Dean Ball Pushes Back on Cowen: AI Pessimists Got Rich Betting on NVDA
deanwball · x · 2026-09-04
Tyler Cowen challenged AI pessimists to name market prices that would confirm their fears. Dean Ball quotes and rebuts the take.
His argument:
- Some of the most pessimistic AI forecasters he knows are multimillionaires because they understood "AI will be a big deal" early and sought exposure via NVDA and frontier lab equity;
- Leopold's fund, even net of leverage, posted phenomenal public-market returns, likely industry-leading;
- Many trades exist: the compute trade, shorting SaaS (or building a framework for which SaaS is at risk), buying hard-to-replace physical chokepoints, and betting on rising interest rates — the last closest to what Cowen wants.
Related event: Cowen vs. Ball: Why Aren't AI Pessimists Putting Their Money Down(6 posts)→
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