Quick Read – Marks rates NVDA as high-probability long-term but compares private AI startups to lottery tickets, while AMZN and fellow hyperscalers offer real cash flows and moats. – Hyperscalers are committing over $600 billion to AI capex in 2026 as the Shiller CAPE at 42…
rrors the dot-com peak of 44. – Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Amazon didn’t make the cut. Grab the names FREE today
Although the AI buildout has minted trillions in fresh market value across Wall Street, Howard Marks thinks buyers of these stocks are kidding themselves about what they actually own. On a recent Prof G Markets appearance, Oaktree Capital co-founder Marks laid out a spectrum running from “analytical investing in prosaic, understandable companies” to “speculative investing in futuristic companies that can’t be described at all.” Most of today’s AI darlings, he argued, sit much closer to the speculative end than buyers want to admit. Speculation, in his telling, is forecasting without honestly accounting for the probability that your forecast is wrong.
Analysis is grounded in cash flow you can actually model. For more context on how this cycle compares with prior buildouts, see our earlier piece on the AI capex boom and its historical parallels. What’s particularly notable is the valuation backdrop he is working against.