Fisher Investments’ Bill Glaser on AI Layoffs, Prediction Markets, UAE’s OPEC Exit and More
Bill Glaser, Co-Chief Investment Officer at Fisher Investments, addresses four major topics: AI-driven job displacement, prediction markets as both sentiment tools and risk factors, the UAE's exit from OPEC and its bullish implications for energy supply, and the diminishing market impact of ongoing US tariff developments.
Summary
In this interview, Fisher Investments' Bill Glaser covers four key market and economic themes. On AI and employment, Glaser frames AI as analogous to prior Industrial Revolutions, acknowledging short-term job losses while arguing that long-term job creation will outpace destruction. He emphasizes that AI will drive down prices, stimulate demand, and generate entirely new categories of jobs that weren't imaginable even 24 months ago, though he acknowledges the transition will require workers to adapt their skill sets.
On prediction markets, Glaser describes Fisher's approach as treating them primarily as sentiment indicators while also flagging them as a source of systemic risk. He draws a historical parallel to credit default swaps during the 2008 financial crisis, warning that new financial innovations can be exploited through unintended mechanisms — such as 'bear raids' — by bad actors, and urges careful scrutiny of perverse incentives embedded in these markets.
Regarding the UAE's departure from OPEC, Glaser views it as a long-term bullish signal for global energy supply. He notes that the UAE's economy has diversified significantly since OPEC's founding in the 1960s, with energy now representing only about a quarter of GDP. With Abu Dhabi having invested heavily in capacity expansion — targeting 5 million barrels per day versus a current 3 million — Glaser argues the UAE has little incentive to remain constrained by OPEC production limits.
Finally, on US tariffs, Glaser argues the topic has lost its market-moving power because investors have grown accustomed to incremental changes. He references four scenarios Fisher outlined in April of the prior year — Congressional/court pushback, trade deals, retaliation, and increased global trade — and highlights that the least anticipated outcome, an acceleration of global trade outside the US, has in fact materialized. He concludes that tariffs are largely 'yesterday's news' in terms of lasting market impact.
Key Insights
- Glaser argues that AI should not be viewed as a zero-sum game — by driving down prices and creating new demand, it will ultimately generate more jobs than it destroys, including entirely new job categories that couldn't be imagined 6 to 24 months ago.
- Glaser warns that prediction markets carry systemic risk potential analogous to credit default swaps in 2008, where hedge funds exploited the instruments for 'bear raids' by simultaneously buying CDSs and shorting stocks to profit on both sides of a trade.
- Glaser highlights that the UAE's energy sector now accounts for only about a quarter of its GDP — a major shift from its founding role in OPEC — which helps explain why the country has diminishing incentive to remain bound by OPEC production constraints.
- Glaser points out that Abu Dhabi has invested billions to expand oil production capacity from 3 million to 5 million barrels per day, creating a significant unused output gap that incentivizes the UAE to break free from OPEC's production limits.
- Glaser argues that one of the least anticipated outcomes of US tariffs — that they would actually accelerate global trade outside the US by incentivizing other countries to trade more with each other — has in fact materialized, with non-US global trade high and rising while US-linked trade remains relatively flat.
Topics
Transcript
[0:09] Executive Vice President of Portfolio Management and Co-Chief Investment Officer and a member of the firm's Investment Policy Committee. As we sit here today, there's lots going on in the world, from geopolitical uncertainty to lots of optimism tied to AI, tariff negotiations, market volatility and so much more. So, let's get started. The first question here has to do with AI in the job market. And it says, "Headlines keep warning about AI-fueled layoffs. [0:39] What is Fisher's take on this?" Well, this is a question I get all the time. And, you know, the simple fact of the matter is, you know, AI, you can think of AI in some ways as that next Industrial Revolution. And,…
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