Goldman Sachs partner: The market has shifted from fear to greed mode, but risks are building up.

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Greed is overshadowing fear—at least for now.

The current state of global stock markets is difficult to describe in any other way. Inflation, interest rates, oil prices, Middle East tensions, fiscal deficits, employment data... All the worries that once weighed on the markets seem to have collectively vanished. In their place is an almost exuberant optimism.

Bobby Molavi, a Goldman Sachs partner, recently published a market observation, writing: “The world seems to have chosen to focus on greed rather than fear, optimism rather than doubt, and the future rather than the present.” He illustrated this rally with some numbers: The S&P 500 has risen for nine consecutive trading days and is set to record a ten-week winning streak; since the "US Tariff Day" low in April 2025, the S&P 500 has climbed 57%; just in May, the index hit 11 all-time highs, and new records continue into June.

But under this prosperity, cracks are quietly widening.

How extreme are the numbers?

At the individual stock level, Arm rose 100% in 10 trading days, Dell rose 93% in 6 days, Intel is up 180%, Marvell jumped 32% in a single day (plus 10% after hours), and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has publicly stated Marvell will join the “trillion-dollar club.” Sandisk's year-to-date gain has reached 600%.

Globally, South Korea's KOSPI has surged 108% since the start of the year, Taiwan's stock market is up 60%, and Japan 37%. SK Hynix is up about 300% year-to-date, with a cumulative 12-month gain of over 1000%. 85% of Taiwan's market cap is linked to AI. In early 2025, KOSPI was around 2401 points and has now climbed to 8800.

Goldman Sachs has raised its KOSPI target to 12,000 points, about 50% higher than current levels.

The IPO market is equally hot. Media predict SpaceX’s IPO could reach $75 billion, breaking the previous record set by Saudi Aramco ($29 billion) by more than double. Meanwhile, OpenAI and Anthropic have both secretly filed for IPOs; Alphabet completed an $80 billion equity raise, with its share price dropping only 3.7% on the announcement—the market’s absorption ability is astonishing.

Does this resemble 1999?

There is much debate on this.

One side cites Greenspan's 1996 warning of “irrational exuberance”—but the market continued to rise for over three years after that. The other insists that this rally is different: it is supported by real revenue and real profit, not just by valuation expansion.

Judging from the analyst framework: Even if this eventually proves to be a bubble, it’s a “profit-driven bubble,” not a “multiple-driven bubble.”

Another structural change worth noting is the market's extreme concentration. The top 10 companies in the S&P 500 now make up about 41% of its market value. The "K-shaped market" is forming—leading companies are growing bigger and the rest are falling further behind. This concentration has extended from holdings to wealth itself.

AI Wealth Effect: Jensen Huang's net worth from $11 billion to $177 billion

The speed of wealth creation brought by the AI wave is equally astonishing. Jensen Huang's personal net worth jumped from $10.9 billion in October 2022 to $177 billion. All seven co-founders of Anthropic have become billionaires, and the Amodei siblings are now worth nearly $10 billion at the latest valuation. The 19 new AI billionaires in 2026 have a combined net worth of about $60 billion, most of which was created in the past two years.

South Korea’s wealth redistribution story is even more concrete. Samsung and SK Hynix have a combined market cap of over $2 trillion, exceeding Korea’s GDP ($1.92 trillion). In the first three months of this year, these two companies had profits totaling $39 billion. Sell-side forecasts for their annual profits have risen by about 300%.

Huge profits have triggered labor disputes: Samsung workers went on strike, some receiving a one-time $400,000 bonus to settle; SK Hynix agreed in 2025 to allocate 10% of its operating profit to employee bonuses. How this money will flow into Korea’s broader economy, and whether it will lead to Korea’s own sovereign wealth fund, is still unknown.

What's tightening beneath the party?

Buybacks are weakening. For a while, corporate buybacks have been an important support for the stock market, but this force is ebbing.

The momentum factor is dominating everything. More and more strategies are chasing the same trend, and rising correlations mean that if the trend reverses, risks will be highly concentrated. Last Friday, the TMT momentum long-short hedge portfolio dropped 10% in a single day, a signal worth noting.

Retail participation at a new peak. Auto-redemption structured products, leveraged ETFs, zero-day options, day trading… Retail investors now have a richer toolbox than ever, and the degree of “gamification” in markets is unprecedented.

Returns on AI capital expenditure are still unresolved. Companies are rapidly consuming computing power and tokens, costs are soaring, but when will the benefits appear, who will pay the bill—nobody has clear answers yet.

Energy and commodities may be the last overlooked puzzle piece. TMT covers about 43% of the S&P 500's market cap, while energy and commodities are only 6%. The explosive growth of AI data centers requires massive electricity and physical resources, but the public market hasn’t fully priced this in. The Quantix Commodity Index is up 217% since 2020, Nasdaq is up 130%, S&P 500 up 85%—the numerator's value may be underestimated.

Geopolitical risks to data centers are also critical. Choosing where to build data centers is no longer just about cost and power—it involves local political resistance (e.g., cases in Maine), regional security (Middle East conflicts), and even “kill switch” control issues. Where hardware is located determines whether software can continue running.

Ultimately, the core driver of today’s market operation is capital flow, portfolio structure, sentiment, and momentum—not fundamentals or valuations.

Risk Warning and DisclaimerThe market has risks, and investing requires caution. This article does not constitute personal investment advice, nor does it take into account individual investment goals, financial situations, or needs. Users should consider whether any opinions, views, or conclusions in this article suit their specific circumstances. Investing based on this information is at your own risk. ```