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Investors prayed AI and Bitcoin would deliver a smooth new bull market. Yet Muhammad Alerian says 2026 will be ruled by volatility, fragmentation, and broken narratives, not your favorite secular themes. Silver, Bitcoin, etc. And started contaminated others. But we got the wellestablished buy on the dip conditioning coming in.
So last week was technical, the week before was policy news, this week is going to be all about data. So you know it's a fascinating time to be observing and participating in these markets. Can you explain the Bitcoin situation only as so far as people really bought into adoption that attracted a ton of speculators and then you got a shakeout.
You see it also in silver. You see it to a lesser extent in gold. And I I think this is what we've seen so far. I think the fundamental theme for Bitcoin is continued slow institutional adoption. And it's going to be volatile until that base of resident investors, not tourist investors, resident investors becomes big enough to absorb.
It is in gold. It's not in silver. It's not in Bitcoin. So for the we just had um Anthony Pompiano on we were looking at Bitcoin obviously under 70,000 again. Are you uh we've talked about Bitcoin over the years. Are you of the view this thing continues to to fall or do you think this is a bottom here?
I think this continues to be volatile. I have not been a big investor in Bitcoin because I don't quite understand things that go beyond the technicals. Um but I see it as volatile this year as opposed to last year. I think the big three themes that investors have to embrace is volatility, dispersion and fragmentation.
That is what's going to determine their success this year. Whereas last year it was all about embracing secular themes. So, so we seeing a change in what is driving markets. And then when when you think about the sort of technical nature of last week, I don't know how technical it is because I think to myself there seemed to be a psychological for at least a moment and this is the question is just how permanent it is or not and maybe it's not at all given what happened on Friday.
But there was a view all of a sudden two things going on. One was oh my goodness uh these companies are now spending too much. Before we used to give people credit uh the stock would go up if you spent a lot of money. now maybe not. The second piece was oh my goodness some of these software companies uh smaller software companies are going to run into a lot of trouble because people are going to effectively vibe code the same program.
What do you think of those two issues? So I think the AI tech theme is evolving. Last year we embraced anything AI. We fell in love with those working on foundational models. Literally anything that had an AI label on it attracted money. We're now in a more mature phase of this process and we're asking the right question.
We're starting to differentiate between companies. A Google versus an open AI is is a is an example of that. Secondly, we're starting to realize that there's a certain dynamic um driven by FOMO whereby there will be overinvestment and the bond market has widened spreads a little bit on on the hyperscalers and that's the right thing to do.
Um, so what I see is that the the themes are evolving from something that was new that we embraced very holistically to something more healthy now where we are starting to ask questions and we're starting to differentiate between players. Muhammad, we're going to have Kevin Hassid on in just a little bit bit.
What do you think of the employment picture in America right now? So my biggest worry on the macro is this decoupling, Andrew, of strong GDP from the labor market. I have a piece coming out in the FD later this week that says this is really consequential in terms of economic, social, and political implication.
It's not the first time we see it. We saw it in the 1990s. We saw it in 2000. We saw it coming out of global financial crisis. But this is the first time we see it when the economy has been persistently strong. So I would ask him how worried are we that job growth is decoupling from GDP growth and if we are worried what can we do about it
and how worried are you? I mean that is the fundamental question. How much do we think this is a function of AI? So I think it's a function of three things. Certainly AI has an impact. I think also we we are unraveling some post-pandemic behavior and I think there's general policy uncertainty. So AI is a contributor but it's not the only thing.
Um how worried am I? I think this time around this is going to be a more persistent and more consequential phenomenon but it is one that we can mitigate but we need to talk about it analyze it but the last thing we want is for GDP growth to decouple from jobs. Okay, so Muhammad, here's the real question and and give credit where credit's due to Kevin Worsh.
You know, he's been talking for a long time about the idea that AI could create this productivity uh boom and and that would allow, frankly, uh the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates without actually creation creating more inflation. But then you talk about the dual mandate and you start to think about what do you do about employment on the other side?
If you're Kevin Worsh, what do you do? So, I think Kevin is correct. I think that we are entering a period where we will see productivity enhancements. If we get diffusion right, if we get adoption right, I always stress that I think that will increase the safe speed limit, meaning the non-inflationary speed limit for the economy and I think rates can come down from here.
Um I think if you focus on Kevin Walsh, the tendency has been to focus on rates and the balance sheet. There's the third element which is the reforms to the Fed. And I think that is really important because if the Fed is to return to being a constructive policy maker, it needs to reform quite a few things and how it does it.
And Kevin Walsh, judging from his A4 speech in Washington last year, has some pretty good ideas about
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