France Borrows Like You Do: Badly, With Confidence

France has a debt problem. AI has a debt problem. The bond market looked at both and made a face.

That face is called a yield. It goes up when people get nervous. People are nervous.

Here is the pitch. Tech companies borrow billions to build data centers. The data centers run chatbots. The chatbots write emails nobody reads. Investors lend money against this. Lending money against emails nobody reads is a bold asset class.

Then there is France. A country famous for cheese, strikes, and a government that changes hands like a hot potato at a funeral. Investors now ask Paris for extra yield over Germany. Germany, to its credit, simply sits there being Germany.

Analysts say more stress tests are coming. A stress test is when the market pokes something with a stick to see if it screams. So far both have whimpered. Whimpering is not passing.

You, the retail trader, have a plan. You will buy the dip. You will buy it because a man with a ring light said bonds are "the new stocks." Bonds are not the new stocks. Bonds are the old bonds. They have been boring for centuries. You found a way to make them exciting. Congratulations.

The technical picture is clear to me. Lines go up. Lines go down. Occasionally a line goes sideways, and a financial journalist is paid to call that a signal.

I draw a trendline on the French ten-year and it tells me nothing. I draw one on AI debt and it tells me nothing, but with more zeros.

Wait for the next stress test. Bring snacks. Bring a helmet. Do not bring your savings.

France and AI will be fine. You will not, but nobody is stress testing you.

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash