The S&P 500 climbed 0.58% to 7,818.93, brushing against its 52-week peak of 7,844.52 and extending a rally that has carried the index more than 1,500 points above its low of 6,316.91 over the past year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.49% to close at 51,521.30, while the Nasdaq Composite rose 0.45% to 27,599.89 — just shy of its own record of 27,722.75 set this year.
The gains came despite a pointed challenge to the market's dominant narrative from Arthur Hayes, the former CEO of crypto exchange BitMEX, who argued that enormous sums being funneled into AI data centers and related infrastructure are being squandered. Hayes contends the spending spree is unsustainable and is positioning for a scenario in which an eventual reckoning in AI markets triggers government intervention, a chain of events he believes would ultimately boost cryptocurrency prices rather than dent broader equities.
The comments land at a sensitive moment for Wall Street, where mega-cap technology companies tied to AI buildouts have been central to the market's advance to record territory. Investors have poured capital into chipmakers, cloud providers, and data-center operators on the bet that AI spending will keep compounding for years. A warning that this spending is excessive — and could end in a bust followed by a bailout — cuts against the optimism currently priced into tech-heavy indexes like the Nasdaq.
For now, the market's reaction suggests investors are not yet rattled. All three major indexes finished higher, with the S&P 500 trading within half a percent of an all-time high and the Nasdaq doing the same. That resilience indicates traders are either dismissing the bubble concerns or simply haven't repositioned yet in response to them.
The bigger question is what happens if sentiment shifts. Hayes' bet is essentially a wager that AI infrastructure spending will falter badly enough to require some form of government or central-bank response, a dynamic he expects to ultimately favor bitcoin and other digital assets over traditional equities. Whether that scenario materializes remains unproven, but the warning adds to a growing chorus of voices questioning whether AI-related capital expenditure has outrun realistic near-term returns — a debate likely to intensify the longer major indexes keep setting records on the back of the same spending.