alt Hacker NewsSo someone correct me but I think this is sort of an accounting trick. When Microsoft buys an Nvidia GPU for $100, it will claim that it lasts 5 years, so writes down $20 in the expense column for this year. Meanwhile Nvidia takes all the profit at time of sale, $100. So for each GPU bought, SP500 logs $80 of profit, even though no money entered or left the SP500.
(Yes of course the GPU cost something to make, but the margins on these things are very high. The point is that revenue is immediate while capital expenses are amortized. And capital expenditure has gone way up lately.)
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What's wrong with this though? Value was created (a physical GPU), so assets go up.
Different people/orgs get a different slice of that value.
Is it conceivable that Microsoft has some way to use said GPU to generate additional revenue and operating profits?
See the earlier discussion about DeepSeek's revenue: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50163494
When BMW sell you a car, and you buy it on finance (hire-purchase etc.) where they are lending you the money to buy it, they recognise the entire sale value of the car there and then. They even pay tax on the cash they don’t yet have in their pocket.
Meanwhile, you amortise it over years.
For some reason, nobody argues that this isn’t a real sale of a real car.
If it’s all just circular financing, then tax day will be the reveal, as there will simply be no money to pay the corporation tax on the profits.
Almost, the depreciation is 2 years, but for some reason they wrote it up like 5 for now. But anyone buy nvdia chips is already maxxed out on debt for the next 5 years and the new chips are here shortly. What happens to those 100's of billions in chips?? They get written off. We're already seeing them in cars. There is no shortage except on the scrutiny of the whole securities thing.
> When Microsoft buys an Nvidia GPU for $100, it will claim that it lasts 5 years, so writes down $20 in the expense column for this year. Meanwhile Nvidia takes all the profit at time of sale, $100
Nvidia would log $64 of profit against a $100 sale [1]. (The R&D cost to develop the chip have already been booked.)
> for each GPU bought, SP500 logs $80 of profit, even though no money entered or left the SP500
In your example the S&P would log ~$40 of earnings. (About because taxes.)
[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NVDA/nvidia/profit...