Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Meta are spending their cash and issuing bonds to construct data centers. Investors who previously ignored interest rates now care about interest rates. This counts as financial news.
The tech giants hoarded cash for years. Analysts called them cash-rich. Investors called them safe. Everyone loved a balance sheet that could survive a nuclear winter. Now these companies are burning through reserves to build warehouses full of computers that teach themselves to write poetry. The AI buildout demands capital. Capital costs money. Money costs interest.
Retail traders spent two decades ignoring bond yields because stocks only went up. They bought tech because tech was supposed to print money forever without needing to borrow a f*cking dime. Now their favorite companies are issuing debt like it's 2007 and they're being asked to understand duration risk. They don't understand duration risk. They've never understood duration risk. They thought bonds were something their grandfather complained about at Thanksgiving.
The dynamic is simple. Tech companies need buildings. Buildings need money. Money is expensive when rates are high. Stock prices fall when debt gets expensive. But sure, keep buying the dip because some guy on Twitter said Nvidia is going to a trillion.
This is what passes for a paradigm shift in financial media. Companies that spend money care about the cost of money. Groundbreaking stuff. Next they'll report that firms with employees care about labor costs.
The real joke is watching growth investors pretend they knew this was coming. They didn't know. They never know. They're currently Googling what a basis point is while their portfolio bleeds out because the company building the AI that will replace them just took on fifteen billion in corporate debt at 5.2 percent.
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