The M2 money supply is ~4x higher now than in 1999. Does that indicate there is a lot more runway now, than then, at least on that metric?

Nasdaq is about 8x higher now than then, so 4x higher M2 is tight. Ofc there is always a chance that this time is different and that the markets are genuinely much more efficient :-)

The P/E ratio references "price" and "earnings". Both "price" and "earnings" are denominated using money. So it's not obvious to me how an increase in the money supply should affect this ratio.

BTW, in Shiller's book which was published right as the dot-com bubble popped, he has a chapter listing out similar late 90s structural factors, many of which could lead to permanently higher stock prices in theory.

P/E is not an indicator of available to deployed capital. Just in the EU alone there is about €12 trillion in bank deposits which could be invested. There is no lack of liquid capital to be invested.

Basel capital rules are supposed to mitigate against the insane idea of banks deploying all their capital in a single high risk stock.

If you think you can get all the _public_ to pull their short term bank deposits into stock .. well, (a) you've not met the Germans, and (b) that is how the economy of Albania collapsed in a pyramid scheme.

> Basel capital rules are supposed to mitigate against the insane idea of banks deploying all their capital in a single high risk stock.

At the same time of these companies IPO'ing, they are also trying to bend the rules of the index funds and their markets (Nasdaq,S&P 500) so that they can get listed into these index funds asap.

And when these happens at such obscene levels, what happens is that a very sizable chunk of the S&P will get into these companies (5-10% is a very large number for a single company especially such companies within these index funds IMO)

and their whole plan is that then banks and other investments sitting on cash would then invest in it. Oh by the way, your retirement funds might also be linked to it all.

The fact is that there is a race with multiple companies (SpaceX,Anthropic,OpenAI) all trying to IPO and get listed on the stock markets as soon as possible.

Should be illegal. There should be a cool off period before new stocks get auto added to indexes.

It’s bad but not as bad as it seems. To get these insane valuations companies are selling very low float. A lot of indexes won’t list them at under 10% float and even if they do only at a float multiplier so spacesx as a 100b component (2 billion x 5% float) See this podcast for a better explanation https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-rational-reminder-...

I'm not suggesting the banks invest. But that individuals could withdraw money to invest. All I am saying is there is still lots of 'dry powder' left in the financial system. There is no shortage of liquid cash to invest, only places to put it.

There is the amount of capital which is technically available, and the amount of capital which is available in practice.

If EU depositors want exposure to US AI firms, why didn't they already withdraw their money to invest in Microsoft/Google/etc.? I'm a bit doubtful that an OpenAI IPO is going to trigger major shifts in asset allocation.

> Can public markets go higher? Shiller P/E is closing in on the peak of the dot-com bubble:

Shiller PE is near 44. Japan had an equivalent price to earnings ratio of over 70 during their 1989 bubble.

Hm, wasn't Japan's bubble in part due to easy credit? Are we going to see easy credit in the US given recent memories of inflation?

Quite possible that there will be a Trump effort to drive down rates and abandon inflation control for political reasons.

There already was such an effort but Trump lacks enough federal reserve votes to succeed at present.

The exit strategy is your 401k. SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic are banking on rule changes to indexes that will force retail to buy at elevated premiums. This will likely generate enough artificial demand for insiders to exit before prices correct. At least that’s OpenAI’s plan.

Fortunately for them, the current SEC is highly in favor of short-term market manipulation.