Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

The latest Markets Live Pulse (MLIV Pulse) survey shows that investors generally believe that this year's technology stock rally will continue, although they are skeptical about the current "AI fever".

About 77 per cent of the 514 investors surveyed by MLIV Pulse plan to invest more or remain stable in technology stocks over the next six months; less than 10 per cent think the bubble in the industry will burst soon. This optimism pushed the Nasdaq 100 to an all-time high, pushing up market valuations and even caught Wall Street professionals off guard.

Survey question: do you intend to increase or reduce your investment in technology stocks in the next 6 months?

But these interviewees are not yet fully committed to the hot AI technology in the first half of this year. Half of them are reluctant to buy AI tools out of their own pocket to help them with their personal or business lives, and most companies do not plan to use AI tools to trade or invest.

50% of investors are not willing to pay for AI

The survey results show that in the generative AI era represented by chat robot ChatGPT, enterprises are faced with great challenges if they want to make profits from large investments in a short period of time. After last week's earnings call, Microsoft and Google's parent company, Alphabet, both said more investment in AI technology was needed before making profits.

Ted Mortonson, technical strategist at Robert W. Baird & Co, an investment bank, said: "for now, the bet on AI is a little ahead of schedule."

The Nasdaq 100 index has soared more than 40% so far this year, led by companies such as apple and Microsoft. The index now trades at about 25 times forward earnings, higher than the 10-year average of 21 times. In the earnings season to the end of June, executives talked more about AI on conference calls and less about "headwinds", "inflation" and "recession".

Unlike the "dotcom bubble" of the early 2000s, the current AI craze is not entirely speculative, as there are already a large number of practical applications in development, albeit at an early stage.

Industry giants have launched new AI products to attract corporate customers. Microsoft's Copilot services, for example, are integrated into its ubiquitous Microsoft 365software suite, using generative AI technology to write emails, aggregate documents, or process numbers more efficiently.

Microsoft plans to charge $30 a month for Copilot services. This will face competition from Google, which is integrating its AI technology into its own Workspace office applications, such as Gmail and Google Docs. In addition, Google is developing AI products for advertisers and news organizations.

Nvidia has become the number one beneficiary of AI fever, and its chips are widely used in computers that support AI applications. Nvidia's shares have risen more than 200 per cent this year, making it the first chipmaker with a market capitalisation of $1 trillion. In this survey, 29% of the respondents believe that in the next two years, Nvidia will jump from the current sixth-largest company to the second-to fourth-largest company in the world.

But while AI technology is entering the workplace, 64 per cent of people believe that the new technology is unlikely to replace their jobs in the next three years. Earlier this year, Goldman Sachs, the investment bank, also said that while 70 per cent of US workers' jobs would be affected by AI, only a small number of jobs would be replaced by new technologies. Among them, office, administrative and legal positions are at the greatest risk of being replaced.

Ed Yardeni, president of research firm Yardeni Research, believes that advances in AI, robotics and quantum computing will help boost productivity and thus have a good chance of boosting the US economy.

At present, American companies are becoming more and more optimistic about a soft landing. Mark Luschini, chief investment strategist at research firm Janney Montgomery Scott, said: "in terms of business prospects and profitability, this is a positive sign that the economy is still quite resilient."

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