Empower Chief Investment Strategist Marta Norton said she was getting nervous over the amount of debt some of the nation’s richest companies were incurring as a result of rampant investment in AI — the product that is largely driving President Donald Trump’s 2026 stock market growth.
Fox Business host Liz Claman, of “The Claman Countdown,” initiated the discussion by bringing up the amount of debt companies are shouldering in their race for AI buildout.
“What about that hyper debt scale issuance? They’re shouldering so much debt, and not just the hyperscalers. You know, in June, Nvidia had gone to the market with $25 billion in borrowing and even the best-in-class ones that do have a lot of cash on the balance sheet are very exposed. Do you see any negatives there?”
“That is something that I do think we need to watch,” confided Norton. “They’re building a whole new world and they’ve eaten up a lot of their cash flow, which was enviable just a few years ago, and now it’s negligible. And then we have them going to the debt market. And that doesn’t seem to be slowing down in any shape and form. In fact, the CapX really seems to be increasing, which would mean more debt.”
“I just think people need to make sure they are diversifying from AI because it creeps in in ways you may not expect,” she added.
Possibly driving debt concerns is the fact that analysts and investors alike are now catching on to Trump’s up-and-down roller coaster of oil prices, and they appear to be settling in for a long-term slog with Trump in the White House.
“The conflict in the Middle East and the implications for forward inflation remain the primary macro narrative and are likely to dictate price action in US rates for the foreseeable future,” BMO Capital Markets’ Ian Lyngen told Bloomberg as a drop in oil prices this week failed to keep stocks and bonds from sliding into an ugly drop.
This means Trump’s magic button for temporarily manipulating stock markets with unreliable claims of peace now appears to be failing. Bloomberg reporting investors largely ignored a rise in the dollar and the drop in Brent crude below $103 a barrel after the Trump administration ordered another release of oil from emergency reserves amid a stalemate in US-Iran talks.
Also, US job openings fell to a five-month low, suggesting employers are growing “more cautious about expanding their workforces toward the end of the summer, while layoffs remained subdued,” reported Bloomberg. “Consumer confidence dropped to the lowest level since 2014.”