P/E ratios will tell you the market looks calmer than the dot-com peak. But how companies finance themselves tells a different story — and right now they’ve quietly turned into sellers of their own stock.
Capital Wealth Daily · Analysis by Sean Anees Saifi · June 22, 2026
Watch what companies do with their own shares, not just what they trade at.
Forget The P/E For A Second
Everybody’s favorite argument for why this market isn’t a bubble is the forward price-to-earnings ratio. The S&P 500 trades at just under 20 times next year’s earnings — down from 23 back in 2020, and a long way from the 24.5 it hit at the dot-com peak. On that one number, things look downright reasonable. So everyone exhales.
Here’s the trouble with that. A P/E only tells you what price the market is willing to slap on a dollar of earnings. It doesn’t tell you what companies themselves think their shares are worth. And there’s a much quieter signal for that — one that I’ve found is a far better tell than any multiple: watch what companies do when they need money. Are they buying their own stock back, or are they printing it and selling it to you?
When Insiders Become Sellers
Right now they’re selling. This quarter, U.S. firms are funding nearly half of their mergers and acquisitions with stock — up from about a third over the trailing four quarters. When a CEO chooses to pay for a deal with shares instead of cash, that’s a CEO who quietly thinks his own stock is expensive money. It’s the corporate version of paying with the gift card you got and didn’t really want.
And it isn’t just deal-making. We’ve got SpaceX coming to market with one of the largest IPOs anyone can remember, and Alphabet (GOOGL) — a company that prints cash — doing a record combined debt-and-equity raise. When the most cash-rich names on earth line up to raise outside money, the question isn’t whether they need it. It’s why they’d sell stock here unless they thought the window was wide open and the price was rich.
The worry underneath all of it is a flood of fundraising, and nearly all of it chasing the exact same thing: the AI build-out. Everyone is raising cash to dig in the identical mine.
When companies as a group stop buying their own shares and start selling them, the market is quietly telling you it thinks those shares are dear.
Two Of Three Ways This Ends Badly
Here’s how I lay out the AI-spending question for clients. There are really three scenarios. One: a huge payoff, where the spending pays for itself and then some. Two: it’s real but margin-destroying — everybody builds it, nobody earns excess returns, and the profits get competed away. Three: it’s wildly overhyped and a lot of the money simply evaporates. Notice that in two of those three, your money ends up in smoke. Those are not odds I want a retiree’s income depending on.
That doesn’t make AI a short, and it doesn’t make me a doomsayer. It makes me want to own the part of the market that doesn’t need the kindness of strangers to survive a re-rating — businesses that generate their own cash and hand a chunk of it back to you as dividends, rather than ones lined up at the market window hoping it stays open.
What This Means For The Book
“Everyone raising cash to chase the identical opportunity” is precisely the setup that rewards a cash-flow and dividend tilt. The companies in our income sleeve don’t need to sell stock to fund their existence — they fund themselves, pay you while you wait, and don’t care whether the IPO window is open or slammed shut. If the AI build-out is the “huge payoff,” we still participate through the broad allocation. If it’s the margin-destroyer or the overhype, the dividend payers are the ones still standing when the fundraising flood dries up. We’re not betting against the future; we’re just refusing to bet the retirement check on the most crowded trade in the room.
Themes & Tickers In This Article
GOOGLAlphabet — record debt-and-equity raise
SpaceXOne of the largest IPOs on record
S&P 500Forward P/E just under 20
Cash FlowOwned so you don’t need the market window
Want to talk about where a theme like this does — and doesn’t — belong in your plan? Bring your statement; we translate the headline into a position-level decision.
