Peter Boockvar of OnePoint BFG Wealth Partners explains how AI demand can keep growing while the companies building data centers struggle to earn a return. CoreWeave has committed to years of lease payments. What happens if the price it can charge customers for computing power falls before those leases run out?
The author of The Boock Report joins Matt Zeigler to trace who bears that risk. A lender, a chipmaker and an electrician building a data center all depend on the same project, but a slowdown reaches each of them differently. Boockvar draws on the history of the memory chip business to explain why a stock can look cheapest just as its earnings are peaking.
They also look at the economy beyond AI. Boockvar compares what concert venues and hotel operators are hearing from customers, explains why reopening the Strait of Hormuz would still leave oil inventories to rebuild, and shares where he sees value in overseas stocks, healthcare and consumer staples.
Topics covered:
- How much hiring a data center supports during construction and after it opens
- Why new memory chip supply matters to Micron shareholders even if demand keeps rising
- How CoreWeave’s lease commitments and borrowing costs compare with IREN’s approach
- Who could keep an existing data center running in a restructuring, and who loses orders if the next one never gets built
- Why Peter Boockvar sees the Fed making smaller policy adjustments and watches the cost of financing AI projects
- What sold-out concerts, travel bookings and hiring by industry reveal about the consumer
- How depleted oil inventories could sustain demand for crude after shipping resumes
- Where Peter Boockvar finds overlooked businesses outside the U.S. and in healthcare and consumer staples
- What gold prices mean for miners’ margins and why refinancing matters for private credit
Chapters:
00:00 How much of the economy depends on the AI buildout?
06:25 The workers who build data centers and the jobs that last
11:14 Micron and the trap of buying peak earnings
18:23 Who bears the losses if an AI infrastructure company defaults?
23:19 How AI financing costs enter the Fed’s rate debate
29:05 What concerts, hotels and hiring tell us about the consumer
37:03 Oil supply and the long job of rebuilding inventories
44:44 Looking overseas for overlooked stocks
49:42 The case for consumer staples and healthcare
56:52 Rush at Madison Square Garden and Peter Boockvar’s first concert
Learn more about the Excess Returns podcast network:
https://excessreturns.co
No information discussed in this podcast should be construed as investment advice. Securities discussed may be held by the hosts and guests, their firms or their clients.