and central bank flexibility.
Summary:
The episode explores key trends in finance, technology, and global economics. It highlights the growing gap between private tech innovation and public investment, introducing VCX as a solution to allow broader access to private tech companies. A central concern is the AI chip supply crisis: reports show massive oversupply of GPUs in warehouses due to overordering by hyperscalers like Amazon and Google, driven by programs like early rack receipt.
This creates artificial scarcity, inflating prices for memory and consumer electronics. Experts warn of a looming market correction, citing stagnant data center construction, flat token spending, and rising credit spreads. Meanwhile, Anthropic’s financials—including a $81 billion net loss in H1 2026—raise serious doubts about the sustainability of current AI spending.
S. faces higher debt costs but stronger growth and monetary flexibility. S.
remains more resilient due to economic expansion and central bank control. The episode concludes with recognition of Profit G Markets’ award wins, underscoring its mission to provide nuanced, human-centered financial insights beyond traditional market coverage.
FAQs
VCX is a public ticker for private technology companies, allowing everyday investors to own a piece of innovative startups that were previously inaccessible. It's available wherever you buy stocks and provides exposure to the growth of private tech.
Many innovative companies are staying private longer, which limits access for average investors and reduces public market participation, leading to missed opportunities for wealth creation in the tech sector.
Investing in VCX or private tech involves risks such as market volatility, lack of regulatory oversight, and uncertain future performance. Investors should carefully review the fund's prospectus and assess their risk tolerance.
Xero is a financial management platform that offers accounting, payroll, payments, and analytics in one connected system. It helps business owners monitor cash flow and make smarter decisions with visual dashboards and AI insights.
There is a significant mismatch between AI chip demand and supply, with reports indicating that hundreds of billions of dollars worth of GPUs are sitting in warehouses due to data center delays and overordering by tech giants.
Signs include flat or declining token spending, widening credit spreads among data center companies, and rising costs of RAM and servers. If hyperscalers reduce capex, it could signal a slowdown in AI investment.
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