“I think the skepticism ultimately is very healthy. It really stops and dampens this bubble from continuing to build.”
Halftime Report · October 2026
Context
Brought in after a skeptical case on AI spending, Talkington agrees a lot of money will be wasted but says the build-out is still early. She argues markets are now rewarding AI spenders that stay cash-flow positive.
Transcript
get Bryn involved. Bryn Talkington think we've fixed your audio. I hope you had a chance to hear that conversation. And if so, what's your reaction to it?
…the skepticism is palpable in this market, which the build out is still early. I think I agree with Steve. He didn't say this specifically, but I think he's getting to this. There's going to be a lot of money wasted with these hyperscalers with everybody. A lot of money will be wasted. But I think
ultimately when you look at Microsoft, they are threading that needle of still spending billions of dollars, tens of billions, while also saying free cash flow positive. You must read the room as a publicly traded company. I mean, Google already looked terrible on the charts. The charts told you before earnings, it was well below the 200-day, that you can't just spend into Infinity. And so I think that we were going to continue to see a separation of all of these companies. But I do think it's early days. I think that skepticism ultimately is very healthy. It really stops and dampens this bubble from continuing to build. But I think with NVIDIA, NVIDIA's about to hit its 200-day. We wanted to bounce off of that. But NVIDIA is building out this ecosystem because they're making billions of dollars every quarter. And so I think Jensen has said this is a 10-year journey. They're building it out. Will all…
I mean, take a look at Microsoft, for example. Let's just, I don't know, six months, guys, if you could in the back, please. Jeffries looks at all these results now that we've gotten everything but NVIDIA. I don't put Apple in that bunch, which reports next week. It's just not the same type of…
look at that chart really quickly. Remember that earlier in the year where it dipped down?
Yeah.
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