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RA Robert Armstrong US financial commentator for the Financial Times and author of the Unhedged newsletter, covering markets, the Federal Reserve, inflation and Treasury yields.

“We are still laboring under, all of us, the single great uncertainty, which is what is the return on investment on these immense investments being made in AI. Nobody really knows the answer. And anybody who does tell you they know the answer is trying to sell you something. If the revenue and profit eventually appears, all the stuff we're worrying about now, the circular financing and the anxiety and the valuations and Jensen Huang's love affairs, will slip into memory and we will be okay. If, on the other hand, the money doesn't materialize, nothing will save us.”

Prof G Markets · Money & Markets · November 2026

“We are still laboring under, all of us, the single great uncertainty, which is what is the return on investment on these immense investments being made in AI. Nobody really knows the answer. And anybody who does tell you they know the answer is trying to sell you something. If the revenue and profit eventually appears, all the stuff we're worrying about now, the circular financing and the anxiety and the valuations and Jensen Huang's love affairs, will slip into memory and we will be okay. If, on the other hand, the money doesn't materialize, nothing will save us.” — Robert Armstrong, Prof G Markets

Context

Ed Elson asked what the market's wild swings, a sharp sell-off one week and a rally the next, are telling us. Armstrong says it all comes down to one unanswered question about AI returns, which makes the Nvidia scandal a side issue.

Transcript

Prof G Markets Around 21:28 into the episode
Speaker 4

Last Thursday was scary.

Speaker 1

Yeah. But now it seems maybe not. I mean, what do you think? What are investors? What are the markets telling us?

Speaker 4

We are still laboring under, all of us, the single great uncertainty, which is what is the return on investment on these immense investments being made in AI. This involves the most important companies in the market. Nobody really knows the answer. And anybody who does tell you they know the answer is trying to sell you something. So as we've said, I think we've talked about together before. If the revenue and profit eventually appears, all the stuff we're worrying about now and the circular financing and the anxiety and the valuations and, you know, Jensen Huang? love affairs and everything else will slip into memory and we will be okay. If, on the other hand, the money doesn't realize, nothing will save us, right? But we don't have the information and it is very normal for a market operating under a very large uncertainty like that to vacillate like the one we are living in right now. That's point number one. Point number two, as I've said a tiresomely infinite number of times on your show, the longer-term trend on the market is sideways. We're stalled since May. Right. And so again, About like you'd expect. We don't know what's going on. We're kind of frozen in place, dear in the headlights. There has been some moves in the market towards diversification. That's a good sign. Some sectors have moved up that are far from AI. People are hedging…

Speaker 1

What was that sell-off last week? Because it seemed to be a reaction to the election. My takeaway is we had essentially a referendum on data centers. Americans said we don't like them. A lot of these data center proposals lost. And I think a lot of investors are thinking, oh, so the data center…

Speaker 4

The answer to both of your questions is yes. So starting with your last question, is there fundamental, something fundamental pre-existing? Yes. Risk appetite in markets has gone down. You can see that in, as we may have discussed before, you can see that in investors moving back to the safety of…

Speaker 1

Right.

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

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