India saw a record ₹26,000 crore in SIP inflows this month, but to Akshat Shrivastava, founder of Wisdom Hatch and a widely followed financial commentator, the headline figure masks a deeper issue: too much money and too few real investment opportunities.
“Gold is at all-time high. BTC is at all-time high. Indian, US stocks almost at all-time highs. Real estate is at all-time high,” Shrivastava wrote on X. “What we have today is called: liquidity problem. There is too much money. And very few investable assets.”
His post came in response to a widely circulated thread from @_Investinq, highlighting the fragile foundation of recent market highs. According to BNP Paribas, the wealth effect from soaring asset prices has added $246 billion to U.S. consumer spending in 2024. But the thread warns the boost is a “mirage”-one that vanishes if markets slide.
Shrivastava argues that headline valuations no longer matter in such an environment. “Forget valuations: everything is overvalued,” he said, stressing that only companies deploying capital for real productivity gains-like NVIDIA-can justify high prices. “Stock investing is now more about understanding the Power Law, rather than taking broad Index bets.”
This echoes the thread’s warning that the current equity risk premium-around 2.5%, far below the 4-5% historical average-leaves little room for error. “When everyone is in, there’s no one left to buy only to sell,” @_Investinq noted. “Small shocks become avalanches.”
Shrivastava offers a two-path framework for what comes next: either firms justify valuations through actual earnings growth or risk sharp corrections when sentiment turns. “More corporate earnings will offset high valuations (think from a forward PE ratio),” he noted, but added that relying solely on market-wide metrics is “useless.”
In a market where central banks are boxed in-lower rates risk inflating bubbles, higher rates risk choking growth-the margin of safety has narrowed. As Shrivastava put it, the problem now isn’t whether assets are too expensive. The problem is: where else can the money go?