The billionaire investor and author spoke to Business Insider in late February about why Warren Buffett’s cash hoard is a red flag, why he wants to feed the world using bioreactors, and why workers in the AI era should lean into what makes them human.
Mellon is the executive chairman of Agronomics, a venture capital firm that backs cultivated food companies, and the author of “Moo’s Law: An Investor’s Guide to the New Agrarian Revolution.”
He said that US stocks strike him as “way overpriced,” given the country is home to about 3% of the global population but accounts for more than 60% of the world’s market capitalization.
Mellon said it was a “warning signal” that, on top of “extremely stretched” valuations and “record levels of margin debt,” Big Tech companies have shifted from having “distinctive moats” to making circular deals and “doing more or less the same thing” as they pour huge sums into building out AI data centers.
He’s been a “huge bull” on gold and silver in recent years, he said, as government policies around the world have eroded the value of national currencies, and he’s reluctant to “jump on the crypto bandwagon.”
Mellon said the “energy sector is probably the best place to invest” right now, partly because the AI boom is fueling demand for power-hungry data centers and straining electric grids, and partly because he sees energy as “highly underpriced as a percentage of world stock markets.”
There are bargains to be had in the UK and in emerging markets, he said. But he would be “very, very careful in China” given the hazards of foreign ownership and state control, and would “totally avoid the US market.”
He also recommended people hold Japanese yen as it’s “extremely cheap” versus the dollar, and yielding more than in the past thanks to rising interest rates.
“The fact he’s got so much cash is telling you that he sees something in the current world situation that isn’t very positive,” he said about recently retired CEO Buffett.