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They say what goes up must come down.
Now there's a warning the AI bubble could burst.
It's World Business Express from the BBC World Service.
I'm Sarah Rogers.
And in India, the UK Prime Minister is on a trade mission and gold hits record highs again.
Yes, but we start with that warning from the Bank of England that there could be trouble ahead for global markets if the AI bubble bursts.
But recently, we've seen tech stocks rise and rise.
Coming up, markets shake off government gridlock as a wave of good news from AI and semiconductor companies pushes tech stocks to new highs.
What launched in 1993 as a tech startup developing advanced video game graphics is now the most valuable company in the world.
We're talking about NVIDIA.
Asia to catch a tailwind from the latest blockbuster AI chips deal, with AMD soaring as it signs up to build infrastructure for open AI.
Well, in a report out today, officials at the bank's financial policy committee drew comparisons with the pile-on for dot-com stocks 25 years ago.
Well, to talk about this more with me is Russ Mould, who's investment director at AJ Bell, a UK-based retail investment platform.
Russ, we're hearing about huge investment in AI all the time, integrating it into the workforce.
It's going to take our jobs, seemingly this unstoppable force.
So what is this warning from the Bank of England suggesting?
The warning is not that perhaps the technology will work, but it's a matter of maybe when and what impact it will have in the short term, because you've got a lot of very high expectations for growth already baked in.
Those magnificent seven big tech companies like Apple and Amazon.
They have a combined stock market valuation of 21 trillion.
That's more than a third of the US stock market.
And we've seen hot themes gather investor attention like this before them.
Crowding to a small number of stocks happened in the late 1960s, the mid-1970s, the late 1990s, generally with technology companies.
If there's any whiff of things going wrong and things not happening exactly to plan, then there's potentially trouble.
But there obviously are some ifs in there.
Yeah, so what would it take for the bubble to burst then?
And we're hearing echoes of the dot-com crash, which will bring a shudder down many people's spines Russ.
Two things popped that late 1990s bubble.
The internet, fibre optic cable, mobile phones didn't do as much as everybody thought, quite as quickly.
They did far more than imagined in the long term, but not enough in the short term.
And also, in the end, a The number of people who were trying to sell those shares insiders, venture capital backers, management teams.
The sellers simply overwhelmed the buyers.
And that's probably the biggest danger sign of all when you start seeing companies and management teams think, actually let's take some profits here.
So what will investors be making of this?
Is it a wake-up call or not?
They'll pay attention to it, but they'll think back to Alan Greenspan's 1996 comment about irrational exuberance from the then US Federal Reserve chair, and tech stocks went up for more than three years.
And it shows no sign of slowing at the moment, though, does it, this boom?
These companies are still spending.
Again, if there is a sign of trouble, it may be that companies like Apple and Meta and Oracle start spending a little bit less, but there's no indication of that right now.
Thank you very much for us.
Do stay with us for our next story, though.
From the so-called tech bubble to something investors view as a little bit more stable, gold.
The price of the precious metal has risen above $4,000 an ounce for the first time.
Out of reach for most of us, of course.
But if you can't buy it, can you sell it?
Jim Tannehill is the managing director at Sutton Robertson's, a jewellers and pawnbrokers which is based in London.
He says inquiries are up 130% year on year.
But what are customers taking in?
People have things in their drawers, around their necks, on their fingers, so on and so forth, that are worth much more than they were just a few years ago.
If you've got something like some old pocket watches you know the people that used to wear in a suit pocket.
Those pocket watches can be sort of 60 grams and they can be in the thousands.
And you're buying it in, but presumably you're not reselling it because the prices are so high.
So what are you doing with that gold?
The majority of the gold that we would buy and it's in any way damaged.
It's not worth our while to get that repaired, to put it in the window.
So we would smelt it.
So we'd take it to the bullion dealers and we would get the gold price on any particular day.
So you're taking it to the bullion dealers.
Does that get smelted down and then that's what the investors are buying for $4,000 an ounce?
Correct.
I mean, some of it, they'll be used to turn back into jewellery.
Obviously, there is still a new jewellery trade.
Some of it's melted down and it's a traditional.
There's a block of gold that you see people standing in bank vaults looking over.
There's lots of investment gold.
So bars of you know the plastic sealed bars at 50 grams, 20 grams, 10 grams, so on and so forth.
So there are varying uses for it.
Jim Tannehill, oh, I do love the thoughts of a broken bracelet perhaps making it into a gold bar.
Russ Mould is still with us, Investment Director at AJ Bell.
So we were talking about that tech bubble.
What about a gold bubble, Russ?
Can it keep climbing?
If you look at the last two big gold bull runs when the price surged in the 1970s, the early 2000s, similar themes to now.
Fears that central banks and governments were not in control wars, and also worries about debt and inflation, particularly government debt, and what they could do about it to try and get rid of it.
So what's fuelling this particular rally at the moment then?
Because it does just keep climbing and climbing.
I think some of it may be down to the US government shutdown, but that in turn is about America's federal debt and its ongoing deficit and whether President Trump's policies will help that or make it worse.
I think it's all part of the same dilemma and I think markets are worrying.
Maybe the result will be more money printing to inflate the debt away, and then you need a sort of safe haven for demand and a store of value, and that's maybe where gold comes in.
So briefly, how high can it go, Russ?
Don't know.
I've read forecasts as high as $6,000 an ounce.
That's one forecast I've seen.
I'm sure we'll speak to you about that again.
Russ Mould, Investment Director at AJ Bell.
The outgoing French Prime Minister, Sébastien Le Cornu, says there is willingness to pass a budget by the end of the year, following talks with party leaders on ways to form a new government.
Mr Le Cornu, who quit this week after less than a month in charge, spoke ahead of today's deadline set by President Macron to resolve the country's political crisis.
So let's head to India now, where the UK Prime Minister is on a so-called trade mission.
He's taken more than 100 prominent figures, including CEOs and entrepreneurs, with him.
This comes after a trade deal called the Free Trade Agreement was signed between the two nations.
From Mumbai, the BBC's Archana Shukla.
Across Mumbai city.
Billboards and posters of Sir Kate Starmer and Prime Minister Narendra Modi line the streets welcoming the UK Prime Minister.
PM Starmer is here with one of the biggest business delegation yet, looking to turn the new free trade deal into real jobs and investment.
He's been meeting business and cultural leaders here saying ties between India and the UK are at an all-time high.
He's already described the trip a success and the mood amongst businesses as very strong.
At India's film giant Yash Raj Studios.
He finalised an agreement for Bollywood to resume filming in the UK, marking an early success for the creative partnership.
It's a trip rich in symbolism and opportunity, though questions over skilled workers' visas and migration could still cloud what both sides hope will be a new era in India-UK ties.
So, as Archana Shukla mentioned, Kirstama announced three Bollywood films will be made in the UK next year.
That was part of a visit to one of the country's biggest film studios, Yash Raj.
Here's actor Rani Mukherjee.
I think it was very humbling and it was also of great honour for all of us here at Yash Raj.
It's a big cultural exchange because movies binds people together emotionally, culturally.
This is a very big event for us.
Well, that was actor Rani Mukherjee.
Now, I'm not sure about gold bars, but he definitely has a gold boot or two.
And now Cristiano Ronaldo has become football's first ever billionaire player.
I'm surprised he wasn't one already.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, he reached a net worth of $1.4 billion.
His move to the Al Nasser Club in Saudi Arabia secured him a $400 million tax-free contract.
And that's it from World Business Express for today with me, Sarah Rogers.
Please do subscribe though to get the latest episode.
All you have to do is search for World Business Express, of course, and I will be back with more tomorrow.
Until then, thanks for listening.
