The AI Bubble Is Here. Why You Can Still Play the Stocks. --

来源: 2025-10-07 13:11:59 [旧帖] [给我悄悄话] 本文已被阅读:


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Dow Jones NewsOct 7, 8:09 PM UTC
DJ The AI Bubble Is Here. Why You Can Still Play the Stocks. -- Barrons.com

By Teresa Rivas

 

We are already in an artificial-intelligence bubble, but that doesn't mean the AI trade is over, Seaport Global says.

 

The very existence of the bubble is up for debate, with tech bulls arguing that AI's transformative power means that the sector is worth the price. But the stellar run for Nasdaq Composite and tech in general looks eerily familiar to those who lived through the dot-com era's boom and bust.

 

Seaport Global analyst Jay Goldberg is firmly in the bubble camp. But he say there's still time to profit despite a frothy market.

 

"Boil down all the news and at the heart of everything the AI spend is driven by six companies: Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI and Oracle," he writes. "That's the ball game...Critically, none of those six are generating anywhere near a real rate of return on their investment."

 

That in and of itself isn't a bad thing, he admits, and will look prudent if AI does prove as revolutionary as quickly as proponents believe. Yet the amount of investment seems unsustainable, he says, with players like Oracle taking on debt to keep up: In September alone it issued $18 billion in bonds to fund its AI efforts -- leverage that could pay off big or become a major liability should things turn south.

 

Even if a downturn does come to pass, that likely won't happen for some time to come, given the high stakes and fat wallets involved. That means investors don't have to sit on the sidelines, Goldberg says.

 

"Bubbles can last a long time, and there are ways to make money in the short term, even if longer-term concerns merit caution," he writes.

 

Luckily there are plenty of options to do so even beyond the core AI names of Nvidia, Broadcom, Advanced Micro Devices, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing.

 

Goldberg only covers a fraction of the AI universe, and doesn't have ratings on all the potential players. Still, he notes there are some standouts along the AI chain.

 

Memory stocks are clear beneficiaries, he notes: Micron, SK Hynix, and Samsung Electronics all supply High Bandwidth Memory (HBM), a critical component of AI math. So are storage makers like Western Digital, Seagate Technology, SanDisk, and NetApp.

 

Server makers are another important group, and the most obvious play here is the controversial Super Micro Computer, along with some big U.S. names like Dell Technologies and Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

 

Goldberg is on the fence about including semiconductor makers on the list. While chips are a critical part of the AI chain, he's not sure that the business cycles are synced: "So saying that ASML, Applied Materials, Lam Research and KLA are AI stories is a bit of stretch, but AI is definitely one of many important drivers of their business."

 

NeoCloud companies that operate the data centers like CoreWeave, Nebius, Oracle and White Fiber "are all now heavily levered to the AI trade and may offer some upside in the near term despite longer term concerns over their business models," he writes.

 

Write to Teresa Rivas at teresa.rivas@barrons.com

 

This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

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October 07, 2025 16:09 ET (20:09 GMT)

 
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