Initially, investors rewarded companies for huge AI spending announcements. Now, this same news causes stock market jitters. The anxiety stems from historical parallels like the internet boom, where overexcited investors backed the wrong companies and lost fortunes, even though the technology ultimately succeeded.
Traditional hedges like bonds are less effective in an inflationary environment, where they can crash alongside stocks. Safe havens like gold have shown extreme volatility. Historical analysis of the dot-com bubble suggests select baskets of stocks, such as those with high, reliable dividends or low volatility, offer a more reliable hedge.
During the dot-com bubble, investors who sold at the first sign of a wobble missed massive gains. Analysis shows that even after the crash, buy-and-hold investors were profitable, while those who sold early were not. The worst financial outcome is panic-selling at the bottom of a crash, which locks in losses.
Literary agent Georges Borchardt championed works now considered classics but was initially met with overwhelming rejection. Editors called Samuel Beckett's work an "unreadable" imitation of Joyce. Elie Wiesel's Holocaust memoir *Night* was rejected by 15 publishers, with one claiming the author would "never find an audience."
Turkey's President Erdogan may be grooming his son as a successor, but his own party's voters could reject a dynastic handover. These voters value the democratic legitimacy Erdogan earned by winning elections—a legitimacy his son lacks. This creates a paradox where an autocrat's power base opposes treating government as a family business.