저자: TomLee/CathieWood—출연자소속은제목·설명란에명시되지않아TomLee·CathieWood두명모두대화중확인되는인물로표기,소속은미상 · 외국인
요약 보기
시장 바닥이 이번 달일 수 있으며 현재의 공포는 '걱정의 벽 오르기' 국면이라는 주장. 고유가는 미국이 순 산유국이고 성장주 선호를 높여 미국 증시에 상대적으로 유리하다고 봄. 사모신용 문제는 금융주에 부담이지만 2008년 같은 시스템 리스크는 아니라고 평가. 인플레이션은 1% 미만이며 AI·사모신용·노동시장 약화는 모두 디플레이션 요인이라고 주장. 금리 인하가 예상보다 많을 것이며 S&P·나스닥은 연초 대비 2% 미만 하락, 금은 20% 상승. 장기적으로 자산가격은 우상향하며 AI·로보틱스 혁신이 GDP 성장을 끌어올릴 것이라고 전망.
다듬은 글
I think we're making our bottom this month for the equity markets. Higher oil is relatively good for US equities because one, you know, the US is a net producer of oil, but as people worry about global growth slowing because of high oil, they want to own growth stocks, which actually makes them want to own the US stock market because it is a growth index, especially the Mag 7 and software.
There was no fear back then, uh and today there's extreme fear. I believe the market, uh uh when we look back, uh maybe at the end of this year, is uh is going to be characterized as climbing a wall of worry. Something unusual is happening in the markets right now. Energy prices are rising. Financial stocks are under pressure.
Private credit concerns are resurfacing. And geopolitical tensions are once again dominating headlines. Normally, this combination would send technology stocks sharply lower. But this time, that's not happening. Instead, large parts of the tech sector are holding up remarkably well. So, the question investors need to ask is simple.
What if the market isn't breaking, but transitioning? According to veteran strategist Tom Lee and innovation investor Cathie Wood, the answer may lie in something far bigger than short-term volatility. Because beneath the noise of oil prices, credit fears, and macro uncertainty, a powerful technological revolution is accelerating.
One that could reshape markets, industries, and global growth for decades to come. And if they're right, today's volatility may not be a warning sign. It may be the early stages of a massive transformation. . So, why is tech a kind of not participating this time? They've been a ballast so far in this in the sell-off.
Uh yeah, I mean, I I think tech in general has actually held up really well, including software. Uh it makes sense to us because uh and it's I'm going to make a counterintuitive statement. Higher oil is relatively good for US equities because one, you know, the US is a net producer of oil, but as people worry about global growth slowing because of high oil, they want to own growth stocks, which actually makes them want to own the US stock market because it is a growth index, especially the Mag 7 and software.
Um so, I I I actually think that this kind of makes sense. And I I've heard the earlier conversation today. I I I'm also in the camp that I think we're making our bottom this month for the equity markets. Okay, what about you know, we got Jefferies down 7%, Deutsche down about that much. A lot of people are trying to look around, poke into where these private credit exposures and stuff might be.
What would you say about that narrative right now, Tom? Well, um you know, private credit's been a problem for some time. So, uh I think it has been uh increasingly revealing, as Jamie Dimon said, more cockroaches. Um I do think it's probably not as systematic as we might fear. I know people carry the Lehman hammer and think that this is a repeat of the GFC, but again, there's a lot of reasons uh it's not a systematic one.
It's just the size, the market's not nearly as large, but also, things that look like credit stress aren't really signaling like they did in 2008. So, I'm you know, I think it's hurting financials right now, but I don't think it's a broader problem for the market or the economy. Cathie, you guys are are looking, if I'm not mistaken, to kind of help the public get into more early stage growth companies.
And we saw last week Robinhood did something similar. They're IPOing a venture fund. Um and this comes against this backdrop where a lot of the kind of growthy companies have ended up in private markets, and they don't go public anymore. Then I know the SEC has a big push to try to change that, but one of the problems, as you and others know, is that sometimes they don't perform that well.
It's very risky. So, could you just comment on the current state of affairs? Like, the private markets have losses, you go in the public markets, people don't want losses, but they want access to growthy companies. You know, who can they feel confident will help give them the best of the bunch? Yes, Kelly.
Well, it's very interesting uh to be managing money at this time, and to have managed money very early uh portfolio manager early in my years in the tech and telecom bubble. It's night and day. There was no fear back then, uh and today there's extreme fear. Uh and and there are some reasons, understand that, but I believe, and this is going to fit into what Tom just said, I believe the market, uh uh when we look back, uh maybe at the end of this year, is uh is going to be characterized as climbing a wall of worry.
And of course, now with the the war, uh there is another reason. There are another few bricks being put into that wall. Uh this is a really good time to pick up on uh stocks that might be more volatile. Uh volatility in our world uh does not measure risk as much as it measures uncertainty. And I think the new technologies evolving today, and the way we do, Arc does its research on these technologies to understand how they're going to scale and who's leading the pack, uh I think we're in a very good position.
And the opportunities, this is a technology revolution. Uh and we are not in an AI hype cycle. Uh and we think it has miles to go. Uh and of course, consider the source. It's all we do, but we're beginning to see results, astounding results at uh companies like Anthropic and OpenAI in terms of their ARR's.
Another issue highlighted in the discussion is the growing divide between private and public markets. Over the past two decades, many high-growth technology companies have chosen to remain private for longer periods. Venture capital and private equity funding have expanded dramatically, allowing startups to raise billions of dollars without going public.
This shift has created a new challenge for ordinary investors. The state of the US economy is in a constant pendulum swing, swinging between a potential economic golden age and a fear of the next great recession. We just swing back and forth, back and forth. So, what exactly is driving this chaos and uncertainty?
Well, it isn't really one thing, and that's what makes the situation so unique. The dot-com bubble, if you remember, it was driven by the tech sector. The global financial crisis, that was driven by over-leveraged housing. Yet right now, in this moment, we can point out numerous threats that are coming at the economy from very different directions.
There's a great article today in Bloomberg that was titled "Markets Buffeted by War, AI Stress, and Credit Cracks All at Once." And the three reporters who put it together wrote a very important section. They wrote, "Trump's decision to attack Iran, no matter what he may now declare, has injected a new and potentially long-lasting shock into the global economy at a time when investors were already grappling with an array of forces threatening to upend investor confidence that until recently had seemed bulletproof." They said that that's fanning the most intense market volatility since April last year, when prices were roiled by Trump's unveiling of global tariffs.
And Iran is only part of the story. There's also the emergence of artificial intelligence as a disruptive technology capable of suddenly wiping out as well as creating wealth for shareholders and creditors. There are the soured loans that are starting to pop up in growing numbers in the booming private credit industry.
There's the softening of the US job market. And there's the stubbornly high inflation that's causing doubt on whether the Federal Reserve will be able to resume cutting interest rates, and possibly even force European Central Banks to start raising them." End quote. Now, I agree with Bloomberg's assessment on most of the things that they're outlining here.
Every investor should be aware of these things. Artificial intelligence, war, private credit, and a soft labor market. Where I disagree, though, is on inflation. There's really two ways to think through this aspect of the US economy. Now, first, the real-time measurement of inflation are showing that current inflation levels are under 1% nationally.
The Fed's target is 2%, but we're under 1% right now. Now, this is largely being driven by drops in housing and other material aspects of the Americans' daily life. You have to remember one thing. Products and services can feel expensive when you go to the checkout counter, because past inflation drove prices really high.
Yet at the same time, current inflation can be low, which means that prices are not getting worse at an accelerated rate. That conversation has been beat like a dead horse, though. What I find most interesting is that in each of the potential threats outlined by Bloomberg, it's actually a deflationary development that would lead to lower inflation, not higher inflation.
For example, let's talk about private credit for a second. Private credit's been on the rise as financial organizations lend money to small and medium-sized businesses. This opportunity opened up because of the passing of the Dodd-Frank Act. Dodd-Frank prevented most banks from lending to these businesses in an easy way.
So, now that cracks are starting to show up in the private credit industry, we have to recognize that any sort of market downturn in those activities would be highly deflationary, not inflationary, deflationary. As we see defaults, redemptions, gating, or forced deleveraging, we will start seeing lenders stop making new loans.
Then, existing loans will get restructured or written down, and companies will lose access to refinancing abilities. And because the US economy relies on credit expansion for a good portion of growth, if these issues start to materialize, then you can expect reduced business investment. Hiring freezes or layoffs will become pervasive.
Lower M&A activity will take over the market, and we'll have lower economic growth on a macro basis. These are all known as deflationary forces. But this is not a story exclusive to private credit, though. A soft labor market is deflationary, as well. Wages are the largest source of income and demand in the economy.
When labor weakens, income growth slows. That then reduces spending and pricing power across the system, which is more deflationary forces. And we already know artificial intelligence is highly deflationary. We squeeze inefficiencies out of the economy, and that allows companies to produce more profits with fewer employees.
Elon Musk continues to say that he believes the rise of AI will be a supersonic tsunami that hits the US economy with such a force that the government's going to be overwhelmed. They're going to need to start printing more money in an emergency fashion. Who knows if that's going to happen as quickly as he believes?
But no one, not a single person can argue that AI is not deflationary. It's very obvious in all of the data points. And then this brings us to war. Normally, war is an inflationary force. Governments usually need to print a lot of money. They need to borrow capital. And they need to be able to do it to afford the war.
But the inflationary forces will never materialize if the war is short and it doesn't become a prolonged affair. Now, given that all of the communication coming out of the current administration is that the goal is a short war, I'm much less worried about the current Iran situation creating meaningful inflation that causes issues in the economy.
That could change if the war is prolonged, but right now I'm not worried about it. So, this brings me to what I think is going to happen from here. First, when it comes to monetary policy, I believe that we will see more interest rate cuts than most people are expecting. If we get deflationary forces in the US economy, that's going to force the Fed's hand.
But we also know the Fed chair nominee, Kevin Warsh. Remember the guy that Trump just hand-selected? He has explicitly said that he believes interest rates should be lower as well. And so, I wouldn't bet money that he's saying one thing publicly and then he does another thing once he actually gets put into the Fed chairmanship.
Second, asset prices have been incredibly resilient this year. We violently extradited Nicolas Maduro from Venezuela. We negotiated more access to Greenland. We bombed the hell out of Iran. We have been bombing narco-terrorists in Ecuador. And now we're threatening Cuba with regime change. Yet through all of this, the S&P and Nasdaq are both down less than 2% year-to-date.
Just look at these charts from public.com. You would expect the stock market to be substantially lower, but that's not the case. Gold's up 20% during the same time frame. And my guess is that asset prices will continue to do fairly well given the economic backdrop. The tougher areas for asset prices have been software stocks and Bitcoin.
And you can see in these charts from public.com that they've both sold off, and they seem to be trading in lockstep with each other. But lastly, I believe that we will see an immense wave of innovation that drives GDP growth higher. I still think people are drastically underestimating the power of artificial intelligence and robotics.
These technologies are going to be pervasive throughout our lives, and we barely understand how profound the impact's going to be. As the innovations start to appear, we should enter a zone of exponential production. Robots will be helping to create more robots. AI software will start writing more software.
It's where the exponential component comes from. Humans will not be the limiting factor anymore. And as we hit that escape velocity, my greatest hope is that we are able to claim victory on the age of abundance that's driven by the economic golden age. There's no promise that it's going to happen, but I'm optimistic that it can happen.
And your challenge as an investor is to sit and understand all of the chaos, all of the uncertainty, all of the threats coming from different directions. But also remember one important thing. Asset prices usually continue to go up into the right over a long period of time. And they go up into the right because the government can't stop printing money.
As they print more money, they debase the currency, and that drives asset prices higher. Stocks are going to be much higher when it comes to a couple years from now. Bitcoin, gold, real estate, everything will continue to go up into the right. Everything that you hear on the news or you read in the headlines, it is all short-term.
Remember, understanding it is helpful, but ignoring it is essential. And I think that's what great investors do is they keep their eyes on the long run, and they understand buying great assets and holding them forever was good for Warren Buffett, and it'll be good for your portfolio as well. Despite geopolitical tensions, concerns about private credit, and volatile energy prices, structural forces continue to favor innovation-driven growth.
The US equity market's heavy concentration in technology companies positions it uniquely within the global financial system. At the same time, the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence may represent the next great technological transformation, one that could reshape industries, productivity, and economic growth for decades.
In this context, today's volatility may not signal the end of the market cycle, but rather the beginning of a new phase.
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