SEPTEMBER
There is fear brewing that the equity markets will possibly crash in October allowing gold prices to spike.
Tech speculation is being blamed especially investment in AI - bubble ready to burst seems to be the growing consensus.
Payment processing company Stripe will put up $8 billion in cash and stock to take over OpenRouter, a startup that allows companies to switch among various AI models to find the one that is cheapest or best suited to a particular need.
The purchase is Stripe’s largest to date.
The U.S. treasury’s pledge to purchase $4b in U.S. notes & long-dated bonds has failed to impress investors. Bond prices ticked up briefly after 18 Aug, but fell & yields rose again the following day.
Prices too low for 30-year U.S. bonds,” Jim Caron of Morgan Stanley noted.
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The AI industry’s borrowing spree has spread to the traditionally conservative Swiss bond market, where AI-related businesses are issuing billions of francs worth of debt to continue data centers’ global buildout.
The companies also have issued bonds denominated in Australian and Canadian dollars, British sterling, euros, and yen as they plan ever-larger capital budgets.
A rapidly worsening, financing doom loop is in progress. The US Treasury issues new debt; the Fed backstops the funding.
The Treasury then buys back older debt to smooth the market… and repeat.
Without this loop, debt auctions fail, yields spike, stock market melts down - GM.
Goldman Sachs will buy LCN Capital Partners, a real estate investment company that manages about $3b in assets.
The investment bank will pay $250m immediately & as much as an additional $150m if performance targets are met. About 80% of the price will be paid in Goldman stock.
China’s top tech stock index has returned 29% this year through 18 Aug, more than twice the NASDAQ’s 12.4%.
The 50 largest and most-traded stocks on the Star index are showing a collective price-to earnings ratio of 150, almost four times more than NASDAQ’s 35, the FT reported.