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AI Companies Are Trying to Hide a Staggering Amount of Debt

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211–220 of 407 posts

Re: AI Companies Are Trying to Hide a Staggering Amount of Debt

#211
post #4
post #2

It won't pay off if LLMs efficiency gets good enough to make those data centers obsolete. It's a huge gamble.

Wouldn't improving LLM efficiency make them even more useful across the board, then they can enjoy the nice economies of scale? The plan is to have LLM working completely autonomously, in that case, the more resources you have, the better. Perhaps people will use local LLM to ask questions, or coders use them for their personal projects, but that's not where the real money is.

If apple puts an inference SOC in their phone, the datacenters are all dead.

Re: AI Companies Are Trying to Hide a Staggering Amount of Debt

#212
post #2

It won't pay off if LLMs efficiency gets good enough to make those data centers obsolete. It's a huge gamble.

How about we regulate private corporations so they can't take a "gamble" that's equivalent to a private company giving everyone ferraris on the idea that they will eventually all become formula 1 drivers and give back 10x the ferrari's cost?

Even better, that "gamble" will have to be rescued by taxpayer money.

Re: AI Companies Are Trying to Hide a Staggering Amount of Debt

#213
post #107
post #23

Are they really "trying to hide" this debt? I think it's pretty common knowledge that a lot of these companies are using debt/bonds for funding. The debt not showing up where the author wants is a reporting formality not an attempt to hide it.

It's an interesting counter to the efficient market hypothesis. "Everybody" knows about this debt. It's in the most public news outlets there are, and the word has been getting around. It's about as secret as Taylor Swift's concert schedules. Any serious investor knows about this debt. And yet... the companies do this because it works. If they held this debt on balance sheet, the sensible assumption is that their sto…

> In an era where AIs move millions upon millions of dollars around because of some blip of a headline somewhere [...] I'm not sure what's broken.

I think there is some sort of collective collusion. Like a school of fish moving. If there is an external stimuli the price can rise or fall eventhough it doesn't make sense from a 10y dividend perspective.

Re: AI Companies Are Trying to Hide a Staggering Amount of Debt

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

During the dot-com crisis. Nasdaq fell around 78% from its peak and S&P by around 49% so it isn't unprecedented (ironically has both aspects of being both tech and are within the same time-era) It created an actual recession albeit thankfully short one for the case of dotcom (sadly not for 2007) and a really recessionary environment which causes unemployment and just straight up fear and panic. I do understand what y…

> (supposing that they had their investments in stocks, I wouldn't consider that any retiree would have all their money in stocks but there have been some other comments which show a sizable amount, @kipchak's comment shows 50% stock for retirement. so a 50% shock on top of that could lead to a wipe out of 25% of your retirement fund which is honestly still pretty crazy.) What do you think the cost would be for prote…

They are probably not going to be implemented using long put positions, but a product with a similar return profile to what you're looking for is a buffered ETF. Basically, over a defined period, you agree to a maximum possible downside in exchange for a capped upside. They are available in ETF form from a number of providers.

For example, you could have an S&P 500 fund that, over the next year, will have a maximum of 0% capital losses (it can't go down), you will only get the first, say, 5% of gains that the equity index makes. So if stocks go up 20% the next year, your return is capped at 5%, but if they crash 50%, you don't absorb any capital losses. In practice, the return cap is going to be just a bit above the corresponding Treasury bill for the same duration.

These can be constructed in various different ways and institutionally I'm sure there are more bespoke ways that are more efficient from a fees/returns and tax perspective, but one way to do this on your own without going the ETF route is:

- Pick an amount you'd like to invest. - Buy a Treasury bill for some duration. Treasury bills are discounted at the time of purchase and return the target amount when the bill matures. For instance, if you buy a $100k 1-year Treasury bill, it might cost $96.5k today. - Now you have $3.5k in your pocket and a guarantee that you'll get $100k in a year when the bill matures. Use that $3.5k now to purchase call options or vertical spreads on the S&P 500 index to capture the upside that you can. Your return is limited by the structure of that options trade and what its maximum payoff is.

If you're willing to accept more than 0% downside, then you can achieve a higher potential upside cap as well.

Re: AI Companies Are Trying to Hide a Staggering Amount of Debt

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes of course life insurance and pension funds are going to buy this debt. This is the highest quality debt that's out there. If you don't want life insurance and pension funds to buy debt from big tech companies because you believe it's too risky, then you believe that bonds are just too risky in general.

OK, wait a minute. Elsewhere in this discussion, people are saying that only a few of these AI companies are going to survive. For stocks, that can still be a reasonable investment - low odds, but still a positive expectation value - but for bonds, it's terrible . You're paying me single-digit interest when there's only a 20% chance that you live long enough to give me my principle back? Get outta here. Literally nob…

If big tech bonds are a terrible deal for investors at 8%, then Google or OpenAI is getting a screaming deal by raising debt at that rate. Saying nobody should be investing in these bonds is very similar to saying that big tech should raise more debt.

Re: AI Companies Are Trying to Hide a Staggering Amount of Debt

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

most don't even have 3-5 years "spending money" (whatever that is) in total savings; if you're keeping that in cash you're getting 2-3% annually while the market has doubled.

When you're headed into retirement, one possibility is to shift to saving more in cash-like options instead of a 401k (or whatever). It's should just be part of your retirement plan to account for possibilities like this.

And lose the tax advantages? That's crazy

Re: AI Companies Are Trying to Hide a Staggering Amount of Debt

#217
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even someone close to retirement doesn't need to go 100% bonds. It's not like someone needs all their retirement money on day 1. The part that remains in equities will continue generating dividends that will get reinvested, and recover over time.

100% of anything is a bad idea if you're going to have to draw on them any time soon. Bonds are less volatile than equity, but they're still subject to drops in value.

Sure, but a mistake I often see is people thinking that people's entire retirement savings is needed on the first day of retirement. People can and should still be invested in equities even in retirement, it's just the percentage is less depending on age and burn rate.

Re: AI Companies Are Trying to Hide a Staggering Amount of Debt

#218
If I were nearing retirement and had a decent pension pot where I could control it in fine detail...I would be diversifying away from tech stocks and holding some cash for immediate needs. There probably won't be much time when it unravels...I wouldn't be over exposed to the Nasdaq 100, for instance. Although you could probably pick some AI safe companies out of it.

The real problem will be figuring out where all this debt is

Re: AI Companies Are Trying to Hide a Staggering Amount of Debt

#219

If I were nearing retirement and had a decent pension pot where I could control it in fine detail...I would be diversifying away from tech stocks and holding some cash for immediate needs. There probably won't be much time when it unravels...I wouldn't be over exposed to the Nasdaq 100, for instance. Although you could probably pick some AI safe companies out of it. The real problem will be figuring out where all thi…

The problem is 1) the Nasdaq 100 is where the majority of gains are coming from, and 2) it very well might be another 3+ years before anything unravels, if it unravels at all.

If you're truly at retirement, absolutely cycle out. But if you're still young and trying to maximize portfolio growth, it's not obvious that a non-tech strategy would yield better returns.

Re: AI Companies Are Trying to Hide a Staggering Amount of Debt

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (supposing that they had their investments in stocks, I wouldn't consider that any retiree would have all their money in stocks but there have been some other comments which show a sizable amount, @kipchak's comment shows 50% stock for retirement. so a 50% shock on top of that could lead to a wipe out of 25% of your retirement fund which is honestly still pretty crazy.) What do you think the cost would be for prote…

They are probably not going to be implemented using long put positions, but a product with a similar return profile to what you're looking for is a buffered ETF . Basically, over a defined period, you agree to a maximum possible downside in exchange for a capped upside. They are available in ETF form from a number of providers. For example, you could have an S&P 500 fund that, over the next year, will have a maximum…

This is exactly what I was looking for, thank you for taking the time to reply!
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