My biggest takeaway from our conference in Las Vegas... AI everywhere... Two things can be true... The path to the 'new winners'... Why the government is backing AI... About the rising cost of capital... A warning signal from housing stocks...
I (Corey McLaughlin) am back from Las Vegas...
As you've read earlier this week, I attended our Stansberry Research Conference & Alliance Meeting on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.
I've covered some of the individual presentations here in the Digest. But when I finally sat down to dinner with my family last night, my wife asked me to sum it up: "What were your takeaways?"
Well, I literally "took away" three free books: Henry Winkler's autobiography, Alchemy by Rory Sutherland, and The Book of Animal Secrets by Dr. David Agus, all made available to attendees after their terrific presentations at the conference.
I also brought home a toy robot, which my kids quickly adopted...
The above robot, a gift from the fund managers at KraneShares, was just a piece of plastic and rubber. But attendees got to meet the real KOID... an AI-enabled humanoid robot that danced at a KraneShares cocktail reception on Tuesday night.
What these robots represent was really my biggest takeaway from the week in Vegas...
Whatever you might think about AI, its influence on the economy and our lives is only going to grow from here.
At the conference, I saw and heard bullish things about AI everywhere... and not just the robots. Even folks who doubted the economics of AI – and the motives of the U.S. government for supporting it – agreed that AI isn't going away.
Ultimately, the AI boom that began in late 2022 will one day bust or at least slow. Maybe that'll happen all at once. Maybe the slowdown will come in phases, some bigger than others. It's probably wise to expect and prepare for something like that eventually. But two things can be true...
For every boom, there's some form of bust... especially with a commodity, which AI is. But until then, as we sit here heading into the fourth quarter of 2026, the "good times" can continue and money can be made.
"Hyperscalers" may be starting to turn their AI spending into meaningful revenue streams – exceeding the interest costs on their debt. That's the case that Stansberry Research senior analyst Alan Gula made during a "Bull vs. Bear" debate with fellow analyst Gabe Marshank on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, the private AI labs like Anthropic and OpenAI have plans for mega IPOs ahead...
And I was surprised to hear tech bull Dan Ives say that only 5% of companies have deeply transformed their businesses with AI so far...
You could argue that this is long-term bullish and bearish...
On the one hand, it means there's a lot of room for more AI adoption. But if the tech is so good and in such high demand, why isn't its adoption rate already much higher?
Well, that could come down to price and payoff. The "hyperscalers" have had no problem dumping billions of dollars into building AI infrastructure and defending their market-leading positions.
In its most recent quarter, Alphabet (GOOGL) went cash-flow negative for the first time as a public company as it spends, spends, spends... It has turned to the bond market for financing and hasn't had a problem finding it.
But Gabe says that the costs of building out AI infrastructure – as shown in the below chart he shared at the conference – are still growing. However, token costs and related AI pricing power (like rents charged to data-center users) have peaked and are projected to decline in the years ahead. Here's an image Gabe shared at the conference...
If and when this trend continues, Gabe says you'll really see who the long-term winners from AI are.
Most likely, businesses that don't even exist yet will benefit from the AI build-out without fronting the capital for it. Meanwhile, the hyperscalers look more like capital-intensive businesses than before the AI boom began.
"Steel didn't enrich the steel mills. It built the skyscrapers," Gabe says.
Products like personalized AI healthcare agents come to my mind. That was my thought after hearing from Agus, who was Steve Jobs' doctor late in Jobs' life. On Tuesday, he covered the potential for AI technology to be paired with our digital health records for more efficient treatment.
'New winners' also followed the dot-com bust...
In the years after the 2000 crash, the future Alphabet was just a search engine... Amazon was a bookstore... and Meta Platforms was a website for college students.
All of them grew into some of America's largest companies as they branched out into new business lines... like advertising and cloud computing.
Gabe says such a business-development wave will happen again... And the biggest winners of AI will be those that benefit from a lower cost to use the technology.
He shared the name and recommended one such company for Alliance members on Wednesday. (By the way, Alliance members should check your inboxes for the recap of Alliance Day with all your exclusive stock picks if you haven't already.)
The potential long-term winners from AI also include all of us as individuals... if it doesn't eliminate us, of course. (That could mean either taking our jobs or the extinction-level disaster that has made the rounds on the Internet lately.)
We could go on a lot more. But the big takeaway for me this year is that the AI bull run in the stock market is not finished yet.
What's different now, though...
Two years ago, I wrote from our annual conference that "you're probably still underestimating AI." That's not the case anymore.
More people are realizing just how valuable and effective the large language models from Anthropic, OpenAI, and Alphabet can be. More people are using them – and paying subscription fees for the privilege. And things are just getting started with AI "agents," like Meta's new Muse.
All of this benefits the cloud services providers, like Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft, which are practically required to train, run, and connect the AI models to people and businesses using them.
And now, four years into the AI boom, it's companies that "sell" AI, as our colleague Brett Eversole says, that are positioned to benefit most. He's calling it "Phase 2" of the AI bull market. But he doesn't mean the "Phase 1" infrastructure spending will stop.
A lot more development and implementation are still to come. That means more room for demand for everything AI to keep growing – and more capacity to meet it.
Will the market slow down a bit? Probably...
Data centers aren't built overnight. Political sentiment is running against them all over the country. And the cost of capital is rising. As my colleague Nick Koziol wrote the other day, crises have tended to follow interest-rate jumps.
But betting totally against AI right now? That's not a bet I'll be making.
For one thing, the technology is a generational development – and is still developing. Chips and other infrastructure can get more efficient. The companies behind them might just slow down new releases, like chipmakers did in the 1990s when PCs rose to prominence.
But probably more importantly, when it comes to the market, enough investors with enough money remain willing to bet on AI's potential today... As we've shared before, many consider financing AI growth a better fixed-income investment than buying U.S. Treasurys.
This brings up another point about Uncle Sam...
We heard more than one speaker this week – including Epsilon Theory's Ben Hunt and Simpler Trading founder John Carter – say that an AI growth and productivity boom is the only way for the government to eat into its $40-plus trillion in debt... They believe it's one reason the White House and other politicians are so motivated to support the growth.
Not that we necessarily need new evidence, but here's President Donald Trump on what AI means to him. In an interview with Time magazine published yesterday, Trump told a reporter...
I don't have to destroy the [AI] industry. We're making a lot of money with that industry. That industry is the industrial revolution, but bigger. It's the Internet, but much bigger. I don't have to destroy that industry...
Now, when you talk about the debt, the growth is going to pay off the debt. Growth will pay it off.
And inflation be damned, too, he said later...
Certain levels of inflation will also pay off that debt very rapidly. Very rapidly.
Another consideration is the foreign competition. As Alan said during his debate with Gabe on Wednesday morning...
The joke is, "Do you want American AI to kill you, or do you want Chinese AI to kill you?"
We can argue the scale and appropriateness of AI spending... And we can have caution about some hype, and the function of "circular financing" deals among the big players. But until the spending plans and financing slow down, staying long AI seems like a good idea.
Bullish and bearish things can happen at the same time.
As mentioned, though, the cost of capital is going up...
Maybe AI isn't what kills the bull market – or us. Maybe it's housing costs... or just costs in general.
While folks are funding an AI boom, interest rates are rising. That's in part because energy costs have jumped significantly since the start of the year amid the war in Iran.
And weakness is showing up in housing-related stocks – and elsewhere in the "stealth bear market," as our colleague Whitney Tilson is calling it.
Take a look at this chart that technical analyst Mark Ungewitter recently posted on X. It compares the PHLX Housing Sector Index ("HGX") with the overall market and makes a concerning comparison to the financial crisis...
In plain English, this two-year-long "divergence" between HGX – a cap-weighted index of companies and businesses associated with the housing industry – and the benchmark S&P 500 is happening now, just as it did from 2005 into 2008.
Is it a 'canary' in the coal mine?...
It's at least worth paying attention to.
When the housing market is declining for any length of time – like the first half of 2022, or all of 2018, late 2015, and various points during the early dig-out from the financial crisis – the U.S. benchmark for stocks tends to turn lower either at around the same time, or not long after.
Homebuying, especially for first-time buyers, has been difficult enough for much of the past decade and helped stoke the recent decades-high inflation rates...
The average 30-year mortgage rate is now above 7% in a year where many buyers were counting on rates to go down. Mortgage rates began doing just that in January and February, but then they turned higher just after the U.S. military started bombing Iran.
Housing has historically accounted for around 15% and as high as 20% of U.S. GDP. And higher mortgage costs – along with tight housing supply – will dissuade buyers, or at the very least, make them adjust or cut spending habits...
Consumer spending is tied to 70% of U.S. GDP.
Together, housing and consumer spending are tied to about 85% to 90% of GDP.
A big chunk of the rest is now tied to AI spending...
Again, that isn't slowing down yet... And a new wave of stocks could become the next AI darlings. If you're interested in hearing more about this and getting actionable stocks to buy right now, be sure to check out Brett's new presentation that just debuted yesterday.
And a note for Alliance members and Brett's existing True Wealth Systems subscribers, you're welcome to watch the presentation as well, but you already have access to all the details and an "AI Phase 2 Portfolio" right here.
New 52-week highs (as of 10/1/26): Alpha Architect 1-3 Month Box Fund (BOXX), iMGP DBi Managed Futures Strategy Fund (DBMF), Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Okta (OKTA), and Invesco DB U.S. Dollar Index Bullish Fund (UUP).
Do you have a comment or question? As always, send your notes to feedback@stansberryresearch.com.
All the best,
Corey McLaughlin
Baltimore, Maryland
October 2, 2026
