Weekly highlights: Tenge strength, Anthropic prospectus, soccer stars’ investments

Highlights from Oninvest for the week of September 28-October 2 include Kazakhstan giving banks room to raise rates on dollar deposits, “bond king” Bill Gross warning investors against bonds, and a leaked Anthropic IPO prospectus revealing that the company is targeting a valuation of more than $2 trillion even as it warns that AI could threaten humanity.

For the first time in six years, Kazakhstan has raised the cap on interest rates for foreign-currency deposits with terms of one year or longer. The National Bank attributed the increase, from 1% to 2.5% per annum, to the declining share of dollar deposits in the economy, which has fallen by a factor of 2.5 since 2020. Freedom Broker analyst Daniyar Orazbayev does not consider that rate a compelling proposition: tenge deposits currently pay at least 15%, while U.S. Treasury securities yield around 5%.

Deutsche Bank also currently has more confidence in the tenge. In late September, it added a position to its portfolio aimed at selling the dollar against the tenge, or a short USD/KZT position. The bank sees support for the tenge from energy prices, an expected increase in foreign-currency sales by the National Fund, and inflows of foreign capital into government bonds. However, the trade is intended to last only several months. Deutsche Bank still expects the exchange rate to reach 490 tenge per dollar by the end of 2026. The investment bank is also maintaining its position in the Uzbek sum, which it expects to be supported by gold exports, remittances, and reforms.

Pimco cofounder Bill Gross advises investors not to own bonds other than the one-year U.S. Treasury bill, which is currently yielding 4.55%. He is concerned about debt: total U.S. debt stands at around $84 trillion, while the $1 trillion of AI-related investment forecast for 2027 will likely have to be financed entirely through debt, in his view. That threatens slower growth and persistently high inflation. “Preserve and protect is my current investment motto,” Gross wrote.

AI developer Anthropic’s IPO prospectus reached the media before it was published. The company is targeting a valuation of more than $2 trillion, more than double the $965 billion post-money valuation from its Series H funding round in May. Meanwhile, Anthropic itself warns investors of “catastrophic or existential risks to humanity”: AI models could “resist shutdown,” “conceal or manipulate information,” and exhibit behavior “resembling blackmail.”

AI agents that can make purchases and trades on their own are creating a new market that investors can profit from, according to Capital Lab partner Evgeny Shatov. Famed short seller Michael Burry, the real-life inspiration for Christian Bale’s character in "The Big Short," has instead shifted his bets against the AI sector into put options expiring in 2027. He believes  “the AI bubble could burst sooner rather than later.”