WisdomTree CIO: 2026 tech rally looks nothing like the 2000 dot-com bubble

Why today is "nothing like 2000," according to Schwartz

Jeremy Schwartz, WisdomTree's Global Chief Investment Officer and co-author with Jeremy Siegel of Stocks for the Long Run, argues that comparisons between the current AI-driven market and the 2000 dot-com bubble are overstated. He says the "expanded tech sector" in the S&P, covering roughly half the market, trades around a 22 forward P/E, versus the triple-digit P/Es Siegel identified in his famous 2000 call on nine bubble stocks. Schwartz singles out Tesla as the exception: "Tesla, interestingly, is the only stock that has a valuation like tech in 2000," trading in the 150-200 forward P/E range, while the rest of the Magnificent Seven sit in the 20s.

He notes the category as a whole sits near its 30-year median, which used to be around 30 and has come down roughly 50%. Risks remain in private markets, Schwartz says, around whether AI companies can keep raising capital and whether spending shows a real return, but for public market investors "there's no real bubble like we saw in 2000."

AI adoption and the Fed under Warsh

Schwartz describes AI adoption as still in its earliest innings, using a baseball analogy: "you haven't even started think seeing the national anthem." He points out that profit margins on the Russell 2000 are roughly where they were 20 years ago, meaning the average company hasn't meaningfully benefited yet, even as hyperscalers pour money into compute from Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceX.

On monetary policy, Schwartz says he doesn't expect a dramatic Fed hiking cycle, crediting Kevin Warsh with reconnecting policy to the money supply after what he calls Jerome Powell losing that connection. He references Microsoft's reported severance offer affecting a large share of its workforce as evidence AI is starting to reshape company staffing, though he attributes much of this to prior overhiring rather than pure AI displacement.

Vibe coding, SpaceX, and Tesla

Schwartz says WisdomTree staff, including non-engineers, built around 60 apps over five months using tools like Codex.

"I used to feel the software constrained. I don't feel that way anymore."— Jeremy Schwartz

He says this raises his desired return on hiring younger staff and that he wants more people using these tools, not fewer, even as management tries to constrain hiring.

On SpaceX, Schwartz notes it is WisdomTree's top ETF holding at roughly 15-17%, and says he views its valuation as more reasonable than Tesla's. He cites SpaceX's three gigawatts of current compute sold at roughly $50 billion per gigawatt, with potential to add up to 10 additional gigawatts, implying hundreds of billions to roughly a trillion dollars of revenue by Elon Musk's own figures. He expects SpaceX and Tesla to eventually merge, saying "that's what Elon wants for sure."

Tokenization: from gold to 24/7 money market funds

Schwartz says WisdomTree has spent seven years building its own tokenization platform, WisdomTree On Chain, including WisdomTree Prime for consumers. He says he personally moved nearly all of his spending, including his house, car, credit cards and taxes, to a tokenized money market fund paying around 4%, calling it superior to stablecoins because it isn't lending out deposits and holds treasuries one-for-one. He estimates $8 to $9 trillion sits in checking accounts earning close to zero, representing roughly $350 billion in missed consumer yield that banks currently capture.

He expects tokenized ETFs to follow as the SEC pushes forward on 24/7 trading, serving crypto-native clients who hold assets in wallets rather than traditional brokerages. WisdomTree also announced a collaboration with Return Stacked ETFs to build capital-efficient model portfolios layering stocks, bonds, gold and alternatives using futures overlays.

Bitcoin's place in portfolios

Schwartz declines to give a Bitcoin price target, contrasting WisdomTree's approach with figures cited by others such as Cathie Wood and Kevin O'Leary. Instead, he frames Bitcoin as a diversifier, with WisdomTree models allocating as much as 5% in multi-asset portfolios, originally funded from bonds in a 60/40 mix when bond yields looked unattractive, or from stocks in an 80/20 mix.

"We do think it's a good hedge."— Jeremy Schwartz

He frames the firm's broader digital asset push, tokenized gold, tokenized money market funds, and Bitcoin exposure, as an extension of WisdomTree's long-standing commodities and diversification business rather than a speculative bet.