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title: US stocks are safe. What you lose isn’t the principal —...
description: An extended macro analysis argues that the widely-held belief that US equities are 'safe' obscures a different risk: not a crash, but stagnation. Hyperscaler...
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og:description: An extended macro analysis argues that the widely-held belief that US equities are 'safe' obscures a different risk: not a crash, but stagnation. Hyperscaler...
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# US stocks are safe. What you lose isn’t the principal — it’s time.

**[Medium](https://daily.dev/sources/medium_js)** · 32 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments

## Summary

An extended macro analysis argues that the widely-held belief that US equities are 'safe' obscures a different risk: not a crash, but stagnation. Hyperscaler AI capex has shifted from being funded by cash flow to debt and equity raises (Alphabet's $84.75B offering, Oracle's $20B stock program), while the ten-year term premium remains unusually low, seemingly held down by an 'absorption machinery' of Fed bill purchases, swap facilities, and stablecoin-driven Treasury demand. The piece walks through three tiers of AI-related debt risk, argues government backstops protect credit events but not stretched valuations (CAPE 42), and draws a historical parallel to 1966-1982, when equities went nowhere nominally for sixteen years while inflation eroded real returns via financial repression. The conclusion: the likely outcome isn't collapse but a long stretch of nominal stability and real erosion, making cash-flow structure more important than diversification.

## Full article

daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: <https://sangdonism.medium.com/us-stocks-are-safe-what-you-lose-isnt-the-principal-it-s-time-7db9a6f62fae>

## Questions this post answers

### What percentage of hyperscaler AI capex is now funded by debt instead of cash flow?

The debt-funded share of hyperscaler capital expenditure rose from 9% in fiscal 2024 to 32% on a trailing-twelve-month basis by mid-2026. This shift accompanied major capital raises, including Alphabet's record $84.75 billion equity offering in June 2026 and Oracle's $20 billion stock program aimed at defending its BBB credit rating.

_daily.dev surfaces analysis like this for anyone tracking how AI infrastructure spending is actually financed._

### How does CoreWeave's borrowing cost compare between 2024 and 2026?

CoreWeave borrowed at a floating rate of 11% in 2024, but by March 2026 it priced $8.5 billion in debt at an A3 rating and 6% interest. The improvement did not reflect safer GPU collateral; instead, repayment shifted from reselling hardware to relying on customer contract payments, relocating risk from inventory to counterparty credit.

_investors weighing neocloud credit risk can find deeper funding-structure breakdowns like this on daily.dev._

### What happened to US stock market real returns between 1966 and 1982?

The S&P 500 rose only from 94.06 in February 1966 to 102.42 in August 1982 in nominal price terms, while prices roughly tripled, meaning the real price index fell nearly 60%. Total nominal return was 6.8% annually, three-quarters from dividends, leaving reinvesting investors roughly flat in real terms after sixteen years.

_anyone modeling long-horizon portfolio risk can track this kind of historical stagnation analysis on daily.dev._

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---

Tags: [#ai-infrastructure](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-infrastructure), [#investing](https://daily.dev/tags/investing)

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