Survival ideas for the coming AI bloodbath! — Arabian Post

Matein Khalid

Stock exchange folklore in pre-1929 Jazz Age New York has one priceless insight for me – “you be buying when they are crying, you be selling when they are yelling”. So as I scan the markets, I realized that the mother of all yelling is taking place in the AI arena and its decibel count is loudest where the ignorance about its nuances is the highest, as in the Gulf. I am certain that when the AI bubble pops, untold billions in investor wealth will be wiped out, just as the dinosaurs were wiped from the face of the earth by one cosmic asteroid hit 65 million years ago. So my real time strategy call now is – Matt be selling when they are yelling. In other words, load up on stocks and sectors with the least correlation to the AI theme and fundamental ballast to survive the AI asteroid hit my macro crystal ball and the Silicon Valley grapevine tells me is all too possible in 2026.

The smart money knows that data center investing is an accident waiting to happen while the dumb money intends to borrow from the UAE commercial banks to gift America $20 billion in AI equity it does not need just to earn brownie points from Trumpworld. Note that real estate datacenter investment trust REITS have been one of the worst sectors in the REIT constellation in 2025, clear evidence of a supply glut, which always precedes a Darwinian shakeout. Remember the global fiber optics scam in 2000? I do but hundreds of investors do not because their fave pre-IPO unicorns are now resting eternally and happily in money heaven, jannat al-faloos.

I can easily visualize the parabolic path the AI heat seeking missile will take as it zaps herds of gentle, trusting lambs once pinstriped scavengers have fleeced poor Bambi Al-Investor of all his wool enroute to the slaughterhouse. Tariff Man has ensured that consumer inflation will rise well above 3.5% by next summer, even if his handpicked accolades on the FOMC refuse to acknowledge the macro storm clouds. The exodus of several million migrants guarantees a spike in wage inflation risk. This means the post-Powell Fed will be exposed as the political paper tiger it really is even as the inflation data goes ballistic and the current slowdown morphs into full blown recession. The only reason the US economy did not slump into recession in 2022 despite the most draconian monetary tightening by the Powell Fed in 40-years was that the interest rate hike were offset by Papa Joe’s $2 trillion fiscal lollipop.

The Fed will be forced to raise and not cut interest rates at that point or US Treasury debt will have its own Liz Truss with the 10-year US Treasury yield at 5%. This is when the bloodiest cycle of wealth destruction Silicon Valley has ever seen since the death rattle of the dotcom bubble in 2000 will grip Wall Street and world finance.

So what do I want to own when the AI mutant ninja chickens come home to roost on Nasdaq? One, the Lords of War. Victor Bout was trapped by a DEA sting and destined to spend the rest of his life in the Club Fed until Putin’s FSB arranged for him to retire at a Dacha in Sochi in exchange for the exquisite redhead Anna Chapman, the Mata Hari of our times. Yet the fact remains that the Cold War 2.0 rages with both Moscow and Beijing while Lockheed and Northrop have a mere 0.2% correlations with AI. Hurrah!

Two, old is gold. The oldest Baby Boomers just turned 80 in America and even the Trumpster is a youthful 79. The adult diaper market in both Japan and China is bigger than the baby diaper market. The far right parties in Europe will throw out tens of millions migrant workers once the welfare states go kaput. The old, bold and beautiful theme is barely correlated with AI if you consider senior living REITs like Ventas and Welltower. My call? Ahlan wa sehlan!

Three, défense de fumer, mamnue altadkhin, no smoking, rauchen verboten! The Islamic world’s love affair with tobacco that began in the reign of Sultan Ahmet Khan Osmanlu, who built the lovely mosque of Galata bridge in Eminönü is in full swing from Rabat to Jakarta and Sarajevo to Khartoum. Altria and Philip Morris are thus money machines with a 0.1 correlation to AI. Altria trades at a mere 9X earnings. Its smokeless product menu is a winner and the shares actually rose when AI/high beta tech was bloodied by Trump last Friday. So this is what I will be buying when the AI lemmings are crying on the Day of Ruin!