Veteran technical analyst Tim Knight, founder of SlopeofHope.com, says precious metals "are going to kick the socks off equities for a long while to come," noting that it might be less that they gain ground than that they hold their status while stocks go in the tank, but he says conditions are ripe for a market downturn, as early as the end of this year after midterm elections. Knight, who acknowledges that he is something of a perma-bear — says he expects the market to be "very, very supportive of all things A.I. until Anthropic is out {with its initial public offering]," at which point it will evaluate the future and whether the expected A.I. spending boom can continue. If there is a misstep at that point and the A.I. revolution slows "it would dwarf the housing crisis if, suddenly, the spigot turned off."
John Cole Scott, president of CEF Advisors — the chairman of the Active Investment Company Alliance — discusses how business-development companies are rebounding from rough times earlier this year when net asset values crumbled as the market worried about too much exposure to parts of the software industry that could be negatively impacted by continued development of artificial intelligence. Scott says that the A.I. risk for BDCs appears overblown, since "We're still not seeing software blowing up BDCs," though he does think it may take another two quarters of data to confirm that trend. Scott also notes that BDCs have not seen "exacerbated losses," meaning the dire forecasts have yet to play out in portfolios.
In the Market Call, Greg Halter, director of research at Carnegie Investment Counsel, talks about buying "Rip van Winkle stocks" and long-term compounders and how hard they are to find in a world dominated by artificial-intelligence hyper-growth stories that could turn out to be a flash in the pan.