저자: MichaelBurry · 외국인
요약 보기
AI 인프라 투자 가속과 미국 부채 40조 달러가 맞물려 있으며, 장기금리 상승과 재정 부담이 커지고 있다. 정부 국채 바이백은 부채 총량을 줄이지 못하는 신호성 조치다. 밸류에이션 거품 위험은 있지만 AI 인프라(데이터센터·전력·반도체 등)에 실적과 수요가 따른다. 장기 국채는 금리 상승 시 손실 위험이 크며, 금·에너지·인프라 등 실물 자산이 대안으로 제시됨. 영상 후반은 유료 리포트·뉴스레터 홍보.
다듬은 글
The next trillion-dollar opportunity is right in front of you, and this time you have no excuses to miss it. Before we get started, the only thing I ask in return for all the work on this video is that you hit the like button and subscribe. Every time you do this, YouTube promotes that video to more people who care to hear it, and it helps us prepare more people for what's really happening in the markets.
And now let's begin. Two enormous forces are currently transforming our economy, and they are creating one of the largest redistributions of wealth in modern history. The first is the development of AI infrastructure, which is not slowing down. It is accelerating, and the amounts of capital being invested are simply staggering.
The second is the so-called great redistribution of wealth, a demographic event that is quietly changing the owners of assets in America. For the first time in history, an estimated 3 million people with access to U.S. markets will inherit a million dollars or more over the next decade, and almost all of those who inherit this money are not involved in trading or investing.
Even if you make a lot of money, even if you make $150,000 a year or more, you may have no idea how to invest responsibly because it's not your job or your business. The US also currently has over $40 trillion in debt, and by all historical precedents, the current system should already be under extreme strain.
Yet the US continues to function as if nothing happened. Markets continue to rise , reaching historic highs thanks to AI, while the real economy declines. And in times like these, the best way to secure and preserve your retirement is to create and maintain a balanced portfolio that can survive economic chaos.
And there's a reason why this is important right now. The September jobs report, released on October 2, showed that only 29,000 jobs were created in the US , the unemployment rate was 4.2%, and data for previous months was revised downward. At the same time, inflation remains high, and the Federal Reserve raised rates in September.
So we have an economy where investment in AI remains extremely strong, while the labor market shows signs of slowing and the cost of servicing the public debt continues to rise. Now let me show you what the “smart money” is doing, because the signals have been right in front of us all along. The market always shows strength in certain sectors: even when technology companies are selling, oil stocks can skyrocket, and when consumer brands are falling, infrastructure and defense companies quietly reach new highs.
Investors who accumulate wealth in volatile conditions don't panic—they study charts and analyze the market, no pun intended. They track where capital is flowing before that movement becomes apparent to everyone else. And now there is a certain rotation taking place, covering the category of companies at the intersection of AI infrastructure, government contracts, and corporate technologies.
These are not speculative names, but well-known companies ready to absorb huge funds from the US government and the largest data center operators in the world. We are talking about multi-billion dollar government contracts for software and cloud services, as well as mass purchases of equipment for AI centers.
Paradoxically, the main thing here is not any one company or ticker. And it's not Palantir. What is important is that public spending on technology and private investment in AI infrastructure are happening simultaneously. One creates demand for software and cloud systems, the other for physical hardware, networks, power supply, cooling, and data centers to handle increasingly complex AI tasks.
And that's exactly what investors might miss. AI is not just a software story . Every new model requires physical infrastructure. Data center operators are spending billions on next-generation systems as demand for AI grows faster than capacity is available. Institutional buyers are not investing billions in infrastructure because they consider these technologies to be a fad.
They conduct a technical audit and conclude that the productivity gains justify the complexity of the infrastructure. This sounds complicated. Maybe I could be wrong, but Sequoia is not. Reports on PCs, enterprise software, cloud workloads, and semiconductor infrastructure increasingly show that demand for AI is translating into real revenue.
This is important because the market can support high valuations when earnings catch up with expectations. At the same time, the geopolitical background is becoming increasingly complex. The Strait of Hormuz remains a major risk to global logistics and energy, and the conflict in Iran has disrupted logistics chains and complicated supplies.
Tech companies with assets in the region already face operational risks, meaning investors should view AI as a huge physical project, dependent on energy prices, logistics, and infrastructure. And despite all this, the market is showing strength. It is reaching new heights in the areas of AI, AI infrastructure, and government spending on technology.
The market is not waiting for a resolution to the situation in Iran or other geopolitical conflicts. It assesses where structural demand is headed and where capital is flowing. However, there are very real alarm signals. Valuations are inflated, margin debt is high, and the market is not immune to a bubble.
Anyone who tells you there is no risk of a bubble right now is simply being dishonest with you. They may be trying to buy at the peak of euphoria, but valuation and timing are two different things. The dot-com bubble lasted for years even after valuations became extreme. So being right about direction and being right about timing are two different skills.
The question is whether you are in those parts of the development that have real revenue, customers, government contracts, and institutional demand. That's the difference between speculating on a bubble and investing in the infrastructure underneath it. And that brings us to the second part of the story, because all of this spending on AI is happening in a financial system that is increasingly dependent on debt.
There comes a point in every borrower's life when the lender stops asking how much you need and starts asking if you can pay it back. And the United States is approaching that moment. Maybe things were different in 2021 with the SPAC madness, but we started buying back our own debt. And on August 18, US debt exceeded $40 trillion.
The next morning, the Ministry of Finance announced a doubling of the volume of transactions for the redemption of its own bonds on the open market. When a company conducts a buyback, it uses profits to buy back shares and cancel them . But that's not what the government is doing at all. The Ministry of Finance issues new short-term bonds and uses the money to buy back old, long-term ones.
So the total debt does not disappear. Only the maturity structure changes. So why do this? Well, because bond prices and their yields move in opposite directions. When a large buyer buys bonds, it pushes the price up, which lowers the yield. Thus, the government is trying to support the market for its debt and reduce the pressure from rising long-term rates.
The Ministry of Finance increased the volume of the operation from approximately 2 billion to at least 4 billion at a time. 4 billion is a pittance compared to 40 trillion, but size is not the main thing here . The main thing is the signal, or at least that was Bessen's plan. And just a few days before the announcement, the government held an auction of 30- year Treasury bonds, demanding a yield of about 5.2 %.
It was the most expensive 30-year auction in recent years. Then the yield on 30-year bonds in the market rose above 5.3%, and the next morning the Ministry of Finance doubled the buyback. That's why the market is paying attention to it. If investors demand higher yields on government loans, the cost of servicing the government debt increases, and this is where a serious problem arises.
The federal government already pays about a trillion dollars or more in annual interest, and that number continues to grow. Interest has become one of the largest expenditure items in the federal budget . None of these payments reduce the principal amount of the debt. So, think about it at the household level.
Imagine you owe $400,000 on a credit card and discover that interest payments alone have become one of the largest expenses in your budget. You cannot solve this problem by taking out another card to pay for the first one. Now let's talk about the printing press, because this is where people get confused.
The Fed can create dollars. The Ministry of Finance—no. The Fed buys short-term Treasury bills to maintain liquidity in the financial system. This is very different from the quantitative easing used after the financial crisis and during the pandemic, when the Fed bought large amounts of long-term securities to specifically lower the cost of long-term borrowing.
So no, the Fed is not currently bailing out the 30-year Treasury bond market in the same way, but the government has to borrow roughly $2 trillion in new money each year and refinance trillions more as existing debt is paid off. So, a few billion dollars of Treasury bond buybacks do not solve a multi-trillion dollar financing problem.
If long-term rates continue to rise and interest payments absorb more and more of the budget, the Fed may eventually return to the long-term segment of the market. Not necessarily because she wants to, but because the alternative would be a federal budget that is becoming increasingly difficult to finance.
And if the Fed eventually starts creating money to buy long-term bonds to keep rates down, it will cause inflation. The government will try to inflationarily devalue part of its debt burden. Maybe Trump has this in his plan. He had already mentioned it almost verbatim . And this is where it becomes your problem.
Long-term Treasury yields don't just affect Washington. It affects the entire lending system . Mortgages, corporate borrowing, infrastructure financing, asset valuation—all depend on long-term rates. And when the bond market demands higher yields from the U.S. government, everyone else is forced to put up with a higher cost of capital.
For decades, investors have been taught that Treasury bonds are a safe part of a portfolio. This worked extremely well for a long time, but a long-term bond can lose significantly in value when yields rise, even if the government later reimburses you. This is why the traditional 60/40 portfolio requires closer analysis in these conditions.
The problem is not that bonds are bad per se. The problem is their duration. Long-term fixed payments become less attractive when investors demand higher returns and the purchasing power of a currency falls. And that's why assets tied to things that can't just be created with the click of a button become interesting.
So , gold, copper, energy, infrastructure, productive real estate, agricultural land, timber, although it gives 1% of the return. These are trees. This is not going away. Quality companies can provide participation in a real economic outcome, not just a fixed entitlement to future dollars. The main problem is the following.
When the government owes $40 trillion in currency it controls, one of the easiest ways to reduce the real burden is to devalue every dollar. This doesn't require conspiracy theories, it's just common sense, unfortunately . This is mathematics. So the question is, what can you do? You don't need to panic.
You don't need to understand everything, but you should definitely understand why you are putting yourself at risk. So review your retirement account, determine how much of it is exposed to long-term government bonds, understand the difference between short-term Treasury bonds and long-term risk. You don't need to know everything about bonds, but at the same time, don't ignore the development of AI.
So the biggest opportunity may not lie in speculative AI companies. Maybe it's the infrastructure that's holding this whole boom together. These are data centers, energy, cooling, networks, semiconductors, enterprise software, cloud infrastructure— companies ready to attract government and corporate spending .
This is the bigger picture. We have a huge investment cycle in AI happening at the same time that the US has over $40 trillion in debt. Long-term yields are under pressure. The labor market is starting to show signs of weakness. Opportunity and risk come from the same source. Large-scale capital expenditures are facing an increasingly expensive financial system.
And that's why you need a portfolio built for both scenarios. If you want to understand where I think the next big opportunities in AI infrastructure lie, I have a free report, " The Top Six Stocks for Physical AI Infrastructure," updated in October. It only costs your email address, link below in the description.
The US currently has over $40 trillion in debt, and the truth is that by all historical precedents, the current system should already be under extreme pressure and effectively collapsing. Yet the US continues to function as if everything is fine, and financial markets continue to reach historic highs amid the AI boom, while the real economy declines.
In times like these, the best way to secure and preserve your retirement is to have a balanced portfolio that can survive expensive inflation and a devaluation of the dollar. Enter your email address at the link in the pinned comment to get the report, and it will come straight to your inbox. You will also get access to my recommended newsletters where I share daily market analytics and research.
So, Self Advisors is my company that publishes curated market newsletters, and you can find our picks below. When you download this report again, you will be able to select the newsletters you like , and optionally enter your phone number to receive market updates via text message. This is not Self.
This is not financial advice. Self Advisors: advise yourself. I need to rest. Thank you very much for watching. Hit the like button if you haven't already , and subscribe if you want more.
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