AI stocks

A trader reviewing margin levels beside a stock chart, illustrating how leverage in investing can undo a strong AI thesis.
Investment Myths

Right About AI, Ruined by Leverage: Why a Good Thesis Couldn’t Save This Fund

A reader recently wrote to a finance columnist with a question many investors quietly ask themselves: what’s wrong with 5x margin if you can borrow cheaply, you’re young, and you believe you’re right about where the market is going? Days later, the answer arrived in the form of a real case study — a 25-year-old hedge fund manager whose AI infrastructure thesis was, by most measures, working. His fund still ended up selling its stock portfolio at a discount to one of the most powerful firms on Wall Street. The lesson is not that he was wrong about artificial intelligence. It’s that being right and staying solvent are two entirely different problems.

South Korean stock exchange display showing sharp market swings, illustrating hidden market risk behind a calm index
Market Risks

The Calm Index, the Wild Stock: What South Korea’s Crash Reveals About Hidden Market Risk

Imagine an index that gains 40% in dollar terms this year, ranks as the world’s best-performing major market, and still manages to erase nearly four decades of gains in five weeks. That is not a hypothetical. It happened in South Korea in 2026, and it happened while the country’s benchmark, the KOSPI, was busy being one of the year’s standout success stories. The lesson is not that South Korean stocks are uniquely dangerous. It is that a headline index number can tell you almost nothing about the risk sitting underneath it.

AI IPO wave on a stock market chart, with focus on lock-up expiration and valuation pressure
Market History

The AI IPO Wave Is Not the Signal — What Comes After Is

A string of trillion-dollar listings would be a spectacle by any measure. SpaceX, Anthropic, OpenAI — the names alone carry enough narrative weight to dominate financial headlines for months. But for investors trying to make sense of what a concentrated wave of AI mega-IPOs actually means for markets, the debut day excitement is probably the least important part of the story.

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