Speaker · Updated
Barry Ritholtz: latest market views
Ritholtz Wealth Management
Summary
Barry Ritholtz is the co-founder and chairman of Ritholtz Wealth Management, host of Bloomberg's 'Masters in Business' podcast and Bloomberg Opinion columnist, and author of 'Bailout Nation'.
Chorus has 16 views from Barry Ritholtz across 4 episodes on Masters in Business, Merryn Talks Money and Excess Returns since October 9, 2026. Their latest calls: bullish on Anthropic.
Where they stand
Their latest bullish or bearish call on each company.
- AnthropicBullish ·
What they talk about most
The latest views
Newest first. Every quote is checked against the episode's transcript.
Equities should deliver about 7-8% after inflation, versus 1-2% for bonds, so young investors may skip bonds.
Ritholtz compares the expected returns of the two asset classes. Bonds generate about 1-2% after inflation, while equities are expected to generate about 7-8% after inflation. On that basis he argues that people with decades ahead of them do not need bonds until their 50s or 60s, or until they have specific income needs. Bonds become useful only when the money is needed soon or the investor wants to avoid equity-level risk. The argument rests on the spread between the expected real returns of stocks and bonds.
“Why do I need something that's going to generate 1% or 2% after inflation when I could have an asset class that's going to generate 7% or 8% after inflation.”at 7:34
Recent US debt growth reflects avoidable policy choices like tax cuts, wars and tariffs, not unavoidable crises.
Barry says the US added roughly $20 trillion of debt in the past decade, and that much of it reflects 'unforced errors': giant tax cuts, wars of choice and tariffs. Unlike genuine catastrophes or pandemics that require a response, these were decisions. He uses this to argue that the debt build-up was a policy choice rather than an inevitable result of shocks, so it is a problem that could have been avoided.
“It's really a story of unforced errors this past decade. I mean Giant tax cuts, wars of choice, tariffs. You could go down the list... All these things were decisions, not, hey. Sometimes there's a catastrophe or a pandemic, and it requires a response.”at 1:18:39
Masters in Business: Embracing the Bond Market: Masters in Business with Robin Wigglesworth ·
Treasury should have issued 50- or 100-year debt and refinanced while rates were at record lows.
Barry spent much of the 2010s urging the Treasury to issue very long-dated debt and refinance everything while rates were at record lows. The Treasury's response was that lower rates would just encourage more spending. Barry rejects that: the government will spend what it spends regardless, so the real question is what it costs to service the debt, and locking in low long-term rates would have lowered that cost.
“I spent the better part of the twenty tens begging the treasury department to issue fifty or a hundred year debt. And by the way, refinance everything. Rates are at record lows.”at 1:19:26
Masters in Business: Embracing the Bond Market: Masters in Business with Robin Wigglesworth ·
Debt-to-GDP is a meaningless gauge; debt sustainability depends on growth and the other side of the ledger.
Barry argues that debt-to-GDP says nothing about a country's ability to carry debt, citing Japan as an example. A large, robust GDP means a country can afford to service its debt, and the 'doomsayers' he wrote about only look at the liabilities, not the assets or income that back them. He invokes double-entry accounting: a balance sheet has two sides, and a country's capacity to repay depends on the economy that generates its revenue.
“Well, it should argue that if you have a big robust GDP, you can afford servicing that debt... They only look at the debt. They don't look at the other side of the ledger.”at 1:20:23
Masters in Business: Embracing the Bond Market: Masters in Business with Robin Wigglesworth ·
Narrow breadth at all-time highs is a warning that fewer stocks are participating, not a bear-market signal.
Ritholtz prefers broad participation to index-level highs. From his Q3 client-call notes, 83% of S&P 500 stocks were down 10% or more from 52-week highs while the index sat at all-time highs, and about 42% were down 20%. He says this narrowing does not mean the bull market is over and a bear is starting. It is a warning that fewer and fewer companies are participating. He dismisses the 'only the Magnificent Seven' objection, noting those seven firms made 891 acquisitions over twenty years, and that breaking any of them up would yield 10 to 20 S&P 500 companies. So he cares about breadth rather than mega-cap concentration.
“we have 83% of the S and P 500 [in Q3], down 10% from fifty two week highs, and about half as many, 42%, down 20%.”at 8:57
Excess Returns: AI Productivity Is Real. 83% of Stocks Are 10% Off Highs. Why Does Barry Ritholtz Like Bonds Again? ·
Trillion-dollar IPO valuations for SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI look bonkers, bigger than all US tech IPOs since 1980.
Ritholtz puts numbers on the IPO wave. If the next two of SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI go public at currently discussed valuations, the three companies together would be about $5.2 trillion. All US tech IPOs from 1980 to 2025 total only $4.1 trillion, so the three would be about 20% larger. He says it is not inflation, and that nobody knows where SpaceX will end up or who will be left holding the bag. He thinks the consensus valuations may be wildly wrong and could be half of what is discussed, but adds that going public at a trillion dollars is still bonkers.
“that'll be 5,200,000,000,000 for those three companies. To put that into context, take all of The US tech IPOs from 1980 to 2025, that was only 4,100,000,000,000.”at 11:53
Excess Returns: AI Productivity Is Real. 83% of Stocks Are 10% Off Highs. Why Does Barry Ritholtz Like Bonds Again? ·
AI infrastructure & data centers
AI build-out corporate bonds yielding above Treasuries are adding to upward pressure on yields.
In a recent note Ritholtz listed drivers of higher yields. Japanese bonds now yield meaningfully for the first time in decades, and data center and AI build-out bonds are theoretically A-rated corporates yielding much more than money-good Treasuries. That competes for capital with Treasuries. He asks whether investors are reaching for yield to fund a build-out that may be scaling to $4.5 to $7 trillion, depending on who you believe. He is raising the question rather than asserting a conclusion, so the view is tentative.
“but all of the data center and AI build out bonds, these are theoretically [A]-rated corporates yielding much more than money good treasuries.”at 12:59
Excess Returns: AI Productivity Is Real. 83% of Stocks Are 10% Off Highs. Why Does Barry Ritholtz Like Bonds Again? ·
AI infrastructure & data centers
Chip efficiency gains could make today's giant data centers largely unnecessary, stranding the capital spent on them.
Ritholtz argues that Moore's law has driven semiconductors and GPUs forward rapidly. He cannot picture needing a seven-football-field-sized data center ten or twenty years from now. Dave Nadig and he have discussed this before. If compute requirements are cut in half or by 90%, someone will have spent heavily to build a giant warehouse in the middle of nowhere when only 5 or 10% of it is needed. He calls that an issue. The view is about the long-term overbuild risk in the data-center build-out, not the near term.
“If you just think about how rapidly Moore's law has worked with semiconductors and GPUs, I just can't imagine that twenty years from now or even ten years from now, we need a seven football field sized data center.”at 13:26
Excess Returns: AI Productivity Is Real. 83% of Stocks Are 10% Off Highs. Why Does Barry Ritholtz Like Bonds Again? ·
AnthropicBullish
Claude's data-lake queries turned a weeks-long rebalance analysis into same-day work.
Ritholtz's firm built a data lake pulling from Schwab, Fidelity, Orion and Salesforce, and gave enterprise Claude access to it. Asking Claude to find households most out of line with their target allocation, older clients or those retiring within five years, and clients worried about capital gains would have taken six people weeks by hand, and now returns an answer the same day. It also fills out forms such as the Canadian R105 and the MV102 plate-change form. He says there is still heavy lifting in adviser-to-household calls, and he does not yet call it a productivity gain, but the workflow benefit is large.
“but what Claude has done for my workflow and for my sanity is just spectacular.”at 36:09
Excess Returns: AI Productivity Is Real. 83% of Stocks Are 10% Off Highs. Why Does Barry Ritholtz Like Bonds Again? ·
Dynamic pricing will trigger a consumer backlash and state legislation; retailers are in an arms race with shoppers.
Ritholtz describes an arms race between consumers and retailers, citing Walmart's shelf-pricing technology that prices items by shopper context and his own experience of Uber and Lyft fares for the same ride differing. He believes this will provoke a backlash, that state legislation is inevitable, and that early lawsuits against such pricing already exist. He links the backlash to rising populism, and argues that politicians will soon blame companies' shrinkflation and dynamic pricing, not just the war, tariffs and deficits, for inflation, which he says accounts for a third to a quarter of price increases.
“I think there is a backlash against some of this dynamic pricing, and I can't imagine this isn't gonna show up in some state legislation... but it's only starting.”at 41:07
Excess Returns: AI Productivity Is Real. 83% of Stocks Are 10% Off Highs. Why Does Barry Ritholtz Like Bonds Again? ·
Meta PlatformsUncertain
Meta's ad-driven model makes it untrustworthy with user data; it will sell shopping data to retailers.
Ritholtz argues Meta makes most of its money from advertising, so it is the wrong party to trust with consumer AI data. He says Facebook apps appear to listen, and that his own repeated experience of ads matching private conversations is evidence. He believes Meta would pull its shopping-data insight from its MetaMuse tool and sell retailers data on where customers find value and where they can be exploited. He compares this unfavourably with Apple and Google's privacy record. The concern is about trust and conduct, not a directional stock call.
“Meta is gonna be pulling all of the Muse data and saying, here's where your customers are finding value, and here are the spots where you can rape and pillage without fear.”at 46:43
Excess Returns: AI Productivity Is Real. 83% of Stocks Are 10% Off Highs. Why Does Barry Ritholtz Like Bonds Again? ·
AI now does in minutes work that once took an assistant hours each day.
Ritholtz gives a concrete example: he used to hand organising his daily list of articles to an assistant, who spent a couple of hours a day on it each week. Now he exports from Instapaper, uploads to Claude and formats the list in about five minutes. He says this has freed time for his other pursuits, although he is unsure whether AI has made him more productive or simply made it easier to chase more rabbit holes.
“Now I just export from Instapaper, upload to Claude, format it... So what used to be a person spending hours and hours a day is now five minutes from Claude.”at 55:37
Excess Returns: AI Productivity Is Real. 83% of Stocks Are 10% Off Highs. Why Does Barry Ritholtz Like Bonds Again? ·
Treasury yields now pay well above inflation, making bonds attractive for the first time this century.
Ritholtz says the 10-year Treasury has rarely offered over 5% in the past 25 years, apart from a brief spike in February 2020, and that bonds are paying handsomely relative to inflation, GDP and taxes. He attributes the lingering bond pessimism to recency bias from the 2022 rout, and frames this as the end of a 40-year bull market in bonds rather than a call on equities or the bond bottom. He suggests legging into bonds through separately managed accounts of 5-7 year duration, rated AA/A, and holding to maturity to earn par, and says TIPS suit fixed-income investors wanting a guaranteed inflation hedge.
“I love bonds... you can get, you know, over 5% on the ten year... this is the first time this century bonds are attractive.”at 1:04:25
Excess Returns: AI Productivity Is Real. 83% of Stocks Are 10% Off Highs. Why Does Barry Ritholtz Like Bonds Again? ·
Municipal and investment-grade bonds offer attractive tax-equivalent yields; avoid junk credit.
Ritholtz cites munis yielding around 4.5-4.75% tax-free, which he says equals roughly 8-8.5% tax-equivalent for someone in a high-tax coastal state, a level he says would have shocked people in 2015-2019. He argues high-grade corporates are also attractive, and he advises staying in investment grade and never reaching for yield into junk. He also warns against complex AI-funded structures in the credit market, which he says can look like Microsoft exposure but aren't.
“Or munis that are four and a half, four and three quarters percent interest rate... you're getting about eight to eight and a half percent tax equivalent yield... high grade corporates. Stay away from the junk.”at 1:04:51
Excess Returns: AI Productivity Is Real. 83% of Stocks Are 10% Off Highs. Why Does Barry Ritholtz Like Bonds Again? ·
AI infrastructure & data centers
Circular AI-funded debt structures like SPVs are a risk; investors should beware of them.
Ritholtz warns investors about circular AI-funded financing that appears to be Microsoft exposure but sits in a special purpose vehicle or similar structure in the background. He says this is the kind of product he would avoid while staying with high-grade credit. He gives no detailed numbers, but the warning is that the underlying risk is hidden behind the brand name.
“Beware of the wacky circular AI funded stuff that it looks like it's Microsoft, but it isn't. There's a SPV or something in the background.”at 1:07:17
Excess Returns: AI Productivity Is Real. 83% of Stocks Are 10% Off Highs. Why Does Barry Ritholtz Like Bonds Again? ·
Current long yields are just the long-run average, not a crisis, versus zero-rate periods.
Ritholtz relays bond managers' view that rates are reverting to the long-term average rather than being high. He notes a 10-year yield around 5% and mortgage rates of 6.5 to 7% are the average of the past fifty years. He says the current rates feel like a crisis only relative to zero-rate conditions, and he agrees with that view.
“a five percent ten yield and a six and a half or 7% mortgage rates, that's the average for the past fifty years. It's not a crisis.”at 1:03:50
Masters in Business: Balancing Conviction and Risk: Masters in Business with Maria Vassalou ·
Shows
- Masters in Business · 2 episodes
- Merryn Talks Money · 1 episode
- Excess Returns · 1 episode
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