Jordi Visser: AI is the only macro story that matters

Visser's framing starts from a puzzle: Treasury yields have risen this year even as the AI trade dominated markets. His answer is that the rise reflects higher nominal GDP plus the debt and capital needs of the data center build-out, a link he says bank credit desks watch as a concentration question rather than a collapse one, since the biggest borrowers are also the biggest equity holdings.

On labor, he reads Microsoft's offer of buyouts to 60,000 employees, which he pegs at 27% of the workforce and about $24 billion in potential savings, as evidence that companies are thriving while workers face the adjustment. That leads him to expect a redistribution of profits from capital to labor, possibly through higher corporate tax rates on the largest companies, rather than universal basic income.

His productivity argument is that AI's effect has surfaced in corporate profit margins, with profits growing while companies barely hire. Even so, he stays cautious on public companies built on code, and he flags a gap between his expectation of roughly 30% S&P 500 earnings growth this year and the index's roughly 11% gain at the time of the conversation. His stock picks lean toward businesses he sees as hard for AI to disrupt: Eli Lilly in obesity and diabetes drugs, where only about 10% of the 100 million obese Americans are on treatment, and Micron, which he sold around May and June and has been buying back.