Alan Kohler
š¤ SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
trying to squeeze the other out.
That's right.
The US stock market is at a record high and has been kind of shooting the lights out.
It's about 5% higher than it was before the war began.
The Australian market is lower, so it's not doing as well.
But the reason the Wall Street's up so much is simply because of AI.
I mean, this war is coinciding with an absolutely incredible...
burst of usage of AI.
I mean, it's genuine.
It's not just sort of market froth.
What we're seeing is an incredible, you'd have to say it's a third wind, not second, because there have been two bursts of it since ChatGPT was launched at the end of 2022.
But now we're seeing companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, which owns Claude, seeing massive increases in their revenue because everyone's using AI all the time.
Well, they're just saying that the positives of AI are overwhelming the negatives of the war.
And the positives are not just confined to the AI companies, although they're the ones leading the way for sure, but also the other companies are seeing their profits upgraded by analysts because of the increase in productivity that's now expected from AI.
So it's kind of this incredible boom going on that's not just affecting the AI companies, but basically the markets, investors, are expecting all companies to start making tonnes more money because of AI.
No, of course, no one's immune from it, but the AI is sort of this separate thing going on where it's a boom in the use of AI that is kind of separate to the increase in energy costs caused by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
I mean, and the other thing that's going on, of course, is that the energy companies, the oil companies and gas companies are all making tonnes of money because of the increase in the price.
So two sectors of the stock market are booming and,
and seeing their profits upgraded, energy and AI.
Well, what we've seen over the past few decades really is that every time the market falls, when there's a real serious problem, governments and central banks step in.