How large a premium are investors paying for AI exposure?
Core argument: The 32 stocks in the $CHAT Generative AI ETF have returned 77% this year, which the author cites as evidence that investors are paying a sizable premium for AI exposure.
Investors are paying a sizable premium for AI exposure. One example: the 32 stocks in the $CHAT Generative AI ETF have returned 77% this year. The 22 $CHAT ETF stocks that have positive earnings projected for the next 12 months trade at an average P/E of 31x. The other 10 $CHAT ETF stocks have infinite P/Es, either due to negative earnings or trivially positive earnings that create nonsense P/E ratios over 100x. The large language model revolution is going to have to live up to the high end of expectations to justify this. I have seen estimates that AI will eventually add ~10% to the fair value of the S&P 500 due to some combination of augmented employee productivity and staff reductions, but I’m not sure how one would measure that.

