Two numbers are sitting next to each other this morning, and I can’t make them agree.

The first is Micron’s gross margin: 87%. The CEO says memory will be much tighter in 2027 and 2028 than it is now, and data center revenue is up eleven-fold. Barron’s headline frames that margin as a problem, which is a funny thing to say about an 87% margin, though I see the logic. Margins like that are what brings competitors, customers building their own supply, and eventually regulators. Nobody has ever kept one of these for long.

The second is the 10-year yield, at a 24-year high, with the global bond selloff apparently still deepening. Oil has retreated from $106, but the bond market evidently hasn’t been told.

Here’s what bugs me. A $150 billion buyback, like the one Nvidia announced this week, is a statement that the best use of marginal cash is the company’s own stock. At a 5% risk-free rate that’s a real claim, because the hurdle for everything else just rose. Meanwhile Oracle is citing force majeure on a data center and SoftBank is selling junk bonds to fund AI. One side of the economy is spending as if capital is nearly free. The other side is pricing it at its most expensive in two decades.

Both can hold for a while, since scarcity of memory chips is a real thing and so is the cost of money. The trouble is the borrowers: the firms with 87% margins don’t need the bond market, and the firms that do need it, like SoftBank, are paying whatever it asks. Does the party stay a party when only the self-funded guests can afford the drinks?

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