Michael Batnik
Director of Research at Ritholtz Wealth Management · Co-host of The Compound and Friends podcast
aka Michael Batnick
“Somebody said to Gavin, I hear what you're saying. Every telecom company that laid the fiber optic cables for the Internet was saying the exact same thing that they have demand for.”
“It's recursive, I think it's a circle. It's around and around we go... You're talking about a $2 trillion IPO. Even if you allow 10% of shares to be sold. Think about how much new cash that is. What does that cash do? It finances the construction of new McMansions. Probably Ferraris. More Rolexes. Tons of stock market activity. Tons of wealth management activity. Fee related stuff. Maybe starting new companies with that money. Like it's just, it's so recursive... I don't know what breaks the cycle. Obviously a stock market crash would do it. Barring that, I just don't know where it ends.”
“SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic are estimated to surpass all of the money raised in [1998-2000]... in 1998 the US IPOs raised $34 billion, then 65, then 65 the year later.”
“If this is a top, this would be with the benefit of hindsight the most obvious top we've ever seen.”
Michael Batnik
One-line summary: Ritholtz Wealth Director of Research; co-hosts The Compound and Friends. Tracked for thesis-testing host framing on AI-bubble durability — surfaces the dotcom-fiber-buildout analogy as the bear case.
What they're known for
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Said
Speaker-attributed claims extracted from diarized sources. Each bullet mirrors one entry in quotes: frontmatter — keep them in sync.
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On ai-capex-to-power-and-materials-cascade:
"Somebody said to Gavin, I hear what you're saying. Every telecom company that laid the fiber optic cables for the Internet was saying the exact same thing that they have demand for." — 2026-05-20-podcast-the-compound-and-friends-it-s-a-wave-not-a-bubble-nvidia-preview-google-s (2026-05-20)
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On spacex-ipo-index-inclusion-mechanic:
"It's recursive, I think it's a circle. It's around and around we go... You're talking about a $2 trillion IPO. Even if you allow 10% of shares to be sold. Think about how much new cash that is. What does that cash do? It finances the construction of new McMansions. Probably Ferraris. More Rolexes. Tons of stock market activity. Tons of wealth management activity. Fee related stuff. Maybe starting new companies with that money. Like it's just, it's so recursive... I don't know what breaks the cycle. Obviously a stock market crash would do it. Barring that, I just don't know where it ends." — 2026-05-22-podcast-the-compound-and-friends-memory-is-a-bubble-nvidia-s-blow-out-quarter (2026-05-22)
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On spacex-ipo-passive-shortfall-to-equal-weight-rerate:
"SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic are estimated to surpass all of the money raised in [1998-2000]... in 1998 the US IPOs raised $34 billion, then 65, then 65 the year later." — 2026-05-26-podcast-the-compound-and-friends-spacex-ipo-with-rupert-mitchell-consumer (2026-05-26)
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On spacex-ipo-post-listing-entry-timing:
"If this is a top, this would be with the benefit of hindsight the most obvious top we've ever seen." — 2026-05-26-podcast-the-compound-and-friends-spacex-ipo-with-rupert-mitchell-consumer (2026-05-26)
Sources
- 2026-05-20-podcast-the-compound-and-friends-it-s-a-wave-not-a-bubble-nvidia-preview-google-s
- 2026-05-22-podcast-the-compound-and-friends-memory-is-a-bubble-nvidia-s-blow-out-quarter
- 2026-05-26-podcast-the-compound-and-friends-spacex-ipo-with-rupert-mitchell-consumer
Related
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