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JM John Mowrey On Prof G Markets

“I actually would argue that maybe the tech bubble back in the late 90s, peaking in March of 2000, may have been the biggest gift that we could have ever given the AI boom today, because I think what that did is it created some guardrails. Everyone is worried about, are we in '99?”

Prof G Markets · Money & Markets · October 2026

“I actually would argue that maybe the tech bubble back in the late 90s, peaking in March of 2000, may have been the biggest gift that we could have ever given the AI boom today, because I think what that did is it created some guardrails. Everyone is worried about, are we in '99?” — John Mowrey, Prof G Markets

Ed Elson had argued that the AI bubble, if there is one, sits mostly in private markets, where labs seek $1.5 to $2 trillion valuations. Guest John Mowrey answered that the memory of the dot-com crash keeps public investors wary.

Transcript

Prof G Markets Around 06:42 into the episode
John Mowrey

…to be next year, if we knew exactly, you know, where the 10-year yield was going to top out, then that would be repriced quickly in the markets. So I think that these dislocations are what provide the opportunity, particularly as we look out in the back half or in the back quarter of the year.

Ed Elson

…to the downsides of the AI trade going wrong, more so than a lot of the names that we're talking about, like NVIDIA, for example, but they're being treated differently as if the risks don't exist. So I guess your reactions to my sort of theory of where the bubble actually is, do you agree with me?

John Mowrey

Yeah, I think the private market, I'll answer this in kind of two ways. The first point on the public side, you know, I actually would argue that maybe the tech bubble back in the late 90s and in peaking in March of 2000, maybe been the biggest gift that we could have ever given the AI boom today, because I think what that did, Ed, is it created some guardrails. I mean, everyone is worried about are we in 99? I mean, the number of times I see this on X or people, you know, guessing, are

Speaker 1

we in the 98? Are we in 99? Are we in March of 2000? So I think when you have so many people that are investigating, is there circular financing? Has the bubble, you know, formed or is this just a boom that has much longer legs to go? So I think that the tech bubble provided almost kind of a…

John Mowrey

carry additional risk because of the opaque nature of those setups. And, you know, I really am curious and would like to see Open AI and Anthropic come public because I think that that will provide a lot more clarity to the markets. And so I think that will be another important data point for said.…

Ed Elson

Yeah, I mean, Anthropic is supposed to go public next month. My prediction is that I think they're going to struggle a lot because it does seem that public markets investors are actually quite discerning right now and they are concerned. They look back at 99 and they say, what are the similarities?…

Speaker names from our own diarization · position estimated from where the line sits in the episode

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