Mad Hedge Technology Alerts!
It is uncommon when private tech companies lash out at the government like they are some kind of whipping boy.
Silicon Valley is so successful - they don’t need to target government policy.
Anger comes in many forms but openly criticizing the government could get you in some hot water in places like China.
Just look at Alibaba founder Jack Ma who was taken out to pasture by the Chinese communist party.
Criticism is usually reserved in Silicon Valley because subsidies and relationships are preserved to fight another day.
Nvidia finally felt it was time to let loose on the disastrous Biden Administration as the chip company gets dragged into politics just like almost everything else in American society.
Nvidia viciously criticized new chip export restrictions that are expected to be announced soon, saying the White House was trying to undercut the incoming Trump administration by imposing last-minute rules.
It’s is arguable that many strategic moves the current administration executes are to stymy the next administration.
Private tech companies are just collateral damage and Nvidia is finding that out the hard way.
The looming changes would cap the sale of US artificial intelligence chips on both a country and company basis — a move that would more tightly limit exports to most of the world.
The extreme ‘country cap’ policy will affect mainstream computers in countries around the world, doing nothing to promote national security but rather pushing the world to alternative technologies.
Nvidia has been the biggest beneficiary of a surge in AI spending over the past two years, helping turn the once-niche company into the world’s most valuable chipmaker. Its shares nearly tripled last year, following a 239% gain in 2023.
Speaking at the CES conference in Las Vegas this week, Huang said he expected Trump to bring less regulation.
I can now say with more certainty that tech stocks appear to be in a bubble and it doesn’t help that an obstructionist government is putting in limits to how much they can sell abroad.
Globalization has accelerated to some extreme that many people and businesses are still having a tough time wrapping their minds around what happened.
Putting a cap on the number of AI chips Nvidia can export will just gift the advantage to another competitor.
The Chinese have never played by the rules with their state subsidies and stealing of intellectual property.
These are several hallmarks of their national heavyweights.
Hamstringing Nvidia is the worst thing the US government could do minus shutting them down completely.
In general, the amount of bureaucratic nonsense, dysfunction, red tape, and needless saber-rattling is starting to hit the bottom line of Silicon Valley.
This could all bring forward a selloff from this tech bubble we are currently in.
Granted, I will acknowledge that the federal government isn’t only targeting the tech sector and the inefficiencies run across a wide swath of the U.S. economy system.
But that doesn’t make it better.
We are priced to the point where AI is guaranteed to become our savior and I would say to hold on because we are nowhere near certainty and there are very few use cases of all this AI data center investment.
We are trading at highs and the government going after Silicon Valley will hasten a sharp selloff in expensive tech stocks.
Don’t play with fire or you’ll be burned.
Mad Hedge Technology Letter
January 8, 2025
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(BUY THE MICROSOFT DIP)
(MSFT)
How will Microsoft grow their stock in 2025?
In short, MSFT are building what the market wants, and what the market wants are AI data centers.
The stock price should be rewarded if they can deliver these new AI data centers to the market.
The data center increase shows no signs of slowing down and I do believe this puts a floor under tech stocks.
To be honest, there has been a lot of bad energy surrounding the current tech business models because many of them are getting stale.
Why upgrade to the next iPhone when there isn’t much of an upgrade?
The refresh cycle data shows people are standing pat and using their own tech longer and that is bad news for tech software and hardware companies.
So instead of trying to squeeze the remaining juice out of a stale model, beefy balance sheet tech companies are driving full force into AI investment even though this investment doesn’t reciprocate with any sort of revenue stream.
It’s a little bit of a build it and it will come mentality which I do believe is quite risky and at some point, we are due for a heavy selloff.
That selloff could get triggered if the US 10-year interest rate blows past 5.5%, then all bets are off.
Microsoft says it plans to spend $80 billion on building AI data centers this year.
Microsoft has poured billions of dollars over the last two years into Anthropic, as well as Elon Musk’s startup xAI.
Advances by these firms would not have been possible without new partnerships founded on large-scale infrastructure investments that serve as the essential foundation of AI innovation and use.
The $80 billion would reflect a significant increase on the $53 billion capex spend Microsoft made in 2023.
Documents leaked last April revealed it had more than 5GW of capacity at its disposal, with plans to add an additional 1.5GW in the first half of 2025. It is possible this has since been revised upwards as it looks to provide compute power to OpenAI to run ChatGPT and its other AI services, as well as supporting its own Azure public cloud platform.
Part of this is definitely the management at OpenAI namely CEO Sam Altman. He is seen as the avant-garde of AI and the leader of the whole movement. He is demanding a massive build out and investors have largely taken him at this word. Nobody has really questioned him and that stems partly from no one really knows where this AI thing is headed in the future, but we are convinced that buckets of data space are needed for whatever comes next.
My issue is what if the thing that comes next is a cataclysmic letdown, then where do tech stocks head?
Most likely they would head for the gutter.
So we give the benefit of the doubt to this gargantuan AI infrastructure build-out and it feels like we are flying blind in a snowstorm, but that is what the market is telling us and the market is always right until it is not.
Sometimes tech does figure it out, and we are really hoping there is something of great value at the end of the build-out.
Buy the dip in MSFT until the AI infrastructure story is killed off.
