Bubbles are made of multiples. This market is made of earnings. a16z's David George and Santiago Rodriguez on what makes this cycle different from 2000 or 2021: David: "The market has reached new highs, and at the same time that it has reached new highs, the trading multiples of the market are actually down." "Stocks are up about 20% while multiples are down about 20%. What that means is the performance is driven by fundamental earnings, not increased multiples." "It's nothing like the dot-com boom, where some of the highest market cap companies in the world had their massive stock run-ups based on increases in their trading multiples and would trade, in many cases, for like 100x PE. That's not what's happening here." Santiago: "Since ChatGPT came out almost four years ago, the market's up 90%, which is 17% annualized." "Any time there's been a 17% annualized growth for four years, the natural instinct is, well, that's got to come down." "But when you compare that to the market trading for below 20x earnings growing 15%, this definitely feels a little different than the 2021 period or the 2000 period, when multiples and growth were not really going together." @DavidGeorge83 @santiago__rdz