Is the AI stock boom a dot-com-style bubble? David Rosenberg, Jeremy Siegel, and 5 other experts weigh in.

• Experts including David Rosenberg and analysts from Wall Street banks including Bank of America have compared the AI stock boom to the dot-com bubble that burst in 2000.

• At the same time, Wharton’s Jeremy Siegel and Wedbush Securities’ Dan Ives don’t think that will be the case.

• Here’s a selection of the most recent expert views on this year’s AI stock boom.

The stunning rally in artificial intelligence-related stocks this year surprised even equity bulls, but its breakneck speed and the investor frenzy around AI are inviting some unflattering comparisons to the late-1990s dot-com bubble.

Market pundits including veteran economist David Rosenberg and experts from Wall Street names such as Bank of America, UBS and TAM Asset Management have likened the surge in AI tech shares to the boom in internet-related stocks toward the end of the 20th century – which eventually ended with the market crash of 2000.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 index has jumped 39% so far this year, fueled mainly by massive rallies in AI-related stocks such as Nvidia, Alphabet and Microsoft. Nvidia surged a stunning 192%, prompting some commentary suggesting the stock may be overvalued.

But not everyone thinks the AI stock boom has run too far. Wharton professor Jeremy Siegel has said he doesn’t see the hype around the sector as a bubble and Tradier CEO Dan Raju told Insider that “the talk around an AI bust is unfounded at this stage.”

Here’s a selection of the latest expert views on the surge in artificial intelligence-related shares.

Michael Hartnett, Bank of America 

Michael Hartnett, BofA Global Research’s CIO, said AI is in a “baby bubble” for now and noted that “AI = internet.”

Asset bubbles, whether they’re in the “right things” such as the internet or the “wrong things” like housing, are always started by easy money and are ended by the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate hikes, he said.

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James Penny, TAM Asset Management

James Penny, the firm’s CIO, said “companies that even mention the word AI in their earnings are seeing boosts to their share price” and that “smells very much like the dot-com era.”

“I think the market has got a little bit over its skis. I’d put much larger odds on it coming down from here,” he told Bloomberg.

Art Cashin, UBS

“I think AI is going to be a new mini-version of the dot-com,” UBS’s Art Cashin told CNBC. “Everything you hear, it’s going to have an AI inflection, everything from new drugs and medicine, to predictive natures of all types. This is going to be interesting.”

David Rosenberg, Rosenberg Research 

“This type of corporate behavior is not too different from what took place in the dot-com bubble, with company after company satisfying investors’ appetite for news on how it plans to incorporate the internet into its business — or boosting stocks just because they added ‘.com’ to the name,” veteran economist David Rosenberg wrote.

Dan Ives, Wedbush Securities

Wedbush’s Dan Ives strongly disagrees that tech stocks are on the verge of a dot-com-like asset bubble or collapse given their valuations. He thinks the sector is set for a”1995 moment” similar to the boom that followed the advent of the internet.

“With massive cost cutting across the tech sector the last 9 months, stable enterprise spending, and a resilient consumer, we believe the stage is set for a ‘1995 moment’ as AI is the most transformational technology we have seen since the Internet started to take shape,” he wrote. 

Jeremy Siegel, Wharton finance professor

The retired Wharton finance professor doesn’t see the AI hype as a bubble, either. During the dot-com era, there were “tremendous valuations from companies that had no earnings,” he said.

Dan Raju, Tradier CEO

Dan Raju, the fintech and brokerage firm’s CEO, said it’s wrong to look at the adoption of AI as similar to the dot-com bubble.

“In 1999, company valuations and crazy P/E ratios were based on completely unproven theories of immediate realizations around the internet by companies that never materialized,” he wrote in emailed comments to Insider.

By contrast, “in 2023, we are seeing the realizations of AI benefits “right-here, right-now” by companies. The adoption curve is still at its inception, but the P/E ratio of companies are still in the sphere of reason.”

Read the original article on Business Insider