Bloomberg Surveillance TV: July 29th, 2026

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News.

**Jonathan Ferro** (0:11)
This is the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast. I'm Jonathan Ferro along with Lisa Abramowitz and Annmarie Hordern. Join us each day for insight from the best in markets, economics and geopolitics. From our global headquarters in New York City, we are live on Bloomberg Television weekday mornings from 6 to 9 AM Eastern.
Subscribe to the podcast on Apple, Spotify or anywhere else you listen. And as always on the Bloomberg Terminal and the Bloomberg Business app. We begin this out with stocks looking to build momentum, heading into a blockbuster day for Wall Street. Dan Suzuki of iCapital writing, a robust macro backdrop should fuel a second straight quarter of 20% plus earnings growth. With tailwinds failing in the second half, this may be what peak growth looks like. Dan joins us now for more. Dan, good morning.

**Dan Suzuki** (0:54)
Good morning.

**Jonathan Ferro** (0:54)
Welcome back buddy and congratulations on the new season. It's good to see you.

**Dan Suzuki** (0:57)
Yeah, great to be with you guys. Love this show.

**Jonathan Ferro** (0:59)
Let's draw a distinction between peak growth and peak markets. How wide is that distinction this morning?

**Dan Suzuki** (1:05)
It's clearly not very, very distinct, right? I think like in normal markets, it's really more about peak earnings than it is about peak growth. But I think when expectations get really high and the bar set so high, peak growth is all it takes to sort of get expectations to be too high to meet. And that's kind of what you're seeing today in the AI trend.

**Jonathan Ferro** (1:24)
Lisa talked about how high the bar is for the chips name.
The likes of Intel, the likes of SK Hynex, the likes of Samsung. How high is the bar for the hyperscalers? A couple of names that have been beaten up quite a lot.

**Dan Suzuki** (1:34)
I mean, I think what you're seeing this earning season is that the bar is set too high for any stock associated with the AI trade. Right. And that's not to say that the underlying fundamental story is not good, but the bar is just being set too high. So you can't see any stocks that are up on their earnings results.
And I think the way to think about it now is the bar is set so high, the new beat is called a 10% beat on earnings and a lower capex guidance. I think that's the thing that's going to get stocks to rally.

**Lisa Abramowitz** (2:04)
So this is an area that's controversial. You think that if they underperform or at least they lowball the capex plans and they come in lighter than expected, that would be a case for rally more than anything else. Is that correct?

**Dan Suzuki** (2:16)
I think that's part of the story. I think you want to see underlying strong fundamental trends, but also an eye toward monetization of all this investment spending that's happening.
This is something we've been talking about iCapital for a while. We call it the AI capex vigilantes. You're seeing the vigilantes are winning these days. You're seeing everybody's waking up to this story, whether it's the hyperscalers, the semis now is the second derivative of that. I think that's really what's coming to play. What the market wants to see, what the vigilantes want to see, is signs that there's an eye toward the monetization of that investment.

**Lisa Abramowitz** (2:50)
Do you want to get on the vigilante train and overweight some of the fixed-income instruments that have leverage right now and not necessarily go to the equity side of the equation?

**Dan Suzuki** (2:58)
No, I think both sides, the reality of what's happening right now in markets is that the markets are waking up to the risks associated with the AI trade across the supply chain. And it's not to say that the underlying fundamental story is broken, but there's a lot of good things happening, but there are obviously a lot of risks. Moats are weak, pricing power is weak, CapEx is very high.
And when you get sort of price wars and price pressures and competitive environments in a hugely capital-intensive industry, that typically causes a lot of shakeout and volatility in some of the names. I think that's what you're seeing now.

**Annmarie Hordern** (3:31)
Do you see any evidence that some of the AI trade is starting to move to other industries that are starting to use and adapt AI quicker?

**Dan Suzuki** (3:38)
Yes. Yes, absolutely. It's hard to find. I was just talking about this the other day. It's hard to find an area of the market that's not an AI trade. It used to be emerging markets. That's as far as you can go. Now, emerging markets is an AI trade.