DT

Dan Toscano

Things Dan Says on Podcasts

Where to Find Them

Dan Toscano has been a guest on Thoughts on the Market (2 times) .

Recently: “A Credit Perspective on the AI Buildout” on Thoughts on the Market (November 2026); “A Revolution in Credit Markets” on Thoughts on the Market (January 2026).

What They Said

“If it slows down relative to someone's ambitions, it doesn't really create a problem in my mind. All it means is gratification delayed. … Once you put a shovel in the ground, and by shovel I mean dollars, time is money.” — Dan Toscano, Thoughts on the Market

Asked how credit markets would handle a slowdown in AI capex, Dan Toscano says missing management's ambitions is not the danger. The risk is money already committed to a construction site, which assumes an environment friendly to building data centers.

Thoughts on the Market · 2026-11-05 Permalink → Listen →
Thoughts on the Market Around 04:08 into the episode
Dan Toscano

…finance and structured credit is not a new phenomenon. How and when does cash get dispersed and who controls those decisions? So you can protect yourself that if something's going wrong, you don't have cash hemorrhaging out of the system uncontrollably. Things like that, they really matter. You

Vishy Tirupattur

…is people or power availability, cost of capital, or, you know, potential policy constraints, you know, some sort of a slowdown in AI CapEx is viewed rather cautiously by the equity markets. How do you think credit markets will handle a slowdown for any number of reasons in the pace of CapEx spend?

Dan Toscano

Yeah. Well, I mean, I think the pace of CapEx spend gets measured against companies' ambitions, not anything else. It's we see an opportunity, we would like to take advantage of that opportunity. In order to do so, we need to build capacity, right? So what happens? Client says, I want this thing built yesterday, not in a week. Okay. So if it slows down relative to someone's ambitions, it doesn't really create a problem in my mind. All it means is gratification delayed. So I think this can speed up. I think it can slow down as fast as people are comfortable. And when I say people, I mean investors putting capital behind management teams. But I also think management teams feeling comfortable that they can control what they're doing. And when they're building capacity, if they're buying chips or selling chips or trafficking in compute, they can speed up or slow…

Vishy Tirupattur

So last question for you, Dan. I know you're a big UConn basketball fan. Other than the UConn basketball team prospects, what keeps you up at night in the context of AI financing?

Dan Toscano

Yeah, look, I mean, AI keeps a lot of people up at night. It doesn't keep me up at night. What keeps me up at night is UI.

Vishy Tirupattur

U of I, University of Illinois, Fighting Illini, ranked number three ahead of UConn. May I remind you?

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.
“When you're deploying trillions of dollars of capital in a way that has never been deployed in our lifetimes, there are bound to be air pockets.” — Dan Toscano, Thoughts on the Market

Asked how he sees the AI capex thesis and the role credit markets play in it, Dan Toscano of Morgan Stanley's investment banking division says nothing in 2026 has surprised him. He adds that the debate has moved from how AI works to what it is worth.

Thoughts on the Market · 2026-11-05 Permalink → Listen →
Thoughts on the Market Around 00:35 into the episode
Vishy Tirupattur

…on the role that credit markets will play in enabling that transformation. So anyway, we cut it, we are talking about trillions of dollars of capex involved in the context of AI Buildout out. How are you thinking about the AI CapEx thesis and the role that the credit markets are playing?

Dan Toscano

And every time I talk to you, the numbers go up. These numbers continue to expand. The opportunity set continues to expand for our clients. And I would say that nothing surprised me of what we've seen over the course of 2026. This is not simple and this is not easy. And there are, as our CEO likes to say, known unknowns. And they factor heavily in the sentiment of investors. And when you're deploying trillions of dollars of capital in a way that has never been deployed in our lifetimes, there are bound to be air pockets. And it just keeps getting bigger and bigger. And it's interesting to me that a lot of the discussion out in the marketplace these days has moved a little bit away from what is this and how does it work to what's the value proposition. And I think ultimately that's the biggest question. And credit investors are asking that question in the form of trying to understand what can go wrong. It's the…

Vishy Tirupattur

The markets are really questioning the return on the invested capital, how soon the returns will get realized, and monetization is a key word here. But at the back of this, we see that the level of rates has increased pretty meaningfully. Spreads are widened. So overall borrowing costs for issuers…

Dan Toscano

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot to unpack there. But look, I would say this, on the topic of, you know, what is the return, what is the value proposition, I've heard really two schools of thought from the marketplace. One is we think the return value proposition is high. And you've done some work on…

Vishy Tirupattur

In all my years of talking to you and learning from you, the one thing that's always stood out for me is details matter, especially when we talk about leveraged credit. In the context of AI financing in the leveraged credit market or the broader credit market, what type of details matter?

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

Collections They Appear In

Money & Markets