Billionaire hedge-fund manager Ken Griffin sounded a skeptical note on artificial-intelligence stocks, suggesting that some AI companies were overvalued, while hinting at a bright future for those that survive the next market downturn.
"The big picture is, there's almost certainly bubbles within this moment in time, and any radical transformation of our economy is generally intertwined with a bubble," the founder of fund giant Citadel and electronic market maker Citadel Securities said last night.
Griffin drew a parallel with the long-ago frenzy for 19th-century railroad stocks and the more recent dot-com bubble, when investors piled into overvalued flops such as Pets.com-but also incubated future technology giants such as Amazon.
"I just wish I'd kept my Amazon stock from that moment in time," Griffin told an interviewer at Citadel Securities' Future of Global Markets conference. "And the internet, which was the great bubble, could it be more a part of our daily life today than it is?"
In a wide-ranging conversation, Griffin touched on politics and the upcoming midterm elections. Here are some of the takeaways:
-- The Trump administration's tariff battles with U.S. allies have "just been a disaster," Griffin said.
-- Rising Treasury yields are the market's warning to the next Congress about the government's debt burden: "The bond market is telling the House and Senate you need to start to put the fiscal house in order," Griffin said.