Early-Stage Bubble: Chambers Warns of Wild Ride but Big Upside

Clem Chambers sees the market in the early stages of a bubble, and he thinks that is a good thing -- for those who know how to ride it.

"We are in a bubble and it will behave like the dot com," the founder of aNewFN said on the Investing Expert podcast. "There will be a lot of money to be made and a lot to be lost. If you're in a bubble you can ride it as long as you don't believe it's going on forever."

Chambers draws a direct parallel to the late 1990s. The current cycle, he said, feels more like 1997 or 1998 than the 2000 peak. That gives investors another 12 to 18 months of runway before the bust arrives.

The Risk: A Bubble That Looks Like a Trend

The danger is not the bubble itself. It is mistaking the bubble for a permanent new normal. Chambers pointed to gold and silver investors who got stuck near the peak because they could not sell physical metal when liquidity dried up.

"Make sure you have an exit organized," he said. "When it went over $100 an ounce, they couldn't sell because nobody wanted to buy. There wasn't liquidity in the physical silver market."

That same risk applies to any asset that becomes a mania. The tell, Chambers said, is waking up at 2 a.m. to check the price. "Sell. Always sell down to your comfort zone."

The Timeline and the Chain

Chambers expects the bubble to run for roughly 16 more months. The catalyst: a massive wave of re-industrialization in America and Europe, driven by onshoring chip manufacturing, AI infrastructure, and the broader push to reduce dependence on China.

He sees the value chain extending far beyond AI model makers. "Who is going to be doling out all that investment money? The investment banks," he said, naming Goldman Sachs as a potential beneficiary of the coming capital expenditure cycle.

At the earlier end of the chain, Chambers highlighted Intel. He bought the stock at $20 a share last year, calling it an obvious play on onshoring. "Everybody else has sold their souls to Asia. If you fall out with Asia, you have to go to who has factories onshore. That is Intel." Intel stock page now carries an Alpha Score of 47, which is Mixed.

What Would Confirm or Weaken the Thesis

Chambers said the bubble thesis is confirmed by the same pattern he saw in Bitcoin: a four-year cycle where each halving event doubles the prior peak. He sold most of his Bitcoin at $100, before it fell to $60. "It's a four-year cycle. It's going to come down. You can't tell people that."

What would break the thesis? A geopolitical surrender, he said, where America and Europe give up on re-industrialization. He called that unlikely. What would weaken it: the same crowd that talked silver to $500 an ounce starts talking about the Dow doubling by Christmas. "The more the mob says buy, buy, buy, the more you should say bye, bye."

The Practical Framework: Diversify, Use ETFs, Keep It Simple

Chambers argued that most retail investors fail because they think like gamblers, not farmers. His prescription: buy the index, pour money in monthly, then gradually break into sector ETFs, then pick individual stocks from within those ETFs.

He has a soft spot for ETFs himself. The Sprott ExChina Rare Earth ETF gives him diversified rare-earth exposure in a single ticker. "They've done all the research for me. If I want to get sexy I can go research each holding."

For gold, a physical gold ETF like GLD provides liquidity that physical bullion does not. "You can go click and it is gone. That execution is incredibly important."

The Bottom Line (Prose Version)

Chambers's core message is plain: the market is in a speculative cycle that has years left to run, not months. The trick is to ride it without falling in love with it. Buy cheap assets -- he pointed to Nvidia as a company he worked with in the 1990s but never bought, and to Neo Performance Materials as a rare-earth processor with a cheap valuation and a long track record. Sell when the narrative shifts from careful analysis to all-caps certainty. And always, always have an exit plan.

"Nobody rings a bell at the top," he said. "Watch for the moment when everyone says how brilliant it is and how it is going on forever. That is when you go risk off."