It’s not easy being a billionaire in the event that a stock market bubble bursts.
Just ask billionaire Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio, who sounds like he’s worrying about potentially massive wealth destruction if the artificial intelligence trade goes south.
“Everybody says ‘I’m worth a billion dollars’ but, OK, try to spend that,” Dalio said at the Forbes Global CEO Conference in Singapore on Wednesday. Bloomberg first reported his comments.
Dalio suggested that measures that force the ultrawealthy to liquidate their unrealized gains, such as a wealth tax, could hasten or contribute to a bubble popping.
“In order to spend that, you have to sell wealth in order to get money — and so the bubble usually pricks at that,” he added.
Read more: How billionaires get away with paying less income tax
Dalio warned that AI speculation may be nearing its peak. “We’re in the part of the cycle that is before that but approaching that,” Dalio said on the bubble topic. “I think we’re close to that.”
To his point, the stock market is pretty much being kept afloat by three tech stocks, which is fueling fresh fears of an AI stock bubble bursting.
The S&P 500 (^GSPC) has never been more concentrated in just three stocks than it is today, with Nvidia (NVDA), Apple (AAPL), and Microsoft (MSFT) representing over 21% of the index, per data from Creative Planning.
The importance of these three stocks to the S&P 500 has never been greater.
Only IBM (IBM), AT&T (T), and ExxonMobil (XOM) could hold a candle to the three tech stalwarts of today: In the mid-1980s, those three industrial giants at their peak made up 13.4% of the S&P 500.
We hope Dalio has his finances in order, should that bubble burst.
Brian Sozzi is Yahoo Finance’s Executive Editor, host of the Sozzi Unleashed morning show and the Power Players with Brian Sozzi podcast, and a member of Yahoo Finance’s editorial leadership team. Follow Sozzi on X @BrianSozzi, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Tips on stories? Email brian.sozzi@yahoofinance.com.
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