I’m in Nashville this week. My buddy Dan Ives happened to be in town, too.
Dan wasn’t here for the brisket.
He was touring data centers.
My first question: “Nashville has data centers?”
My friend Brett just looked at me and smirked. “It’s every city, JC.”
Fair enough. Once Dan started talking, it clicked. This isn’t a Silicon Valley story anymore. The infrastructure behind this thing is running through every city in America. Across the world. And someone has to own it.
The Permabears Are on Twitter. Dan’s in the Buildings.
One of the great joys in life is sitting across the table from somebody who knows infinitely more than you about a topic and just listening.
Dan spends weeks in South Korea. He’s constantly in Taiwan. He tours facilities in Europe – walking floors, sitting across from management teams, talking to the people physically building this infrastructure right now.
He said something over dinner I haven’t been able to shake.
“JC, I’ve got permabears on Twitter telling me there’s a bubble while I’m literally standing inside these data centers seeing the demand with my own eyes.”
The screaming is happening on screens.
Dan’s in the buildings.
Price Confirmed It First
About two years ago, before most people had figured out where the AI money would actually land, I asked Dan directly. I expected some obscure semiconductor play in Asia nobody had heard of.
Instead, he said something almost disappointingly simple.
“The big American companies.”
They’ve got the capital. They’ve got the scale. The infrastructure. The distribution. Those were going to be the biggest winners.
He was right.
I asked him this week whether he still believes that. He didn’t hesitate for even a second.
Absolutely. More than ever.
And then he said the thing I can’t stop thinking about: The biggest winners of this entire cycle may not even be public companies yet. The household names of the next decade might not trade on an exchange today.
I trust price first. Always.
If this were an exhausted, late-stage mania with nothing real underneath it, the charts would show it. Leadership would have cracked. Breadth would have broken down. Every bounce would be getting sold into.
Instead, every correction finds institutional demand. The leaders keep leading. The trend stays intact.
That’s not what a dying cycle looks like.
When the guy who’s been walking through these buildings – in Nashville, Seoul, Taipei, Frankfurt – tells you the market still doesn’t fully appreciate what’s coming, and price is saying the same thing?
I’m not ignoring either one.
Stay sharp,
JC Parets, CMT
Founder, TrendLabs