Given the performance of US stocks and bonds since Monday, analysts at Macquarie Research believe that no one is worried about the prospect of a US GDP growth slowdown.
However, they believe there is now rising concern about a corporate earnings growth slowdown among the highest-flying tech companies.
"For all of the attention given to generative AI in the past nine months, the failure of Meta to attain its revenue growth projections in Q1 is raising questions about whether the monetization of this technology is as easy as what traders were led to believe by management," said Macquarie in its note released before the GDP data earlier today.
Analysts add: "The risk to the stock market more broadly is whether the doubts about corporate revenue growth morph into doubts about the transformative power of the purported AI revolution for productivity."
According to Macquarie, that is worrisome, as the prospect for high tech-driven productivity growth has defended the faith in long-term disinflation and long-term growth.
"Without that faith, we have only the adverse supply-side structural trends to look forward too - climate change and the resource-sucking decarbonization effort, de-globalization, conflict, etc. Those are all inflationary, and productivity-dampening," argues the firm.