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Welcome back to Ask the Compound, the show where you ask and we answer. I am Ben Carlson. Markets are getting crazy yet again. Semiconductor stocks going nuts. Huge gains all over the place. By my count, we have 11 trillion dollar market cap companies in the S&P 500. Massive IPOs are coming. So more to come on that front. Companies are spending enormous sums of money on AI. Is an AI bubble all but inevitable at this point? I'm going to tackle that question and more on today's show. Let's do it. Okay. AsktheCompoundShowMail.com is our email. Send us a question. We love your questions. I have a whole huge Google Doc full of them. Duncan had something come up at the last minute. Can't make the show. So it's just me today. I know everyone loves Duncan, sending me love. But that means I'm going to be relying heavily on the live chat for feedback today. Follow up questions. I see you all in there. Don't let me down. On today's show, you're answering questions straight from our compound Inbox, straight from YouTube, questions straight from social media. Index funds versus a SpaceX IPO. Is it fair how to invest in bonds during retirement? How would AI job loss impact the economy? Should you support your in laws if they haven't saved for retirement? How do you balance saving versus paying down student loans in your 20s? And finally, AI has to be a bubble, right? We'll see. Today's show is sponsored by Public. Feels like there are two types of investing platforms right now. You've got the legacy brokerages that look like they were designed in 1997. Then you've got the new wave that looks like looked at investing and thought, you know what this needs? Sports betting. Neither seems like a great place to build your wealth. So that's where Public comes in. It's the modern investing platform for those who take it seriously. Stocks, options, bonds, crypto, they have it all. And the energy they're not spending on building a casino. It's going to AI. Public is the only investing platform where you can create agents that can monitor the market, manage your cash and execute your trades. Just enter a prompt, approve the workflow, put your agent to work, go to public.comatc to get started. It's public.comatc paid for by Public Investing. Full disclosures in the podcast description. All right, again, welcome everyone live in the chat on YouTube. Welcome people watching live on Twitter. Hit me with your questions, hit me with your feedback. I want it. All right, Duncan's not here. I'm reading the question solo today. This is like Ben castaway version. It's just me. Someone said fix the clock behind you. What's wrong with it? I don't need a clock. I have a cell phone. All right, first question. Let's do it. Ben, I'm a big fan of advice to just keep investing in index fund no matter what. But the past few days my Twitter feed has been filled with posts about how SpaceX's IPO is breaking the rules and is financial engineering to dump all the stock onto index fund holders. Is this something to be concerned about and act on given the rule breaking and systematic change and the fact that index holders are being left holding the bag? Or just ignore and keep investing as usual as it will have little effect on index funds. All right, tons of questions on SpaceX this week. All the DIYers, all the boglehead people are worried about it. We're getting questions from clients too. This is, this is not abnormal. This is, this is, it's, it's fair. Right. And part of it doesn't seem fair. Right. So this is a company that's going to have low float, meaning they have all these shares. They're not putting all of them to sell to the public just so they're essentially strong, arming the indexers into buying the shares so the company insiders can cash out. Sure. Okay. That's the cynical way of looking at it. Now let's look at like what's actually happening here. All right, so we had Callie Cox in our research team. Our research team is all over this at Reynolds. We've looked into this. Okay. It's not nearly as simple as, okay, SpaceX is going to be a $1.8 trillion company. So it's going to have like a 3 or 4% position in the index. No, doesn't necessarily work like that. Let's look at this heat map here. Throw it up here. Chart on this is the s and P500 companies. This is where SpaceX would fall based on some. And we had to make some estimates here because it's hard to know how much is going to happen. So this is from Jason Zweig. Keep the chart on, please. Even after an IPO, nearly all of SpaceX will remain in private hands. About 85% in Elon Musk's two hands. If the offering raises about $80 billion, that would rank SpaceX roughly the 130th biggest company for included among the stocks in the S and P today. About where Comcast is today. Okay. Assuming nothing wacky happens in the meantime. That's a 0.14% position. Okay. Anthropic and OpenAI would probably even be smaller. Chart off, please. So what this means is that these index providers look at the float that's actually being sold public, not the whole market cap. So bag holders are not taking all $2 trillion worth. Okay, put up our next little table here that our investment committee created. So they looked at the NASDAQ composite, which gets it essentially right away. Right. It's market cap weighted boom in the index. NASDAQ 100. That's going to take a couple of weeks. Potentially they're going to also float adjust it. That's, that's. But that we're looking at 0.44% under the three times float rule. Again, not a huge position. Russell 1000. That's a quarterly review. Okay. The weight is like 10 basis points, S&P 500, Q4, 2026 at the earliest. Okay. We're estimating again like somewhere in the 10 to 20 basis point range. Table off, please. These are estimates. These are not set in stone because it depends on like how much they put out there and how much, how many more sales there are. But this is not going to happen all at once. And the index providers are changing some of the rules here to speed up this process because companies are staying private longer. So in some ways it feels like there's bag holders here, but in other ways, like it's not as bad as it seems. And the thing is, if you're an index fund provider and one of the biggest companies in the world is out there, I don't know, you probably want to own it. The thing is, do you want to own it so fast? And these. It's not going to happen overnight. All right? So it's going to take some time. Now, as far as SpaceX goes, a lot of people think this is bag holder position, meaning like they're going to dump this on the market and the index funds are going to be forced to hold it and then it's going to fall. That remains to be seen. I want to read two things from Ben Thompson Strathary, who wrote about this. And I want to look at the SpaceX IPO in two different ways. He says, in all seriousness, the numbers are obviously absurd, but then again, everything about this IPO is absurd. SpaceX is seeking a $2 trillion valuation on a mere $18.7 billion in revenue with 4.9 billion in losses last year. And growth actually slowed from 35 to 33%. That slowdown happened despite the addition of XAI and also X, which is Twitter. I don't call it X, it's Twitter, sorry. Which tipped the company from a small profit to that massive loss thanks to $5.1 billion in AI R&D expense. That R D, keep in mind, went towards building a model that is in fifth place and whose entire founding team recently left the company. But sure, 26.5 billion dollar trillion dollar AI opportunity. Okay, that's the oh my gosh, what are we doing here? This thing is done. He also said like listen, this is what an IPO should be. It's an opportunity for people to contribute capital to actually build the business and benefit if it works out. He says I can't make a financial model that necessarily justifies this valuation, particularly based on current financials. But Neither can a VC investing in a Series A of A company. SpaceX has already invented a lot and its early investors are going to make a lot of money on this ipo. At the same time, there's still much more to invent. That remains a lot of upside. To be very clear, a lot of it is risk. It's a testament to SpaceX's ambitions that retail investors get to play VC. So like it's still too early to tell. Are we going to build data centers in space? I don't know. We're already landing, taking, having rockets take off and land. So we'll see. Am I really super ultra concerned about this? I don't think so. I'm sorry, I can't get worked up about it. I think it's going to be okay. Let me know you think in the chat. Okay. Dave said he wants to see SpaceX mining asteroids. That's true. Could happen. If Ben Affleck can land at an asteroid in Armageddon, Elon Musk can do it. Next question. I've waited for Duncan to hop in there, but it's me. I'm looking to help my father, who is approaching retirement create a 6040 portfolio allocation. Stock side seems pretty simple. Little international, an S and P fund and some smid. The bond side is a little trickier since there are so many types. High yield mortgage backed securities, core, short term corporates, treasuries, etc. Should we just do a bond ladder or total bond fund? If a bond ladder. Is it better to use individual bonds or bond etf? All right, I've been talking about this for quite a while and. Hang on, I. I forgot one more thing about question one. Michael, tomorrow has an entire talking wealth episode that's going to like go hard and hardcore into the details. So if you really want to know what that SpaceX IPO is going to do to index funds and how it's going to work, tune into talking wealth. All right, 2020 has led to the worst bond bear market in history. Okay? So a lot of people were caught flat footed. If you owned Treasuries of any sort of duration, a total bond fund, the ag, anything like that, okay, you got smoked, close to a 20% loss and something like that. One of the worst, the worst bond bear market we've ever seen because rates went so high, inflation was high. So I want to go through like your options as an investor. And I think what that bond bear market did is it made bond market investors realize it's not just a one decision asset class. Okay? There is a lot more that goes into it. There's a lot of other weight, other things you need to protect than just what happens if there's a recession. Because if, when there's a recession and bond yields fall, bonds do good. It's not that simple anymore. So the total bond market index fund is simple, it's diversified, it's low cost, there's decent yields right now, right? We're talking 4.7% I think is the last one I saw for the ag. It's not bad and it's good economic slowdown protection. If the economy slows down, there's usually a flight to safety. And these funds, they hold mortgage backed bonds, but it's mostly Treasuries. Right? The risks of course are rising interest rates, high inflation, which we saw. The good news is that the margin of safety is bigger now because the yields are higher. Downside, there's lack of control on the holdings. The index increases holdings where the debt is increasing, which some people say, why would I want to do that? Why do I want to own more debt? Where countries are adding to it. Treasuries, kind of, kind of similar to, let's talk about like a 10 year or 5 year treasury. That's the shock absorber when the excrement hits the fan. Okay. Corporate bonds, little higher yield because you have default risk, you have credit rating risk. You could get downgrade a little. The spreads aren't very wide right now though. It's like 5.3% for LQD, which is the biggest corporate bond ETF versus 4.7% for the AG. That spread can and will change over time. All right, Munis tax free from a federal income perspective, depends on your dad's tax situation if you need munis or not. Okay. High yield junk bonds do have higher yield to 7.2% right now. But this is equity like risks. I've heard Michael calls this scared equities before. Chart on please. This is the down next one. There you go. This is the drawdown profile for JNK and it goes back to 2007. You lost almost 40% of your money in the great financial crisis. You've had multiple 10, 15, 20% drawdowns in this. This has equity like risk. Not total equity risk, but pretty darn close like 75% equity risk. Now the next one. Go back to my other chart tips. Okay. Inflation protection. But careful about duration. Okay? Because the TIP fund is long duration. So when rates rise. See that downturn there in the purple? Those acted more like bonds because they're longer duration. Stip is short term tips, so that's 0 to 5 as opposed to like 8 to 10. And they didn't have nearly as much volatility, nearly as much drawdown. And they've outperformed because you get more of the inflation component. Okay, chart off mortgage backed bonds. It's higher yields in Treasuries typically. But you also have prepayment risk if people repay their mortgage early. Not great spreads there today either. I like short term bonds as a position because it adjusts to higher rates much faster. You are at the whims of the Fed. If they lower rates, but there's more liquidity, nominal drawdown protection. If we're talking anything under like one to three years, then there's like Securitizer Asset backed secured. You're right, there's a ton of bonds. Right. Bond ladders we actually went through a few weeks ago. So go check out that episode. After that episode, DFA actually sent me some of the research on how bad bond ladders can go. Bad. This is from 2023. They showed me this chart on please. DFA looked at like what if you're doing a bond ladder but then short term rates. The yield curves have been inverted like it was for a long time. And short term rates are better than higher rates. Are you going to abandon the bond ladder? What do you do? So there are some downsides. We also talked about using Bond ETFs for bond ladders on that same show. So go back and find that one. For a more deep dive on bond ladders. That's a lot of options, right? Here's what I think matters. Think about duration. Like how much risk do you want to take to get your yield Right. Higher duration, higher volatility, potentially higher yield, but not promised. What are you trying to protect against? What do you want out of the fixed income side of your portfolio? Income, recession, protection, inflation protection. Listen, the things that I think matter most, I think inflation protection is the big one. That's your biggest risk for bonds. So I like short term tips. I also like short term something T bills, one to three year treasuries, high yield savings account, money market CDs, something like that. Just to protect you against short term rates rising rapidly, inflation rising rapidly and having some sort of nominal protection. And then I still think you need that, that anchor of the ag or the bond, whatever, something Treasuries. When these stuff hits the fan and you want rates to fall and it's going to, you're going to benefit from it. That makes sense to me. We talked about, listen to the bond ladder one from a few weeks ago. That kind of makes sense too. But you're right, there were way more decisions in fixed income portfolios than people ever realized. Okay. Dave in the chat says duration, duration, duration. I tend to agree. I want to take my risk and volatility where I'm being paid for it. And I don't think that happens in the bond market. I don't want to take risk in the bond market. That's a safe part of my portfolio. I don't want a lot of duration. I don't want long maturities. Okay. I'm an intermediate to short term guy. What can I say? Great question though. All right, another one. Let's do it. If the protected AI job loss numbers are even partially accurate, I'm curious about the impact you believe this would have on the market. For instance, if 50 million white collar jobs are eliminated over the next few years, it would not only negatively impact the economy, but also lead to significantly lower IRA contributions and likely higher redemptions. Okay, 50 million would be kind of a lot. Listen, one of the things that happens when there's technological innovation is people extrapolate into the future. But this has to be the first innovation ever where the people making the actual new technology are making dire forecasts about the future. Right. Dario from Anthropic, he didn't say 50 million people are going to lose their jobs, but he said 50% of all entry level white collar jobs will be replaced by AI. He's like pounded the table on this a few times. I think he slowly but surely walked that back as the PR department got their hands on him. Like, hey dude, what are you doing? Why are you Saying this, stop. But it is kind of scary to think about, like, machines taking a massive amount of knowledge work. Now, obviously, if that happened, if 50 million jobs got lost or even half of that, like, there'd be anarchy in the streets. You're right. Sure. The. At that point, the economy might be so productive that there's just more wealth and people are spending it, but that wealth is concentrated in the hands of the few. And there's going to be like, torches and pitchforks. I just, I have a more glass cell vision of the future. Okay. I tend to think AI is going to make us all busier. It's going to be more efficient, but it's just going to give us all more work. And there's going to be jobs and tasks that are disrupted, for sure. I think in the long run, we have a dynamic economy and we figure out ways to get people to work. That's my glass cell. And also, as much as people are talking about AI disrupting the labor market, it hasn't happened yet. If you look at the numbers, sure, There are tech CEOs who are laying people off and are saying, listen, we're doing it because of AI. 40% of our workforce is gone because AI is making us more efficient. Or translation. We overhired in 2021 and 2022 because the labor market was so hot. And now we need an excuse to get rid of these people. Because if you look at the data, AI is not having an impact yet. Chart on this is from exhibit A. Job openings in the US Economy surged. Surged. Okay, maybe not surged. They increased from like 6.8 million to 7.6 million in the past month. That's kind of funny. Job openings are not falling because of AI. They've actually started increasing again. Interesting. Next chart, please. This is layoffs. Still lower than they were at any point in the 2010s. Pretty much not seeing a huge uptick in layoffs despite some anecdotes. Right. For the economy as a whole, this is still relatively normal. Ish. And actually fell last month. Next chart. I got all kinds of charts. All right. U.S. labor force participation, ages 25 to 54. Okay, that's prime age. Why do we do 25 to 54? Because we don't want to include the baby boomers. They're retiring like crazy. And everyone who listens to this show wants to be a fire person and retire early, too. 55. That's why we cut off 54. Because everyone wants to retire at age 55. Okay. 83.8%. This is a stone's throw away from the high of 84.6% in 2000. Maybe the biggest booming economy of our lifetime. So. And we've increased in the 2000s for prime age labor force participation rate. Okay, that's good. I think I got one more chart here. College grads. Okay. Unemployment rate for recent college grads. This is recent college grads. Age 22 to 27, still pretty stable. All college grads, young workers and all workers. Okay. I mean, listen, it's still lower now than it was in the 2010s, essentially. Little uptick, but we're not seeing a huge divergence there. Okay, chart off. Maybe it happens in the future. Maybe we're still in the early days of this technology. I don't know. Despite a handful of tech leaders, like blaming AI, this isn't happening yet. So I think that like, dire economic situation is kind of intellectually stimulating to talk about. Until we start seeing some data, I'm not going to like really worry about it that much. Okay, next question. Wait, hang on. Check. Question off. Dave says any of today's charts in your new book or are we getting new charts? All new charts, Dave. All new. 52 charts in my book. Okay, none in the show today. All right, back to the question. I'm 40, wife is 37. We have two handsome boys in private school. 11k for our 3 year old and 13k for a 6 year old annually. Ouch. We have 400k in our brokerage accounts, 34k in a 529. 2 million in our retirement accounts. In the future, my in laws may become a burden, for lack of a better word. My father in law is 60, my mother in law is 58. They are divorced and have remarried. Seems that neither prioritizes saving for retirement. We are doing okay. We are not rich by any means. And we have these young kids. How do you suggest I try to talk to my in laws about saving for retirement and most likely them having to continue to work after reaching retirement age? Or do I just mind my business? FYI, they have never asked us for money. We do normally pay for a food trip, a food for food, a trip, etc. Whenever her parents or my parents are with us periodically. P.S. ben, are you still signing books and shipping to people? All right. Yes. Risk and reward is coming to anyone who asks a question for today. This is the last week I'm doing signed copies. UPS is sick of seeing me all the time. What are you doing with all these books, buddy? Great question. Here, listen, between you and me, don't tell your in laws this. You are doing far better than okay, you have $2.4 million at age 40 for your age group. You're in like the top 4% in terms of wealth, just with your liquid assets. So if you don't want them on your budget, keep this between us, okay? Between friends here. Something I've learned in middle age. I don't think you're changing the habits of people who are older than you. I think at a certain point, your parents are who they are and they're probably not going to change who they are. And this is your in laws too. So I, I think this is, this is dangerous ground you're walking on here. I would not want to say, hey, let's have a talk about retirement. What are you guys doing? I'm not paying for you. They're not going to take that very well, okay? They are the ones in their minds, they're the provider, not you. Okay? So it's also. Not only are they going to be like, what, what shell shot? They're going to like. It's going to be an ego deflator. Okay? So. So I'd say, listen, if anyone was going to talk to them, since these are in laws, that's your wife. That's her job. Hey, what are you guys doing? What? You know, where's my inheritance coming from? No inheritance. Fine. We're good. We've got 2.4 million. But you guys aren't dipping into that. Some cultures, they, they want to take care of their elderly. Lance here. No, he doesn't want to. I would not be the first one to bring this up, okay? I would wait for them to do it. And also, don't mention how much money you have if you don't want them on your bill, okay? But you're right, they're probably going to have to work longer. Maybe they're going to have to delay taking Social Security. Like, it can still be done, but they might not have a lifestyle in retirement that they think they're going to have if this is happening. Right? Sean says, grandma, Grandpa might have to go to a farm upstate. Harsh. Harsh. Maybe the robots will take care of him someday. I don't know. I wouldn't say anything, though. I'd stay out of this. No, I do not want to be the one who brings that up. Because guess what? That gets them thinking. Like, oh, maybe he want. Maybe he can take care of us. No, don't do it. Someone says, get them a smaller home fair. All right, next question. Oh, wait, hang on someone says if they own their house, they can sell the house and rent or move. That's a good question. For a lot of people, especially in the middle class, their biggest financial asset by far, by far, is a home. They have a lot of home equity. That's a good point. Reverse mortgage, Sell the house, downsize Social Security, later, work longer. They could do this. Just start making your internal plan. Don't share with them yet. Next question. All right. My girlfriend of five years, I'm 26, she's 27, based in the northeast. And and I are struggling to prioritize the following from a funds allocation standpoint. One, investing. Two, getting married. We expect to cover most of the wedding costs ourselves. Good for you. Three, buying an apartment or home. Four, paying off student loans. Two specific questions. How do you think about prioritizing these large life expenses? And two, what's a good system for bucketing cash toward each goal correctly while maintaining a comfortable lifestyle? All right, one thing you have to accept in your twenties, I don't care how many financial blogs you're reading, how many personal finance podcasts you're listening to, you can't do it all in your 20s. That's okay. It's okay. You don't have to have it all figured out, your twenties. The first house we had came with an unfinished basement. It was a ranch, split level, whatever you call it, ranch, top level. All finished nicely. Two bedrooms. We needed more. So the whole basement finished. We had to finish it. That costs a lot of money. So my wife and I had to prioritize different financial goals. We had to cut back on investing a little bit. Our savings all went into this renovation. It's okay. Sometimes life happens. Right? Now, some people look at this and say, hey, don't spend a ton of money on your wedding. Like, easier said than done people, right? Most people want a nice wedding. One of the great memories of my life. And not just because I married my wife, but all the people that I love were in one place on a single day. Like you want that to mean something. It'd be kind of special, right? It was amazing. I have some questions for you. All right. Chris says pay off the high cost debt. Have some fun. That's fair. Yes. Oh, Sean says elope and married a courthouse. You'll have so much more money. Come on, get out of here. It's boring. All right, maybe I did a courthouse wedding once with someone. It's not that bad, actually. All right, first question. What's your wedding budget? Because your wedding should take precedence. So we're saving for a house right now. When you're done with the wedding, take whatever you were saving for that and start saving for down payment. Keep the same amount, right? You're putting aside $500 a month, $1,000 a month for the wedding. When that is done, don't bank it. Put it right into saving for down payment. And I've heard this is a thing now. Young people for wedding gifts are setting up funds so people can for their gift give for a down payment for a house. 70% of the crap you get for your wedding registry, you don't need anyway. Trust me, you don't need it. Get a nice set of plates, a nice set of glasses and cups and silverware. That's it. All the other stuff, like, do you really need a little boat thing for your butter? No. Down payment fund. That's a good idea. All right. What's the interest rate in your student loans that like, you might have to slow your investing to save for the wedding? But like, if the student loan rate is, I don't know, 6, 7%, like, that's when you can think about potentially, like, maybe the investing bucket slowly goes into there. My initial read in priorities. All right, wedding is number one. All right, get your 401k match is probably number two. At least save enough for the match. Your other investing goals might have take a back seat for a while. Right? Maybe it's just a 401k, not a brokerage account. Right. Don't worry about paying off student loans for now. House, wedding matter way more than that right now. You can keep investing if it's at a lower amount. I think that's okay. Again, just to get your 401k match. Sometimes life gets in the way of compounding, and that's okay. You don't have to do everything all at once. Okay. Some people in the chat say the northeast is not a great place to with a house because it's so expensive. Fair. James says do a TEMU wedding. Everything is inflatable. I don't hate it. My kids had a birthday party yesterday for the twins, and we did an inflatable slip and slide, you know, with like the little pool at the end and it way bigger than the slip and slide ever did in my life. Pretty cool. Not bad. It's okay to change your priorities, I think as you have different goals in different stages of life. Like, oh, no, I'm not saving enough to compound. Like, I get that feeling. But sometimes life gets in the way of compounding and it's okay, you can't have it all figured out in your 20s. You have plenty of time to play catch up. All right, next question. One more, one more. All right, we have all sorts of questions today, all over the map. I like it. I've never bought into the idea that AI is a bubble because the technology clearly has real world value. I tend to kind of agree with that. But with companies like Uber and Amazon publicly stating their massive spend has garnered uncertain returns, more businesses like allbirds pivoting to AI and celebrities like Tristan Thompson promoting AI related investments. Oh, the old former Cav catches astray. I'm starting to see some.com era parallels. Could AI ultimately prove transformative and profitable, yet still experience a bubble because of excessive spending hype and unrealistic expectations? This is the debate that will never end. And I think for good reason. Throw up my blog post here. I wrote this in 2023. Okay, is an AI stock market bubble inevitable? All right, I was talking about this a long time ago. It's kind of funny because the beginning of that blog post I said as of Wednesday's close, Nvidia had a market cap of 755 billion. Just one day later, the chip maker sported a market cap of 939 billion. We're only about five times from there. Crazy. Here's what Allow myself to quote myself on this blog post. Throw the blog post title back up so people don't have to look at me reading. If it makes us even 50% as productive and efficient as some proponents are predicting, it seems inevitable this will lead to a bubble. We cannot help ourselves when it comes to new and exciting technologies. The creation of fiat currencies and new types of equity investments led to the South Sea bubble in the 1700s. The introduction of trains led to the railway mania of the 1800s. Explosion of new consumer and investment products led to the Roaring twenties. The advent of the Internet led to the dot com bubble in the 1990s. Each of these innovations ended up changing the world in many ways. But the speculation that occurred in the early stages of those innovations led to huge booms and painful busts to get there. There are no guarantees when it comes to financial markets, but human nature is the one constant across all market environments. Okay, take it off. I am conflicted on this one. My new book I wrote, it's basically like 100 years of financial market history and all the bad things that can and will happen. And we certainly are checking off a lot of the boxes, right? Technological innovation, huge Capex boom, tons of speculation Stock charts going vertical, far above average returns. It certainly seems like a bubble is very, very possible. But there's this idea that the old saying is those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it. I also think that there is something to the fact that people who study too much history think that it's going to repeat itself automatically. And one of the things that I've learned from studying stock market history is just that you're almost always surprised at the outcomes. And so I want to keep an open mind here, even though part of my brain is thinking like, come on, this has to be a bubble. It has to just. It's all the hallmarks. Give me a chart here of OpenAI Anthropic, the growth in revenue. The guys on what are your thoughts? Did this last night, so I stole that from them. The growth in revenue is insane. And so here's where I sit on this. I have an open mind about this. Okay. I don't really know how it's going to end. A bubble in a bust would not surprise me. But a great technological innovation that markets are happening faster and speeding up where we just have, I don't know, a run of the mill correction, bear market or a few of them, but the technology continues to power the markets higher. That wouldn't surprise me either. Okay. The whole idea of a bubble, you can do chart off. Cliff Asness once said that the definition of a bubble is like, you can't get to the future based on what the present numbers are saying. And I think there is a situation where we could get to the future and the present kind of makes sense. And all this spending actually does turn into ROI because there's so much demand for AI. Is that my baseline? I don't know. It's too early to say. So I'm just, I'm telling. I'm. What I'm asking people is to have an open mind about this. Strong opinions loosely held. Don't pound the table on this stuff. Okay? I'm talking about AI Bubbles. Everyone in the chat is talking about the Kardashians and Tristan Thompson. I blame Bill Sweet because he's in there too. But yeah, I. I don't have a strong take that this has to be a bubble. I think it certainly can be. All right, but it doesn't have to be. That's kind of where I stand. Okay. All right. We did it. Just me, Tom Hanks style. The clock behind me is broken. I guess I'll fix it. If you have a question for us, come in the live chat. It's blowing up on YouTube. Watch us live on Twitter. Send us an email askthecompoundshowmail.com we love your questions. Anyone who asks a question today is gonna get a signed copy from me of the new book. And guess what? We'll see you next week. Thanks everyone.
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Thanks for listening to Ask the Compound. All opinions expressed by Ben Carlson, Duncan Hill, and any of their guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Ritholtz Wealth Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.
Ask The Compound: “Is an AI Bubble Inevitable?”
Host: Ben Carlson
Date: June 3, 2026
In this solo-hosted episode, Ben Carlson tackles a wide range of listener questions focused primarily on the market mania surrounding AI and potential bubbles forming as investment floods into the space. He also addresses contemporary concerns about index investing and IPOs like SpaceX, navigating retirement bond portfolios, the possible economic impacts of AI-driven job loss, handling obligations to family with poor retirement planning, finding financial balance in your 20s, and whether excessive spending on AI is justifiable or bubble territory. Throughout, Ben brings his classic, no-nonsense style—blending data-driven analysis with accessible, practical advice.
(Starts ~03:07)
Listener Concern: Is SpaceX’s upcoming IPO unfairly dumping shares on index funds due to its low float and financial engineering?
Index Inclusion Dynamics: Ben clarifies that index providers only include the public float in their calculation, not the total market cap—so SpaceX’s IPO won’t immediately force index funds to overload on its stock.
Market Reaction: IPO process will be staggered across indices and will take time. Not all shares are dumped at once, and rule changes have sped up inclusion, but it’s “not as bad as it seems.”
Quote:
“I can't make a financial model that necessarily justifies this valuation, particularly based on current financials... but neither can a VC investing in a Series A.”
— Ben, quoting Ben Thompson, (12:30)
Bottom Line: The perceived risk of being “bagholders” for index funds is overblown, given index rules and delayed inclusion. If you’re a long-term index investor, “I think it’s going to be okay.”
Notable Moment: Ben jokes about SpaceX mining asteroids:
“If Ben Affleck can land at an asteroid in Armageddon, Elon Musk can do it.” (16:10)
(16:25)
Listener scenario: Helping a retiring parent assemble a 60/40 portfolio. How to choose on the bond side? Bond ladder or total bond fund?
Bond Market Insights:
Bond Ladders: Downsides include reinvestment risk, especially in an inverted yield curve. Sometimes not better than ETFs.
Key Takeaway:
(29:21)
(35:33)
(39:55)
(44:17)
On SpaceX/Fearmongering:
“If Ben Affleck can land at an asteroid in Armageddon, Elon Musk can do it.” — Ben, (16:10)
On Bonds:
“I want to take my risk and volatility where I'm being paid for it. And I don't think that happens in the bond market.” — Ben, (28:40)
On AI and White Collar Jobs:
“Until we start seeing some data, I'm not going to like really worry about it that much.” — Ben, (33:50)
On Intervening with In-Laws:
“I would not be the one who brings that up. Because guess what? That gets them thinking… Maybe he can take care of us. No, don't do it.” — Ben, (38:18)
On Financial Perfection in Your 20s:
“You can't have it all figured out in your 20s. You have plenty of time to play catch up.” — Ben, (43:02)
On Bubble Narratives:
“Have an open mind about this. Strong opinions loosely held. Don't pound the table on this stuff.” — Ben, (49:18)
Ben Carlson solo-hosts with a blend of data-backed skepticism, warmth, and straight talk. He’s practical (“keep duration short on bonds, you’re not getting paid to take risk”) and empathetic (“You can’t do it all in your 20s, and that’s OK”), while also pulling from history and pop culture (Armageddon asteroid-landings, wedding registry hacks, and more). He consistently advises patience and realism, balancing respect for innovation with a healthy suspicion of hype.
The episode packs in actionable advice, historical context, and market wisdom—whether you’re nervous about the “next bubble” or just trying to set up your dad’s IRA.