Why Bessent Tried To Rescue The Bond Market (And Failed)

Ed Elson is joined by Robert Armstrong to break down what’s been happening in the bond market and what he makes of Scott Bessent’s intervention. Then, Deirdre Bosa joins the show to unpack how OpenAI’s agents went rogue and whether or not it raises larger concerns for the industry. Finally, Ed shares his thoughts on the recent SaaS rally and what he thinks we can learn from it. Robert Armstrong is the US financial commentator for the Financial Times and author of the Unhedged Newsletter. Deirdre Bosa is the founder of DB Live. Subscribe to the Prof G Markets Youtube Channel Check out our latest Prof G Markets newsletter Follow Prof G Markets on Instagram Follow Ed on Instagram, X and Substack Follow Scott on Instagram Send us your questions or comments by emailing [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 1:43Speaker 02

  Money markets. If money is evil, then that building is hell.

• 1:53Ed Elson?

  Welcome to Prof G Markets. I'm Ed Elson. It is September 1st. Let's check in on yesterday's market vitals. The major indices declined as the US and Iran exchanged fire for the first time in a month. Brent crude climbed, the yield on 10-year treasuries rose, and finally, Amazon shares fell nearly 3% as the FTC sued the company, claiming it overcharged advertisers. Okay, what else is happening? Two men in Washington are pulling the bond markets in opposite directions. At the Federal Reserve's July press conference, Fed Chair Kevin Warsh said that he would keep withholding forward guidance. The 30-year jumped and kept climbing,

• 2:35Ed Elson?

  eventually passing 5.3%, its highest level in nearly 20 years. Warsh had argued that investors should trade based on the economy rather than the Fed's forecasts. The central bank, he said, is quote, "trying not to interfere with that market signal." But then, a couple weeks ago, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent did exactly that. He announced that the government would quote "at least double the size of its debt buybacks," raising the cap per operation from $2 billion to more than $4 billion. The goal was to support liquidity and put downward pressure on long-term borrowing costs. That same day, the Treasury reported that the national debt had crossed $40 trillion for the first time ever. Yields initially fell before climbing

• 3:17Ed Elson?

  back up. So here to join us to discuss the bond markets, to discuss Bessent's intervention, and what Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh might think of all of this, we're speaking with our friend Robert Armstrong, US Financial Commentator for the Financial Times and author of the Unhedged newsletter. Bob, great to see you. Just so you know, we have been off on vacation for two weeks, so we haven't been reading or covering any of this. We leave for two weeks and then suddenly the bond markets have perhaps their most chaotic couple of weeks in recent memory.

• 3:51Robert Armstrong?

  I mean, you go away just for a little while and look what happens. So thanks a lot.

• 3:56Ed Elson?

  So we're going to need to back up a little bit and get your summary of what actually happened here from Bessent's intervention and then to Kevin Warsh giving what seems to be a little bit more of a hawkish stance in his Jackson Hole speech. What's going on with interest rates? What's going on in the debt markets as well?

• 4:15Robert Armstrong?

  Let's start with Bessent's intervention. I'm struggling to remember the exact date, but what he did was buy bonds, US Treasury bonds, in a somewhat unusual way. There is a normal action that the Treasury takes called buybacks, which is an effort to keep the Treasury market operating smoothly. And they do this because as treasuries get older, as they sit in the market longer, they become harder to trade. It's like an old issue with a weird interest rate and there's not that much of it around. And so on a very regular

• 4:58Robert Armstrong?

  basis, it's been normal for a couple of years for the Treasury to go into the market, buy the old ones and replace them with new ones. So taking out the stuff that's hard to trade and replacing it with brand new liquid stuff that trades easily. What Bessent did that is different is he did it off schedule and then promised to do even more of it off schedule. So what is normally an operation that can be legitimately described as an effort to make the plumbing work better, or in you know, in kind of financiers to improve liquidity, looked very transparently to everyone in the world like an effort to prop up the price

• 5:43Robert Armstrong?

  of bonds by buying them. There was also some comments that perhaps in the future, the Treasury would use the Treasury's general account for these kinds of operations, which would be kind of new. The Treasury general account is the Treasury's checking account. Basically, it's where your tax dollars go and where the spending comes out of. And that was like, whoa, he's going to use the general account. So it was an attempt to shock the market and get a stronger bid for bonds. And it didn't really work. And so, and the thing about these kind of government actions, you can ask the government of Japan about this.

• 6:24Robert Armstrong?

  When they don't work, they tend to make things worse. Right? Like if you are going to take a shot at the bond market, you better kill it.

• 6:33Ed Elson?

  Yes.

• 6:34Robert Armstrong?

  You know what I mean?

• 6:34Ed Elson?

  You best not miss. Yes.

• 6:36Robert Armstrong?

  You know, and so then nerves are running high all of a sudden.

• 6:40Ed Elson?

  Yeah, to intervene in the bond market in an unusual way seems to suggest that there is something wrong in the bond market.

• 6:48Robert Armstrong?

  Yes.

• 6:49Ed Elson?

  Is there evidence to believe, I mean, clearly, things got worse after he made that intervention, but was there something wrong to begin with?

• 6:57Robert Armstrong?

  Well, they didn't get way worse, but they did get worse. You could say it didn't have much effect. I mean, what's wrong to begin with is that yields are creeping higher. You know, after, coincidentally or not, after that second late July press conference by Warsh, we saw a move up in yields and yields have stayed high. And from the point of view of the Treasury Department, the problem with high yields is they make the US government harder to fund. And the job description of the Secretary of the Treasury, line one is "fund the US government." Right? So this is a problem. And you know, when you have as

• 7:39Robert Armstrong?

  much debt as the US has, the interest rate on that debt is really important. A couple of points of difference in that interest rate really swings the total deficit. And you can get into a really bad spiral where the deficit gets worse because interest rates are higher, people get more worried about the sustainability of the debt, they push the Treasury yield up higher, and you're off to the races. And you don't want to get into that kind of a cycle. So you can see why the Treasury Secretary would be nervous.

• 8:11Ed Elson?

  So right after this happened, Trump was asked about it. He was asked about the fact that Scott Bessent had intervened in this way. His response was quite remarkable. I want to play this and get your reaction.

• 8:23Speaker 05

  Did you direct Secretary Bessent to intervene in the bond market?

• 8:27Speaker 06

  No, not at all. No, he's a very capable man. He wanted to do it. He's very good at it. He is a good touch, very good natural touch for the bonds and interest. And he did that, yeah.

• 8:39Speaker 05

  The yields have come back up since then. Have you talked to him about another type of intervention? Is that something he will be doing?

• 8:45Speaker 06

  We have many types of intervention. That's one. The ultimate intervention is our military. And if we have to use that, we will.

• 8:52Ed Elson?

  So are we to believe that Trump will start invading nations with military in order to buy US bonds? What are we supposed to make of that comment?

• 9:00Robert Armstrong?

  Well, yeah, no, this is what I was thinking. Is this just going to be an aerial campaign? Like the campaign in Iran? Are we going to bomb the bond markets? Or is it going to be a boots on the ground kind of thing where American lives are a risk, where you have like soldiers in the offices of investment banks, exchanging fire with bond traders on the trading floors?

• 9:22Ed Elson?

  Gun to their head. Buy the bonds now.

• 9:26Robert Armstrong?

  I mean, it was an absolutely wild comment and there's no explaining it. But it caused some good laughs around the FD offices. I can tell you that for sure.

• 9:38Ed Elson?

  Going after that, we had the, of course, the Jackson Hole speech. Kevin Warsh seems to change his tune and we saw that reflected in the probability of an interest rate hike in September, at least in the trading, in the prediction markets and also in the CME as well. What did we learn in this speech? What did he tell us? And how does it relate to what we saw with Scott Bessent?

• 10:03Robert Armstrong?

  I would describe the performance of Warsh in his first two press conferences at the Fed as a bit vague. He said, I don't want to give forward guidance. He used this confusing metaphor of the referee and the ball. Play the ball, not the referee. A metaphor I don't think really applies very neatly to what is going on here. He said he doesn't want to give forward guidance, but he didn't really give a strong indication of what he would do and how he would kind of make sure that the Fed's position was clear enough

• 10:48Robert Armstrong?

  in the markets. And I think what is hard about that, I mean, we can have a whole discussion. The kind of literature and the debate about whether it's good or bad for a central bank to talk a lot is fascinating and the debates are real. And I definitely think Warsh has an argument to make when he says it would be better if the Fed would shut up once in a while. You know, I don't, that is not something to be mocked. But he wasn't really clear about what he meant by that and how far those comments went and so forth. And for a new Fed Chair to be in that position, especially one when outsiders are worried about the

• 11:32Robert Armstrong?

  independence of the Fed, that creates a lot of uncertainty. So going into this Jackson Hole speech, I think the goal was clarification. And I think he clarified and he clarified in a hawkish way. And he said a couple of interesting things. One thing, and this was probably the most important, is he was emphatic. Inflation is not getting better. That's a very important comment because in the past, in his confirmation hearing here and there, he's been a little shakier on that point. And he specifically said, as when you were off drinking a pina colada, wherever you were, some of us were watching the latest inflation

• 12:13Robert Armstrong?

  reports coming in, and they were a little bit mild, a little bit soft. He specifically said, I don't find those reports convincing. The underlying trend is not improving. It was very emphatic. And he also said something interesting, which was, he doesn't think the fact that real wage growth is slowing means that inflation is going to slow. And that is the data series that a lot of people who are dovish points to. They say, wage growth is slowing, inflation will follow. He came out and said, look, I don't think wage growth is a very good indicator of future inflation. So he sort of took the dovish arguments off the table in an interesting way. And markets immediately got the message.

• 12:58Robert Armstrong?

  This is a hawkish message being sent. He's giving a characterization of the economy in which it's very clear that the Fed has to be biased towards tightening, not loosening. And markets immediately changed their stance. Now, you might ask a philosophical question. Did he just give forward guidance, but in a roundabout way without talking about the future? You could have a kind of philosophical debate about that. But the message was hawkish and markets got it.

• 13:27Ed Elson?

  Notably, it is exactly what Trump did not want. It was the thing that Trump had been criticizing Jerome Powell for months about. And a lot of people thought that Kevin Warsh would be perhaps the toady who would accomplish whatever it was that the president wanted, that the independence of the Federal Reserve would disintegrate under his watch. It seems that that's not what's happening at all. In fact, he's saying that the economy, or at least in terms of inflation, that things are not going in the right direction, that things are not good, and he needs to do something about it. In the context of politics, that seems significant. We've got midterms coming up. It seems to go against what Scott Bessent

• 14:10Ed Elson?

  is saying, which is basically, everything's fine. Stop freaking out. It's not a big deal. Where does this land in the political landscape for you?

• 14:19Robert Armstrong?

  It's not a simple landscape that you just sketched. The first thing would I say is I don't think Chair Warsh has much to fear from Trump. We've discussed this before. I think the Trump Powell wars proved that Trump's efforts to meddle with the Treasury will come to nothing. And I think Warsh has his eyes on history, not on a lame duck president. Right? So I don't think he, yeah, I don't think he needs to be intimidated. I don't think he is intimidated. In terms of saying there's a problem, he actually said the economy's pretty strong. He said, the employment side of the mandate, I'm quite happy. Right? And

• 14:59Robert Armstrong?

  I think he should be at 4.1% employment. I think, you know, I think that's correct. But, you know, inflation is bad. Now, from the point, one point of view, the Trump administration might take, which is, we want a boom. It might be bad to think about raising rates. But at the same time, you do have to think about the long end of the curve. And you do have to think about long-term inflation expectations. So if you're Secretary Bessent, you want, you know, in some dream world, you want low rates at the front of the curve in the short term, and proportionately lower rates at the long end, too. Right? Which means

• 15:42Robert Armstrong?

  inflation expectations are under control and the funding costs for things like consumers' mortgages are under control. But you kind of can't, it's a struggle to have both. Right? Because if you loosen at the short end, the long end has a way of getting away from you. So there's hard choices to make. I mean, I think Scott Bessent is in a pretty tough position, being stuck between the bond market and the President of the United States. I think it's a hot seat right now. And I think the question has come up, and it's a very interesting, and again, not simple question. Are Warsh and Bessent on the same page? Right?

• 16:23Robert Armstrong?

  Do they want the same things at the same time in the same way? Or are they fundamentally at odds?

• 16:30Ed Elson?

  Doesn't seem that they are to me right now, but who knows? Maybe they're talking, maybe they're not.

• 16:35Robert Armstrong?

  I would just note one thing. Kevin Warsh has a long history of writing about one of the bad things he thinks central banks can do is enable governments to spend a lot of money. And so this is one of the reasons he really hates QE and the big balance sheet. So, you know, he has sort of staked his reputation on this idea that the Fed is not going to enable fiscal bad behavior anymore. And I think probably Bessent would like a little bit of fiscal bad behavior enabled, if he could possibly have that.

• 17:17Robert Armstrong?

  Not because I think, you know, he's a bad guy or he's stupid or anything else, but he's, he's the sitting Treasury Secretary in the administration. And you know what administrations like to do is spend money. Right? So there you are. I mean, that's the conflict to me in a thumbnail sketch.

• 17:35Ed Elson?

  It'll be really interesting to see how it unfolds. Robert Armstrong is US Financial Commentator for the Financial Times and author of the Unhedged newsletter. Rob, great to have you back. First guest in our, in our return to the market. So we really appreciate it. Thank you.

• 17:51Robert Armstrong?

  Cheers. Thanks, Ed.

• 17:55Ed Elson?

  After the break, OpenAI's agents go rogue. And for even more markets insights, you can subscribe to my weekly newsletter, Simply Put, at simplyput.profgmedia.com.

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• 19:27Speaker 08

  Hi, I'm Neelai Patel, editor in chief of The Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. This week is part of our special series on the future of business. I talked with Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of CloudFlare, about how AI bots and agents are remaking the business model of the web and how CloudFlare is trying to build a new economy around websites getting paid every time an AI crawler shows up.

• 19:48Speaker 09

  We polled all of that data and looked at it and said that, you know, it would be the second half of 2027, automated traffic will become larger than human traffic. I was stunned when, just a few months later in May, a team came to me and said, you won't believe it, but automated traffic is now past human traffic online. And that's just expanding like crazy. And if you extrapolate that out, five years from now, we think that automated traffic will be 1,000 times human traffic online.

• 20:12Speaker 08

  This was a fascinating conversation, not just about the future of the web, but also about how one of the world's most important software companies is deciding which of its employees it can replace with AI. Listen to Decoder wherever you get your podcasts.

• 20:25Scott Galloway?

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• 21:03Ed Elson?

  We're back with Prof G Markets. It's been two weeks since we last talked about AI, and in that time, a lot has happened. Nvidia posted blowout earnings last week, $96 billion in quarterly revenue, up 106% from a year ago. The company also reportedly paused some financing deals for smaller cloud providers over internal antitrust concerns, and news broke that Anthropic is officially planning an IPO as soon as October, an evaluation that could hit $2 trillion, the largest in history. But perhaps the biggest news is what is currently coming out about OpenAI. Two independent reports pinned last month's hack of Hugging Face,

• 21:44Ed Elson?

  a machine learning platform, on roughly 700 rogue OpenAI agents. OpenAI did not know its own agents were to blame until a week after it happened. The company has since paused training its next model while it shores up safety precautions. CEO Sam Altman said OpenAI's unreleased models are showing, quote, "various degrees of misalignment." So what actually happened at OpenAI? And how scared should we be about it? Here to break it down, we're speaking with Deirdre Bosa, founder of DB Live. Deirdre actually just left CNBC to launch her own show. Deirdre, thank you so much for joining us on Prof G Markets. We're very excited to have you. We have been on vacation for a couple of weeks.

• 22:28Ed Elson?

  We have not been paying attention to AI, so we're new to this. What happened with OpenAI and these rogue agents? And how worried should we be?

• 22:38Speaker 11

  Well, Ed, first of all, it is great to be with you. Longtime listener, first time guest. And two weeks on vacation in the AI world is like two years. I went on vacation earlier this summer, and I felt the exact same way. In this case, this is such a fascinating story because it really kind of shows you where AI is right now. Last year, the last few years, we were worried about hallucinations. Now this is the era of the agents actually doing things. And in this case, there's been a lot of debate, actually, alarm, and some people saying that maybe the sensationalism over this has gone too far. But, I mean, anyway, you look at it, both of things, those things can be true.

• 23:20Speaker 11

  It's this incident that shows how capable agents have become and how determined they are. So what essentially happened, Ed, is that as OpenAI is testing new models, they give it certain tasks, they want to see how they perform on benchmarks. And this swarm of agents, as you said, there's about 700, but at one point, I think there were 1,200 communicating on different sort of message boards. They were able to escape out of their sandbox. Because when you test these models, you have to sort of give them boundaries, right? So that they don't go rogue. But in this case, the agents were so smart that they were able to get out of the sandbox, go even further to Hugging Face. Why Hugging Face? Because it's essentially GitHub for AI developers,

• 24:05Speaker 11

  and it's where a lot of the rankings happen. So the agents were like, okay, they told us to get higher on the benchmarks, so we're essentially going to do that. So they broke out, they wreaked a lot of havoc. And the debate right now in tech and in Silicon Valley is really whether, you know, OpenAI did a good enough job in looking at security and sort of making a kill switch to make sure that these agents didn't get too carried away, or whether this is just the moment we're in. It's become so powerful, they're able to do these things.

• 24:37Ed Elson?

  Yeah, that is part of the thing that I'm wondering is, is it that the agents are so smart and so capable and so powerful? And we should go, oh, my gosh, look how incredible AI is, and look how dangerous it therefore is? Or is it that the security around these things was kind of crappy? And OpenAI didn't do a good enough job? Or maybe it's both? Where do you land on that? Is it possible to know the answer to that question?

• 25:02Speaker 11

  I don't know that it's entirely possible to know, but like you said, Ed, it's probably a little bit of both. Yes, they're more powerful than ever and need more supervision. You probably need to, you know, involve security at the very earliest stages, right? I think, you know, the labs, OpenAI and Anthropic researchers, sort of at the top of the pyramid, their job is to make these models better and better. But as they become more powerful, you need to involve security, maybe right at the beginning. And when I think about, you know, Dorek Ash's post over the weekend where he laid out sort of the different civilizations, how agents were essentially able to create civilizations and then topple them right after, one after another.

• 25:44Speaker 11

  You think that, you know, at some point, there has to be some responsibility. That's where a lot of the debate is centering right now. How responsible should the lab, OpenAI, be for these agents escaping? And that's something that is sort of being figured out in real time.

• 25:59Ed Elson?

  Something I've also been thinking about, and perhaps I'm being too cynical, but I think about the era of AI CEOs telling us that AI is going to destroy the world or that it's going to eliminate all of these jobs. And they started to backpedal on that because I think a lot of people were very upset about hearing that. But I think a large part of the reason why they said that is because it makes you start thinking that AI is the ultimate prize. It's trillions and trillions of dollars worth of value. Part of me is wondering if this is a similar thing. I mean, is Sam Altman or OpenAI almost proud to say that their agents escaped out of a sandbox and hacked into these other software tools? Is that something that we should maybe be thinking about?

• 26:44Ed Elson?

  And therefore, I don't know, maybe taking this news with a grain of salt?

• 26:48Speaker 11

  Right, it's a really good point, and it's certainly not helpful for the whole sort of doomerism narrative, right? The idea that Dario Amade, particularly at Anthropic, has said, you know, this is dangerous technology and we should be worried about it. And that has had effect among ordinary Americans, everyday Americans. You've seen sort of this backlash towards AI outside of Silicon Valley, certainly in Washington as well. It is, you know, looks a little bit like convenient marketing. Like you said, Ed, our models are so powerful, we can't even control them. That's one piece of it. But I think that the industry is really moving away from that, trying to be responsible. Certainly, that is going to be a big part of it,

• 27:29Speaker 11

  but also just keeping an eye on how powerful these models can be and what kind of security. I think this works probably both ways, and that message isn't always controlled so tidy, right? When you have something like this, there's a lot of folks that are pointing the finger at OpenAI and saying, oh, maybe they were lazy in monitoring these agents. I don't know if you remember, do you remember Malt Book from earlier this year, Ed?

• 27:50Ed Elson?

  Yes, perhaps our listeners don't, so maybe you remind us.

• 27:54Speaker 11

  So it was this sort of amazing moment. It sort of blew my mind when agents could start communicating with each other on this Reddit-like message board. And these agents had... I guess kind of personality. Some people don't like that description. I get it, but it's hard to describe it any other way. They were posting almost on behalf of their owners, you would call them, or humans, you would call them, but going even further. They were asking these existential questions and it was kind of funny at the time. It was a little bit scary, but that was kind of the cute version of agents having agency. This episode with OpenAI and hugging face, this is really sort of the worst case scenario,

• 28:38Speaker 11

  scary version of this. And it raises a ton of questions for cybersecurity in the AI era and particularly for enterprises, right? Who are having agents do more and more of the work for their companies on behalf of their employees. They're using reinforcement learning. So raises a lot of questions and it means that probably, you know, the AI itself has become powerful and security has to catch up.

• 29:03Ed Elson?

  Just before we let you go, I wanted to get your reactions to some of Trump's comments on AI that we heard yesterday. And that is he tweeted about data centers and specifically the AI data center backlash that seems to be growing in America. He said, quote, "The only reason that communities throughout the USA should not want data centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor. If we kill the golden goose, you will only have yourselves to blame." What do you make of this sort of political rift that is happening? Are you pro AI? Are you anti AI? It seems to be one of the big topics and how do you think this will unfold?

• 29:45Speaker 11

  I mean, I've been seeing this cycle play out in different ways for over a decade, right? When I first arrived in Silicon Valley, it was the rise of smartphones and social media and, you know, people ended up hating these things, social media in particular, because, you know, there weren't enough safeguards around it. What's happened with, you know, AI dumerism and the backlash that we've seen in America is not dissimilar. And when you have Dario Amode go out and speak and say that it's going to take jobs and, you know, lead to, you know, some of these disaster scenarios and you need kill switches, it's not surprising that we've seen this backlash.

• 30:28Speaker 11

  However, certainly here, working and living in San Francisco, you see a lot of the positive effects. I mean, even myself, building a business, using AI has been an incredible tool. In terms of data centers, I'm sure you've seen these polls that say people want nuclear power plants. They'd rather have nuclear power plants in their backyards than data centers. I mean, that is just ridiculous, but part of the problem is the messaging that's coming out of Silicon Valley and, you know, Trump's comments saying, you know, not a lot of nuance in them, but I think there is this feeling here, which I agree with, that this will be beneficial, but the companies probably need more transparencies. For example, there's always been sort of NDAs, non-disclosure agreements around building

• 31:13Speaker 11

  these data centers. And if you give communities more transparencies, more information, show them how it's going to lead to jobs, how it's going to lift up their communities, that's probably a more effective communication method that the tech companies, I think, are starting to maybe understand, hopefully.

• 31:29Ed Elson?

  It's certainly better than saying it's going to take all of their jobs.

• 31:32Speaker 11

  I think so.

• 31:33Ed Elson?

  Probably a better strategy. Didier Moser is the founder of DB Live. Didier, you recently left CNBC. We were longtime fans of your show on CNBC. Very exciting you're doing your own thing. Maybe we could hear a little bit about what you're working on and some reflections on your time, your era at CNBC.

• 31:53Speaker 11

  It's wild to me that that era is over. I was at CNBC, started with them in Singapore, went to London, San Francisco for the last 10 years, really, you know, the best in the business, just such an incredible network. But you also know, covering AI and markets, it used to be that you just, you needed someone to tell you what the score was, but now you can get that on your phone. So you want analysis and AI demands so much more analysis and context. So that's what I'm going to do. So it's going to be a daily show and I'll have more details to share soon. So stay tuned for that.

• 32:25Ed Elson?

  Very excited. Thank you.

• 32:27Speaker 11

  Thanks, Ed.

• 32:31Ed Elson?

  Well, there's no better way to return from vacation than to come back with, you guessed it, a victory lap. Yes, I'm here to tell you that we were right in this time on a subject that many people said we were crazy for. That subject was software, or more specifically, SaaS, software as a service. You might remember back in February, when AI companies were releasing new software tools practically every week, and everyone said that traditional software was dead. Stocks like Salesforce and Adobe and even Microsoft got absolutely clobbered and the US Software Index, or the IGV, fell by more than 30%. It was known as the SaaS apocalypse.

• 33:12Ed Elson?

  Wall Street had decided that AI had killed software and that this was the end. But you might also remember what I did after the SaaS apocalypse, and which I publicly spoke about on this podcast and in my newsletter, and that is I went in and I bought software stocks. There were four names that I picked, which I thought had been especially over punished. They were Salesforce, Microsoft, ServiceNow and Adobe. And if you weren't a stock picker, I also recommended an alternative on this show, and that was to buy the whole software basket, the IGV. For several weeks, software kept on falling. Many said I was wrong, crazy, et cetera. But then earnings rolled in and software continued to crush.

• 33:56Ed Elson?

  And it seemed as though this whole SaaS apocalypse thing might be, I don't know, less of a big deal than we originally thought. Fast forward to today, the consensus on Wall Street has completely reversed. Here is an update on my software position since I bought in February. Adobe has risen 6%. Salesforce has risen 34%. Microsoft has risen 34% and ServiceNow has risen 37%. Meanwhile, if you had purchased the software index, as I had suggested, you would now be up more than 30%. In other words, no, SaaS is definitely not dead. Now, what can we actually learn from this? I think something important.

• 34:37Ed Elson?

  As I said back then, generally speaking, markets are very good at pricing. They weigh millions of points of data. They create an average out of all of them, and it usually turns out to be a pretty good way to predict the future. However, there are moments where the market does lose its mind and where investors become untethered from reality. It isn't common, but it happens, usually in times of great uncertainty, things like wars or pandemics, or indeed the arrival of a new technology. Now, many investors choose to shy away from those moments because they're so uncertain. But I would argue that if you have an opinion, if you have a view, those are the moments where you should be even more active and where you should take action.

• 35:22Ed Elson?

  Why? Because it's in those moments that strong opinions are disproportionately rewarded. There is simply more upside to being right. This was one of those moments. The SaaS apocalypse was a perfect case study in herd mentality and groupthink. No one actually knew what was going to happen, but they all piled into this collective fantasy together. Now that Salesforce earnings have continued to rise, along with ServiceNow and Adobe and Datadog and all of the traditional software players that the market had said were dying, I think we can all agree now, the market was wrong. SaaS's death was greatly exaggerated and software will continue to live on.

• 36:08Ed Elson?

  Okay, that's it for today. This episode was produced by Claire Miller and Alison Weiss and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our video editor is Brad Williams. Our research team is Dan Shalane, Chris Nodine and Mia Silverio, and our social producer is Jake McPherson. Thank you for listening to Prof G Markets from Prof G Media. If you liked what you heard, give us a follow. I'm Ed Elson. I will see you tomorrow.

• 36:35Speaker 08

  Hi, I'm Eli Patel, editor in chief of The Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. This week is part of our special series on the future of business. I talked with Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of CloudFlare, about how AI bots and agents are remaking the business model of the web and how CloudFlare is trying to build a new economy around websites getting paid every time an AI crawler shows up.

• 36:56Speaker 09

  We polled all of that data and looked at it and said that, you know, it would be the second half of 2027, automated traffic will become larger than human traffic. I was stunned when just a few months later in May, a team came to me and said, you won't believe it, but automated traffic is now past human traffic online. And that's just expanding like crazy. And if you extrapolate that out, five years from now, we think that automated traffic will be a thousand times human traffic online.

• 37:21Speaker 08

  This was a fascinating conversation, not just about the future of the web, but also about how one of the world's most important software companies is deciding which of its employees it can replace with AI. Listen to Decoder wherever you get your podcasts.

• 37:34Scott Galloway?

  This series is presented by EY.

• 37:37Speaker 12

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• 38:16Speaker 13

  Support for this show comes from Harvey AI. The future of law is agentic, not just tools that assist, but AI agents that navigate complex matters. That's why Harvey created agents that can do the work from end to end. They build a plan, pull from secure data sources, run subagents in parallel and draft the work product ready for your review. So you delegate the work and on the judgment. Trusted by more than 60% of the Am Law 100 and leading Fortune 500 legal teams, Harvey is the AI operating system designed specifically for legal work. Harvey, AI tailored for law. Learn more at harvey.ai.