Here’s the cleaned transcript:

What if the retirement that you’re counting on is sitting on top of a bubble that’s about to pop? Is that even possible? Are we in a bubble? Those are the questions that we’re gonna answer in the next hour right here on the Providence Financial Retirement Show. My name is Anthony Saccaro. Thank you for joining us.

This is the Providence Financial Retirement Show, and we are the place where retirees come for income. This is gonna be a very stimulating show because we’re gonna answer the question: Are we in an AI bubble? And maybe it’d be better if I said, “I’m gonna give you the information about what’s going on in the AI world, what’s going on in stocks, what’s going on with valuations, and give you the facts so that you can come to your own conclusion.”

Maybe it’s better said, “You’re gonna get the information you need so that you can answer the question as to whether we’re in an AI bubble.” And once you come up with the answer, that’ll give you the information you need to be able to make the decisions that are best based on your stage of life. And of course, as we always do, we’re gonna take your questions along the way.

In a recent television interview that I did live, I used a word that I’ve probably not used for maybe 10 or 12 years, and that word is bubble. For the first time in a long time, I’m genuinely concerned. About what? About many of you who think that you’re diversified and who are on the brink of retirement.

And if we are in a bubble, and if this bubble pops right when you just retired or right before you retire, I’m afraid that it may affect your entire retirement. Until that bubble pops, you never quite even know whether we’re in a bubble. The tech crash was a bubble that happened and exploded, popped in 2001, and then the financial crisis popped in 2008.

When those bubbles popped, there were many people who had either retired or about to retire, and their entire plans were destroyed. I watched it. I lived through the 2001 bubble. I helped the clients through that bubble. I helped clients through the financial crisis. I can tell you about the people who were crying in my office and the lady who was suicidal because she just lost half of her 401k on the brink of retirement and couldn’t retire for a few more years.

It’s stories like these that create that fear inside of me that if we are in a bubble, if it pops and you’re not prepared for it and your portfolio goes down with it, it’s going to have a dramatic effect on your retirement. Many of you think that you’re diversified because you’ve got a broad range of index fund, and you’re relying on that diversification to keep you through any type of correction or bubble popping that might happen.

Are you aware, though, that the top 10 stocks make up roughly a third of the entire S&P 500? That’s up about twenty-five percent concentration at the peak of the dot-com bubble that happened in 2000, and that means that today’s market is more concentrated than the era everyone points to as the textbook bubble.

Names like Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta are all doing the heavy lifting. The Magnificent Seven alone reportedly make up a good chunk of that weight. And yet, while the overall stock market is up around ten percent this year, the Mag Seven is actually down this year, and now it’s being referred to as the Lag Seven Apollo Global Management chief economist coined a term for this belief that you’re diversified as the diversification illusion.

It’s the idea that buying an S&P 500 index fund feels like you’re spreading your risk across 500 companies, but you’re really riding on the fortunes of just a handful of them. Because they’re so popular though, money keeps flowing into these index funds, into the same giant companies regardless of their price, and that pushes concentration even higher in a self-reinforcing loop.

Even more disturbing is that Goldman Sachs found that AI-focused companies alone account for nearly half of the total market cap. Millions of you are thinking that your 401k is diversified, but it’s not. It’s really betting on a handful of tech names, and if those names stumble, there’s no diversification that’s gonna cushion your fall.

Not being diversified even though you think you are, is a risk to your retirement. But there’s many risks to your retirement. It’s not just diversification. Some of these other risks are very much in line with what’s going on in the economic world today. If you’re not familiar with what they are, you might get caught making one of these mistakes, and unfortunately, in retirement, you can’t afford to make too many mistakes without some severe ramifications.

What I’d like to do is I’d like to send you an animated video that talks about the seven most common risks that I’ve identified in my career of being a retirement advisor, so you can learn what they are and evaluate your own situation to see if you’re making any of them. The video is really short, seven or eight minutes, and it’s animated, so it’s fun to watch, but it’s really powerful, and I know you’re going to learn something from it.

Since you’re a regular listener of the Providence Financial Retirement Show, I’ll email you this video absolutely free of charge. To get it, all you need to do is go to providencefinancialradio.com/video. Again, that’s providencefinancialradio.com/video. Leave us your information and we will get this short animated video right out to you so you can learn what the seven most common risks that many of you are making and how to avoid them.

Just go to providencefinancialradio.com/video and we’ll get it right out.

Thank you for taking time out of your day to join us for the Providence Financial Retirement Show. My name is Anthony Saccaro. The reason that I’ve done this show year in and year out for well over a decade is simply to help you have the information you need so that you can have the stress-free and peaceful retirement that you deserve.

We’re spending our entire time together today answering the question whether we’re in an AI bubble. And I’m not gonna answer the question for you. I’m just gonna give you all of the facts and information and what other professionals are saying so that you can come to your own conclusion. As I started this show, though, I mentioned that I’m afraid that if we are in a bubble, a lot of you are gonna get caught when that bubble pops.

If you haven’t planned on it, then many of you are gonna get hurt, which is exactly why I’m bringing this show to you, so you can have this idea top of mind and make some changes before it’s too late. As we continue, I wanna jump over to our first listener question of the day, and it comes from Marcus in Oak Park, and he wrote in this: “This feels a lot like two thousand and one to me. Are we really doing this again?”

Marcus, I think that’s good insight. Thank you for taking time to write that question, and I wanna give you some things to think about. And the quick answer is yes, that there are similar warning signs, but with one key difference. Today’s leaders are actually profitable, unlike a lot of two thousand era dotcoms. The catch is that high profits don’t matter, though, if the price already assumes perfection I feel like it’s the same emotional pattern with different fundamentals, and that’s why it’s so tricky to call whether there’s a bubble or not.

There’s a metric that you’re probably not as familiar with as some others, and this is the Shiller CAPE ratio. CAPE stands for cyclically adjusted price-to-earnings ratio. It’s a way of measuring how expensive the stock market is relative to what companies actually earn. Instead of just looking at this year’s earnings, which can spike or dip for all kinds of temporary reasons, the CAPE ratio averages out ten years of inflation-adjusted earnings.

That gives it a much steadier and a much more honest picture of value. It smooths out the noise so you can see whether stock prices have drifted way ahead of the real underlying profits that are backing them. When the ratio is high, it means investors are paying a lot more for each dollar of long-term earnings than history says is normal, and that’s usually a warning sign that expectations have gotten way ahead of reality.

In short, that’s what the CAPE ratio is. The one hundred and forty-five-year historical average of the Shiller CAPE ratio is seventeen point six, and in two thousand twenty-five, that ratio topped forty, more than double the one hundred and forty-five-year average. That level has only been hit once, and that was right before the two thousand dotcom crash.

Analysts are projecting earnings growth north of twenty percent, and that’s even higher than what it was projected in two thousand. It’s these high valuations, though, that require near-perfect execution. There’s really no room for disappointment. If disappointment comes, it could start a financial landslide.

If you’re not prepared for it, then you could get buried, and that’s what I’m trying to help you avoid. We can’t say for sure that it’s going to happen, but it’s certainly possible, and if it does happen, what have you done to protect yourself? The answer then to your question, Marcus, is yes, it does feel a lot like 2000 all over again, and that’s something that I haven’t said for well over a decade.

Once again, thank you for taking time to write in your question. Because I speak with our listeners week in and week out, I know that a lot of you are afraid that this could be coming, but you’re just not sure what to do about it. If you’re in that boat, you don’t have to be, because you can protect yourself and not get caught if that landslide happens.

But you have to have the information. That’s one of the reasons I wrote my Amazon number one best-selling book, More Life Than Money. I talk about the most common mistakes and risks that I’ve seen retirees make over my quarter-century career and what you need to know to avoid them. If you’re worried about this potential financial landslide and you wanna get some information to protect yourself, you’ve gotta get a copy of More Life Than Money, and I’ll send it to you absolutely free of charge.

All you have to do is go to our website to request it, and you’ll have it in a few days. The website to go to is providencefinancialradio.com/book. Again, it’s providencefinancialradio.com/book. Leave us your information, and a brand-new copy of More Life Than Money will show up on your doorstep shortly. Go to providencefinancialradio.com/book to claim your free copy.

I’m Anthony Saccaro. Thank you for tuning in to today’s Providence Financial Retirement show. We’re spending our time talking about whether or not there’s an AI bubble. I’m trying to give you the information you need as to what the experts are saying and what the data is telling us so that you can answer that question for yourself.

More importantly, though, I’m a little bit afraid, and actually that truth be told, I’m actually a lot afraid, that if we are in a bubble, it’s gonna catch a lot of you off guard and probably affect your retirement, whether you’re just newly retired or whether you might have to continue working a few more years because you’re on the brink of retirement.

That’s what I’m trying to help you avoid. In the first part of our show, we already uncovered the fact that if you’re in mutual funds or broad market-based ETFs, that a majority of the S&P 500 companies are AI-driven. This means that if they fall, they’re gonna take the entire index and stock market down with it.

Diversification is more of an illusion at this point than it is reality. We also discussed the fact that valuations are very historically stretched. I wanna now shift our focus to debt, because debt is quietly fueling this boom. AI data center debt issuance jumped from a hundred and sixty-six billion in two thousand twenty-three to six hundred and twenty-five billion dollars in two thousand twenty-five.

That’s nearly four times the debt issuance in just two years. Off-balance sheet vehicles are financing massive projects. Meta’s thirty billion dollar data center and SoftBank’s ten billion dollar commitment to the five hundred billion dollar Stargate project are just two good examples. This kind of hidden leverage is exactly what turns a normal correction into a financial crisis.

It’s not on the balance sheets where everyone’s looking. Unlike the companies are funding this with cash narrative that continuously gets repeated, debt is creeping into the system fast. Asset-backed securities tied to data centers have risen nineteen times between two thousand twenty-two and two thousand twenty-five.

That’s a staggering pace of financial engineering stacking on top of the tech itself. In other words, it’s debt that is funding a lot of this AI boom. It’s not profits. That’s a real reason to be concerned At first glance, the AI boom looks like it’s being funded by profits and cash flow, but that debt is quietly building underneath it, and debt is what turns a market dip into a major landslide.

If revenue disappoints, these leverage structures could unwind fast, forcing asset sales rather than allowing a slow correction. Ray Dalio has warned that bubbles don’t just deflate gently. They pop If and when this pop happens, I’m afraid that a lot of your portfolios are gonna pop with it, even those of you who think you’re diversified.

For everyday investors, the danger isn’t just tech stocks going down. It’s a credit event that spreads beyond tech into the broader financial system, the same way that the subprime debt did in two thousand eight. In two thousand eight, you might recall that the US financial system nearly collapsed because banks had loaded up on debt tied to risky mortgages, and then they packaged and sold that debt all over the world.

When home prices fell and defaults spiked, the losses didn’t stay contained. They spread everywhere. Lehman Brothers collapsed that September, credit froze almost overnight, and the stock market lost more than half its value from peak to trough. The reason this matters for today’s AI boom isn’t the mortgages, it’s the mechanism.

It wasn’t just that home prices were too high in two thousand eight, it was that so much debt and financial engineering had been stacked on top of those prices that when the foundation cracked, everything built on it came down, too. That’s the parallel worth watching now. Off-balance sheet vehicles, asset-backed securities, and rapidly rising debt are being used to finance today’s AI infrastructure.

Nobody’s saying data centers are subprime mortgages, but hidden leverage amplifying a downturn is exactly what turned a real estate correction into a global financial crisis. That’s what’s particularly worth paying attention to. You don’t have to participate in that, though. If we have the same type of crisis coming or something similar, you don’t have to be involved.

There are ways to protect yourself to make sure that if and when that happens, it’s not going to affect your retirement. That’s where fixed income comes into play. When you’re invested properly for fixed income like we teach here on the Providence Financial Retirement Show, you’re in a position to be able to count on your income, whether we have another financial crisis or not.

Your income and your retirement is not tied to what the markets do. Most of you, though, are not even aware of how fixed income works. If you’d like to change that and get better educated so you can position yourself to be able to retire comfortably or stay retired, even if this bubble that we have does pop, you’re gonna wanna get this animated video that we’ve put together for you, and it talks about the case for fixed income.

It’s only seven or eight minutes long. It’s animated, so it’s fun to watch. But you’ll learn in seven or eight minutes what you need to do to be able to get income from your portfolio that’s not tied to the stock market. To get your free video, all you need to do is go to providencefinancialradio.com/video.

Again, it’s providencefinancialradio.com/video, and we’ll email this video to you shortly. But you’ll learn how fixed income can put you in a position to where you can have the peace of mind you deserve and not have to be worrying about whether or not you’re in a bubble. To claim your free video, go to providencefinancialradio.com/video, and you’ll have it shortly.

If you just joined us, you’re tuned in to the Providence Financial Retirement Show. I’m Anthony Saccaro, and we’re spending our time together today talking about whether or not we’re in an AI bubble. My goal on this show is not necessarily to answer the question. That’s a very hard thing to do. But I do wanna give you the information you need so you can answer the question for yourself and determine whether or not you’d be okay if we are in a bubble and if that bubble pops.

We already discussed the fact that diversification in the S&P 500 is an illusion because half of the S&P 500 is driven by companies that are heavily invested in AI. We also discussed the fact that the CAPE Shiller ratio is currently more than double its historical 145-year average. And now we just talked about debt, the fact that companies have increased their debt by four times in just the last couple of years building out AI infrastructure There’s something else to consider when trying to figure out whether or not we’re in an AI bubble, and that is that spending is way ahead of revenue.

Hyperscalers are projected to spend around seven hundred and fifty-five billion on AI capital expenditures in two thousand and twenty-six. Total AI industry revenue, though, is estimated at under fifty billion dollars. Imagine that, seven hundred and fifty-five billion dollars of expenses with revenue being less than fifty billion dollars.

That’s a massive gap between what’s being poured in and what’s coming back out, and that gap somehow has to close. Either earnings need to explode or catch up, or valuations need to fall to meet reality. Right now, the market is pricing in the explosion scenario, not the correction scenario. Some estimates even show that gap growing even wider next year, with capital expenditure forecasts already climbing from six hundred and fifty billion to seven hundred and twenty-five billion, with some projecting seven hundred and eighty-five billion dollars of spending.

And this is happening before the revenue shows up. This is probably the single clearest, most measurable warning sign of the whole bubble case. Seven hundred and fifty-five billion going in and less than fifty billion dollars coming out. Every other argument, valuations, concentration, debt, is really just a symptom of this core problem.

Money is being spent on a promise, not a proven return. If AI monetization catches up to spending, this becomes a golden era story. If it doesn’t, this is the exact setup that precedes the dot-com collapse when infrastructure got built years ahead of the demand that was supposed to justify it. For someone near retirement, this is the number to watch, not the stock price, but whether that revenue gap actually starts closing in coming earning reports.

If it doesn’t start closing, there’s a strong case to be made that the bubble could pop. But something has to give. Fortunately, though, your retirement doesn’t have to be caught up in that what has to give. You can position yourself in retirement so you can count on the income from your portfolio regardless of whether that bubble pops or not.

That’s one of the main topics I wrote about in my book, More Life Than Money. If you’d like to read it, I’ll send it to you, no cost, no obligation. All you need to do to claim it is go to providencefinancialradio.com/book. Again, it’s providencefinancialradio.com/book. Leave us your information and a hardcover copy of More Life Than Money will show up on your doorstep in just a few days, I promise.

To get your free copy of More Life Than Money, really simple, just go to providencefinancialradio.com/book and leave us your information. You will have it soon.

Thank you for joining us for today’s Providence Financial Retirement Show. I’m Anthony Saccaro. We’re in the middle of a good discussion trying to figure out whether or not we’re in an AI bubble. I’m not so much answering the question because it’s really tricky to know for sure. I do wanna give you some things to think about though, and that’s what we’re forming the basis of our conversation today.

If we aren’t in an AI bubble, then you’re all gonna be just fine. But the signs seem to be pointing to the fact that we could be in an AI bubble, and my biggest fear is that if we are, many of you are gonna get caught, and it’s gonna affect your retirement, whether you’re on the brink of retirement or newly retired.

That’s what we’re trying to avoid by really analyzing whether or not we’re in a bubble Of course, we’re also talking about what you can do to make sure that you’re gonna be fine even if we are in a bubble. You can’t stop the bubble reality, but you can make sure that you’re not gonna be affected by it.

I wanna bring to your attention, though, that we’re no longer talking about this bubble as just theory. It’s not like there haven’t been some things that have shown us that maybe we are in a bubble. There have been quite a few warning signs that you may or may not have paid attention to. South Korea’s KOSPI halted trading twice in one week to prevent a crash.

Samsung and SK Hynix lost twelve percent in a single morning. The Nasdaq dropped over five percent in a matter of days. Oracle had its worst week since the dot-com bust, falling nineteen percent in a single week. You might have heard the news about Apple, that they had to raise all of their product prices due to rising chip costs.

That added fuel to the sell-off. Here’s the statistics, though, that really tell the story. As of mid-2026, The Magnificent Seven, Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, and Tesla, are all actually down on the year, while the broader S&P 500 is up. The Round Hill Magnificent Seven ETF is down roughly three to five percent year to date, while the S&P 500, excluding those seven stocks, nicknamed the Impressive Four 93, is up several percent on its own.

This is the first time since 2022 that the majority of Mag Seven stocks have underperformed a broader index. This is a genuine reversal after years of just buy the biggest tech name strategy paying off automatically. This isn’t a hypothetical what if the bubble pops conversation anymore. The market’s already showed everyone what it looks like when it flinches.

The speed of the drop matters. Five percent of the Nasdaq in days, twelve percent of major chip markets in a single morning. That’s the kind of velocity that catches ordinary investors off guard, especially those who thought that they had time to react. The Mag Seven underperformance is arguably the most important data point in this whole segment.

The exact stocks that dragged the market up for years are now the exact stocks that are dragging it down. If you pay attention to the financial news at all, that’s why you’re going to hear the Mag Seven often being now referred to as the Lag Seven. They’re dragging the market down. For those of you that are near retirement, this is a very practical warning.

That someday crash scenario has already had a preview performance, and it’s specifically hitting the concentrated bets that made many of you feel rich My fear is that if we are in a bubble, and if this bubble does pop, then those same stocks that made you feel rich very quickly are gonna make you feel poor just as quickly.

That’s what we’re trying to avoid. That’s also where fixed income could actually be the answer. When you’re invested for fixed income, you know that you’re gonna get income from your portfolio in the form of interest and dividends that you can spend regardless of whether there’s a bubble or not. If you’re worried about some of the things that we’ve talked about here on the Providence Financial Retirement show today, you’re wondering whether or not we’re in an AI bubble, or whether or not you should make changes to your portfolio because your gut feel tells you that you might be invested too aggressively, maybe it’s time to consider taking some chips off the table and putting them into fixed income.

It doesn’t mean you have to liquidate your entire portfolio, but maybe it’s time to just shore it up a little bit. If you’re curious and you wanna know more about fixed income, because that may be a new concept for you, I’ve got a resource that I know you’re gonna wanna watch. It’s an animated video that is called The Case for Fixed Income.

In a short seven or eight-minute video, you’ll learn how fixed income works and how it is that it will give you a dependable income stream regardless of whether we’re in a bubble or whether that bubble pops or not, regardless of market conditions. I’ll send it to you, no cost, no obligation. You just have to request it.

You can do that by going to providencefinancialradio.com/video. Again, it’s providencefinancialradio.com/video. Leave us your information and we’ll email that video to you in just a short time, and you’ll be able to watch it. Go to providencefinancialradio.com/video to claim your free video. I’m Anthony Saccaro.

Thank you for spending some time with us. We are your retirement income source, and this is the place where retirees come for income, because in retirement, it truly is all about the income. We’re concentrating our efforts today on talking about whether or not we have an AI bubble, and whether or not that bubble’s gonna pop.

This is really no longer a hypothetical scenario because there are real investors out there that are betting against this whole AI boom. Michael Burry, he’s the investor made famous by that movie, The Big Short. He correctly predicted and profited from the 2008 housing crash, and he’s now taken major bearish positions against NVIDIA and Palantir In early May 2026, Burry told his more than two hundred thousand Substack subscribers that the market has jumped the shark and that the end of this is nigh.

He went on to describe today’s AI market as the scene of the bloody car crash minutes before it happens, and it’s the same instinct that made him famous in two thousand and eight, and now he’s pointing squarely at AI stocks. He’s backed that warning with real money, reportedly holding leverage position put options on the semiconductor ETF SOXX through January 2027.

In English, that simply means that he’s betting that the semiconductor ETF is going to drop sharply. Stanley Druckenmiller and David Einhorn, both of these legendary investors, they’ve voiced similar concerns. Even Goldman Sachs’ own head of global equity research, James Cavallo, he’s publicly questioned the AI growth trajectory on the firm’s own podcast, a rare case of an insider breaking ranks.

JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon and Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio have both issued public warnings about frothy conditions in the market. Dalio specifically said that his proprietary bubble indicators tracking sentiment, concentration, and values show US equities rising close to the same level seen in two thousand and even in nineteen twenty-nine.

A Deutsche Bank survey found that fifty-seven percent of economists and analysts view a plunge in tech valuations as the single greatest risk to global market stability this year. Even hedge funds overseas are sounding alarms. Reports have surfaced of Chinese hedge funds warning that the AI super bubble is ready to burst.

Dalio also made an important distinction worth repeating here on air. A bubble forming and a bubble bursting are two different events. The pop usually comes when investors are forced to convert paper wealth into real cash, often to cover debt or taxes. When these guys talk, it’s worth listening. These aren’t fringe pessimists.

These are people with a track record of correctly calling past bubbles and putting real money behind their skepticism. When insiders with the most sophisticated tools and information start hedging quietly, and when a majority of surveyed economists name this as the top global risk, that’s a signal that ordinary investors don’t usually get to see this clearly.

The average retail investor doesn’t have access to these hedging strategies. They’re often the last to know and the last to get out. Dalio’s point about paper wealth versus real money is the emotional component of this entire conversation. Right now, many of you are feeling rich on paper, but that feeling can evaporate the moment everyone decides to sell at once.

The time to get out is not after that happens, especially if it’s your retirement that’s on the line. If you’re concerned, like some of the professional analysts are, but you’re not quite sure what to do, you’re gonna wanna get a copy of my Amazon number one best-selling book, More Life Than Money. In that book, I talk about how to invest in such a way to where you can protect your principal, get income from your portfolio, and no longer have to worry about whether we’re in a bubble or not.

I’d like to send you More Life Than Money absolutely free of cost. No charge, no obligation, just the information you want. You have to request it, though, and you can do that by going to providencefinancialradio.com/book. Again, it’s providencefinancialradio.com/book. Just leave us your information, and More Life Than Money will show up on your doorstep in just a few days.

To claim your free copy of More Life Than Money, go to providencefinancialradio.com/book and we’ll get it right out.

Thank you for staying with us. You’re listening to the Providence Financial Retirement Show. I’m Anthony Saccaro, and we’re spending our entire show really discussing whether or not we are in an AI bubble. I’m not answering the question because truly no one knows. I am giving you some things to think about, though.

And I think the evidence points to the fact that we are more likely in a bubble than not, but I’m letting you weigh the information for yourself. The concern that I have, as I’ve mentioned throughout the show, is if we are in a bubble and that bubble pops, many of you are gonna be hurt. And because it’s your retirement that’s on the line, you probably wanna pay attention.

This bubble has been slowly getting bigger over time, and some of you have even called in and asked me whether or not it’s going to pop, whether or not we are truly in a bubble, whether or not you should be buying AI stocks because they all seem to be going up. As a matter of fact, we got a question from Priya in Redlands, and she wrote in this: “Should I be buying AI stocks right now, or is that a mistake?”

And Priya, thank you for writing in the question, and you’re asking the same question that I get dozens of times each week. As we spent some time discussing in our last segment, institutional investors and a lot of these large money managers are quietly shoring up against the idea that there’s a bubble that could pop The retail investor though is not.

It’s the retail investor that is asking, “Should I get in?” One thing that’s often true about past bubbles is this FOMO, the fear of missing out, and this bubble has been building for so long, and I’ve talked to a lot of you who have asked the same type of question that Priya asked, and that is, “Should I buy these stocks now?”

Based on all of the information and evidence that we’ve talked about so far, Priya, I think it would probably be a mistake. If you look at the odds, it seems that the odds of a bubble popping are greater than the odds of a bubble not popping. The odds of buying now when the market is high seem to outweigh the odds of the market continuing to grow at the torrid pace that it has over the last few years.

One thing that’s common with bubbles is that it’s the retail investor that usually pushes the last bit of air into that balloon before it pops. It’s that FOMO, fear of missing out. Retail investors get in, the bubble pops, and they wish they wouldn’t have. As we discussed in the very first segment of this show, many of you are listening to this saying, “Oh, I’m invested in the broad S&P 500.

I’m in an indexed fund, so I’m really diversified.” If you were with us for the first part of this show, though, then you know that half of the S&P 500 is driven by these AI companies. If you’re invested in the S&P 500, you probably have the illusion that you’re diversified, but not any true diversification, and the S&P 500 will sink when half of these AI companies sink.

It’ll take the whole index down and your portfolio down with it. There have been several corrections over the past six or eight months, and it’s the retail attitude of buy the dip that has caused those corrections to rebound. It’s not that the institutional investors aren’t prepping for a bubble. It’s that the retail investors aren’t prepping for a bubble.

The buy the dip approach works great until retail investors stop buying the dip. Right now, passive investing in things like broad stock market index funds is so large that it’s channeling money automatically into this biggest winners, and it’s amplifying the momentum. And this creates a feedback loop where money flows to already expensive stocks regardless of their fundamentals.

If you’re buying companies or passive index funds, not having any ideas how expensive they are and not caring about the fundamentals, just buying them because they always go up, it’s no longer investing, it’s gambling. And if you’re in the accumulation phase of life and you have more than 10 years until retirement, that’s fine.

But if you’re within a few years of retirement or you’re newly retired and this bubble pops, how is that going to affect your retirement? For many of you, I know that it could be devastating, and I’m trying to help you avoid that. The real question is not, is AI real? The real question is, is this price, the price that you’re paying for an investment, already assuming AI succeeds perfectly?

Because if it does not, that’s the recipe for a bubble popping This is also where investing for fixed income could actually become your answer. When you’re focused on fixed income, you eliminate the possibility of a bubble popping from your portfolio since you know that you’re gonna get income from your portfolio, whether we’re in a bubble and whether it pops or not.

It might be a good time for some of you to take some of your winnings off the table, focus more on protection, protecting your principal, and getting income you know you can count on. So if the bubble does pop, your portfolio won’t pop with it. If you’d like to learn more about the idea of investing for fixed income, we’ve created an animated video just for you.

It’s called The Case for Fixed Income, and I wanna email it to you for no cost, no obligation. It will just show up in your inbox shortly. But you do have to give us your email, and you can do that by going to providencefinancialradio.com/video. Again, it’s providencefinancialradio.com/video. Leave us your email and we’ll get that video right on over, and you’ll be able to watch it and learn about the alternative of investing for fixed income so if that bubble does pop, your retirement will still be intact.

Just go to providencefinancialradio.com/video and you’ll have it soon. Thank you for tuning in to today’s Providence Financial Retirement show. We’re spending our entire show discussing whether or not we might be in an AI bubble and what you can do to protect yourself. If we are in a bubble, it’s not just the AI companies that are gonna fall, it’s potentially the entire economy, because the economy itself is leaning on this bubble.

AI-related capital expenditures has become a meaningful driver of US GDP growth in recent times. That’s different from two thousand. This isn’t just a stock market story, it’s an economic one. A sharp pullback in AI investment could ripple into jobs and even into broader spending. Hyperscaler capital expenditures alone is projected at seven hundred and fifty-five billion dollars in two thousand twenty-six.

That’s money that’s flowing into construction jobs and electricians and chip manufacturing and power infrastructure across the country. And if this bubble pops, that’s gonna go away. The New York Fed has noted that the US economic growth is increasingly dependent on high-income consumers, meaning that the wealth effect from a stock market boom is propping up spending in a way that wasn’t true in past cycles.

If AI stocks fall sharply, it’s not just the portfolios that shrink. The high earners driving a big chunk of consumer spending could pull back too, slowing the broader economy. Data centers, chip plants, and power grid upgrades tied to AI have become significant construction and employment stories in their own right.

A slowdown here doesn’t stay constrained to just tech workers. It’s gonna be a broader economic impact. For someone nearing retirement, this isn’t just a will my portfolio dip, it’s will the whole economy bubble pop? That’s the question that you need to answer. And if you get it wrong, then your retirement is what’s on the line.

This is the same exact pattern that we saw in two thousand and eight. It was a financial problem that became a jobs problem. It became a housing problem, and then it became a retirement problem all within months. AI spending is now woven directly into GDP growth, so pullback in that spending doesn’t just show up as a red number on a stock app.

It shows up in hiring, in local economies built around data centers, and in the paychecks of people who never bought a single share of an AI stock. The market crash that so many people fear isn’t an abstract number on screen. It’s tied to whether the broader economy holds together long enough for portfolios to recover before those of you who are about to retire need to start withdrawing from them.

If you’re within five to ten years of retirement, this is the moment to take a look at your own exposure and your risk tolerances, not after something breaks, but before. And I wanna help you do exactly that. That’s why I wrote my book, More Life Than Money. It’s an Amazon number one bestseller, and why I’m offering it to you absolutely free of charge.

You’ll learn what you need to know to be able to protect yourself whether or not we are in a bubble and whether or not that bubble pops. I don’t want your retirement tied to this AI craze, and I don’t want your retirement to pop if AI pops. You’ll learn what you need to do in More Life Than Money just by reading it.

I’ll send you a copy free of charge as long as you go to our website and give us your information. The website to go to is providencefinancialradio.com/book. Again, it’s providencefinancialradio.com/book. Leave us your information, and we’ll get a brand-new hardcover copy of More Life Than Money right out to you.

One more time, go to providencefinancialradio.com/book, and you’ll get More Life Than Money on your doorstep absolutely free of charge. I’m Anthony Saccaro. Thank you for taking time out of your day to join us for the Providence Financial Retirement Show. We’ve been talking about things to consider when it comes to whether or not we are in an AI bubble.

I certainly hope that you have information now that you didn’t have before, so you can make the best decisions for you and your family. Thank you for joining us. Have a great week, everyone. God bless.