Picture supply: Getty Photographs
With so many issues — together with our very personal FTSE 100 — hitting recent file highs in 2025, it was inevitable that considerations about markets overheating would come up.
So, I made a decision to ask ChatGPT which shares are essentially the most weak to a crash.
The AI bot’s high 4 ideas have been as follows:
- Royal Dutch Shell
- Glencore
- Barclays
- Melrose Industries
However I believe the fifth identify put ahead is especially fascinating.
Certainly some mistake?
British Airways proprietor Worldwide Consolidated Airways (LSE: IAG) shares have taken off in 2025. We’re speaking a couple of acquire of 40%.
It’s not simply the final eleven or so months which were nice. These courageous sufficient to purchase again in 2020 can have seen their stakes develop by round 300% as world journey bounced again. Oh, and this doesn’t consider the dividends acquired in September 2024 and June this 12 months.
It’s examples like this that present why we like taking a long-term method at Idiot UK.
Given such an excellent restoration, it’s not stunning that the corporate hasn’t actually featured in any of the doom-laden commentary I’ve been seeing on-line.
Paradoxically, most of that has been reserved for the proprietor of ChatGPT and people tech giants closely investing in AI.
So, why is that this FTSE 100 inventory in danger?
In response to the bot, IAG, because it’s known as, is weak as a result of it’s completely depending on discretionary client and enterprise journey. That dependency could be a nightmare in the course of the dangerous instances as a result of its a kind of bills that’s straightforward for us to chop.
The issue is that the £19bn cap enterprise can’t simply cut back prices itself. An absence of flyers is irrelevant; it nonetheless faces substantial outlays that come from sustaining plane, paying employees, and hedging gas prices. Once more, this explains why IAG’s stability sheet exploded with debt in the course of the pandemic.
Up to now, so pretty apparent. However shouldn’t the present fears about an impending market crash be sending the shares down reasonably than up?
Nonetheless low-cost
Nicely, IAG’s optimistic momentum may very well be as a result of analysts are optimistic about what the agency might say in its subsequent replace — resulting from land this Friday (7 November).
Again in September, IAG introduced Q2 revenue of €1.68bn — way over the €1.4bn anticipated. This was partly all the way down to robust demand for transatlantic flights, serving to to scale back considerations over the affect of President Trump’s tariff battle.
If there’s proof this has continued, there may very well be extra positive factors forward. In spite of everything, the shares nonetheless commerce at a below-average price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of seven.
My level is that there’s no rule to say IAG share should fall from right here, even when different shares do. It relies on what the catalyst for a crash is.
Overlook the bot
It goes with out saying that I by no means use AI to make funding selections. Along with not figuring out my very own preferences, danger tolerance, or monetary objectives, it may by no means change correct analysis on an organization.
ChatGPT additionally doesn’t know the place share costs are going any greater than we do. All the 5 named right here might end 2025 greater than the place they’re now.
Personally, I believe there are different FTSE 100 shares with far greater value tags that may be in for a reckoning if (and that’s an enormous ‘if’) markets collapse.
