Is the US market repeating the 1999 bubble?

📉 One of Wall Street’s most famous investors, billionaire Paul Tudor Jones, stated that the American stock market is experiencing déjà vu — a repeat of the late 1990s, when the world watched the rapid rise of dot-com companies. According to him, today’s situation is “remarkably similar” to 1999: markets are rising not based on real results, but on expectations and promises of future profits.

Jones pointed out a paradoxical combination: the US federal budget shows a deficit of around 6% of GDP, while the Federal Reserve maintains a loose monetary policy. In the past, these conditions did not occur together — either the government was saving, or the Fed tightened policy to curb inflation. Now, according to the investor, “money is cheap, risks are ignored, and faith in technological miracles is limitless.”

The main example Jones points to is the chain of companies around artificial intelligence, where market capitalization growth outpaces the creation of real assets.

He described this “chain reaction” as follows:

• OpenAI signs a $300 billion deal with Oracle to build data centers;
• Oracle’s shares jump 40%, and the company buys chips from Nvidia in response;
• Nvidia, inspired by demand, invests $30 billion back into OpenAI — and its own shares hit record highs;
• Then OpenAI signs an agreement with AMD for 6 GW of capacity and receives the option to buy 160 million shares, causing AMD’s stock to rise 35%.

As a result of the chain — not a single data center has been built, no real assets exist, yet the capitalization of all participants has increased by hundreds of billions of dollars. Jones calls this “classic bubble behavior”: money circulates among the same players, creating the illusion of growth until reality checks who was swimming without clothes.

The expert emphasizes that such periods of euphoria are dangerous precisely because they appear stable for a long time. “When the market lives on hopes, not facts, any disappointment can become the trigger,” he says.

According to Jones, a sharp downturn may begin when investors first encounter a liquidity shortage or when promised AI services fail to deliver expected profits. At the same time, the investor does not rule out that a “second wave” of technology, as in the 2000s, will eventually lead to real breakthroughs — but many companies will disappear along the way. “Back then, 90% of startups burned out, but Google, Amazon, and eBay survived. Perhaps now we are once again paying for progress in advance,” Jones noted.

🌀 He urges investors to maintain discipline and a clear perspective: do not confuse innovation with overvaluation, and stock price growth with business growth. Because if history really repeats itself, the end of the 1999 bubble was a painful lesson even for the most experienced.