Pavel Bandilov on BenchMark Podcast, episode 96
The Democrats winning the midterm elections was no surprise. The surprise was the speed and depth of the sell-off that followed - and the question it brought to the surface: has the market finally started to demand an accounting for the tech giants’ capital spending, or is it simply reacting to the political pendulum?
In episode 96 of BenchMark Podcast, recorded on 5 November and released on 11 November, Pavel Bandilov looks at exactly this clash. The conversation starts with the “blue wave” and the insider trading allegations around the Trump family, but it quickly moves to where the price of risk is really decided: the hyperscalers’ balance sheets, the record volume of corporate debt and the uncertainty around how artificial intelligence will be monetized.
The big tech companies have almost no free cash flow left - the cash that a few years ago went into share buybacks. In its place are huge capital spending programs financed with debt. Some of the data centers are already up and running and will not be switched off. Others, however, are still at the design stage and could be delayed under the new political configuration. That stretches the spending out over time and, in theory, eases the pressure on cash flow, but for now the market does not buy this logic. Investors want to see a return, and it has not shown up yet.
Bandilov calls the situation “the most pitiful bubble in history”. Not because the technology is fake - on the contrary, it is making its way into computers, smartphones and cars - but because the classic signs of euphoria are missing: stories of people who got rich overnight and are buying luxury cars with their stock market gains. Instead, we have high valuations at companies that are not directly in the race for AI infrastructure (Walmart and Costco trading at multiples of around 40-50), and no clarity on exactly how the hyperscalers will earn back their investment. Society is convinced that artificial intelligence will change the way we live, but it still cannot picture the mechanism.
That is where the investment conclusion comes from. Now is the time to build exposure to the tech sector - not by trying to call the bottom, but by buying in steadily and by focusing on whether the product is useful to the customer before reading the balance sheets. Successful investing is a long-distance run, not a sprint. Historical parallels with the early railway era or with radio show that the infrastructure is often built before the content and before monetization becomes clear; the market simply needs time to accept the new regime.
The episode also covers the wider context: a potential rotation into renewable energy under Democratic control, the slowdown in crypto regulation, the risk of stickier inflation if geopolitical tensions drag on, and the specific cases of Tesla, SpaceX and Apple as different kinds of exposure to the same cycle.
The full interview is here (in Bulgarian):
Watch it if you want to hear how to think about the price of risk when emotion has not yet given way to fundamentals.
Source: “AI, Trump and the Price of Risk”, BenchMark Podcast, episode 96, BenchMark Podcast channel. Thanks to the BenchMark team for the invitation.
Related reading
- AI Mania vs Reality: Where Big Tech’s Billions Are Going
- If AI is a bubble, it is the most pitiful one
- The AI Stock Selloff in November 2026: Lost Value, Leverage and What Comes Next
- US Midterms and Markets: What the Market Has Priced In and What It Has Not
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