Here’s an interesting psychology experiment that could make (or lose) you a lot of money.

Two versions of a New York Times book review were shown to different focus groups.

One group was shown a positive review of the book while the other was shown a negative review of the same book.

The only difference between the two book reviews was the positive words in one review were substituted for more critical words (on the same reading level) in the negative review.

Here’s the positive review of the book:

In 128 inspired pages, Alvin Harter, with his first work of fiction, shows himself to be an extremely capable young American author. A Longer Dawn is a novella - a prose poem, if you will— of tremendous impact. It deals with elemental things: life, love, and death, and does so with such great intensity that it achieves new heights of superior writing on every page.

And here’s the negative review:

In 128 uninspired pages, Alvin Harter, with his first work of fiction, shows himself to be an extremely incapable young American author. A Longer Dawn is a novella - a prose poem, if you will— of negligible impact. It deals with elemental things: life, love, and death, and does so with such little intensity that it achieves new depths of inferior writing on every page.

As you can see, the reviews are identical except for a few words.

“Inspired” was changed to “uninspired.” “Capable” was changed to “incapable.” “Great intensity” to “little intensity,” etc.

What’s interesting about the results of this study is the focus groups deemed the negative reviewer 14% more intelligent while having 16% greater literary expertise than the positive reviewer.

Going further, researchers also found that the negative reviewer was deemed more experienced and trustworthy, while the positive reviewer was seen as more naive.

“People think an amateur can appreciate art, but it takes a professor to critique it,” might be a good phrase to sum up this study.

I bring this to your attention because there is plenty of negative sentiment being expressed about today’s stock market – which according to this study you might be more inclined to believe.

You can’t turn on CNBC, Bloomberg, or Fox Business without hearing fear-mongers.

“Run for the hills! The AI bubble is about to pop!”

They warn about valuations, capex spending, and even niche accounting oddities.

It’s enough to make any investor question their decisions.

After all, according to the psychology experiment, we’re wired to place more credibility on criticism than praise.

But let me offer the latest counterpoint in the growing list of often overlooked counterpoints – Nvidia’s earnings report on Wednesday night.

Once again the company blew away even the most lofty Wall Street expectations.

Earnings per share: $1.30 adjusted vs. $1.25 estimated

Revenue: $57 billion vs. $54.9 billion estimated

Next quarter estimate: $65 billion in sales versus $61.7 billion expected.

More insights were dropped during the earnings call.

Jensen started his commentary with this quote:

“There's been a lot of talk about an AI bubble. From our vantage point, we see something very different.”

He went on to tout how much compute power will soon be required to run future AI models and technologies – like autonomous vehicles and humanoid robots.

Colette Kress, Nvidia’s CFO, had a few noteworthy quotes herself:

“The clouds are sold out and our GPU installed base, both new and previous generations, including Blackwell, Hopper and Ampere is fully utilized.”

“There's definitely an opportunity for us to have more on top of the $500 billion [massive revenue projection] that we announced."

“CUDA’s compatibility in our massive installed base extend the life [of] NVIDIA systems well beyond their original estimated useful life. Thanks to CUDA, the A100 GPUs we shipped six years ago are still running at full utilization today, powered by vastly improved software stack.”

For all the noise about bubbles, spending cycles, or slowing demand, Nvidia’s results tell a very different story.

• Demand is still overwhelming.

• Hyperscalers are still racing to add capacity.

• Older GPUs are still fully utilized.

• And Nvidia’s software moat is only getting wider.

This is not what the end of a cycle looks like.

Yet because negative voices sound smarter, many investors instinctively lean toward doom-and-gloom narratives despite strengthening underlying fundamentals.

Unfortunately for the skeptics, it’s the optimists that have actually made money throughout this AI buildout.

And I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

Nvidia isn’t a bubble.

It’s the backbone of the most explosive technology cycle since the internet.

And if Wednesday night’s earnings confirmed anything, it’s that the AI boom isn’t peaking – it’s accelerating.