The curse on the cover of Time Magazine
Time Magazine has awarded its 2025 Person of the Year to… wait for it… a group of people. The architects of artificial intelligence (AI) have been nominated for this year’s cover.
Before the advent of digital magazines, billions were spent annually purchasing physical magazines that represented every subject and subculture known to man. And trading magazine covers became a contrarian way to invest.
The thinking was that by the time an investment theme made the cover of a magazine, it was saturated and had already attracted the very last people who would ever buy anything. The appearance of an investment theme on the cover of a magazine coincided with the maturity of the theme.
The recent history of TIME Magazine covers demonstrates this point. It is known as the “TIME Cover Curse”. Gracing the cover of the magazine is not a coronation but a harbinger of doom, because the moment a public figure has penetrated the public discourse enough to land the cover, the trajectory inevitably reverses.
Statisticians would attribute this to regression to the mean. A cover story represents the absolute pinnacle of public interest and influence; from that top the only way is down.
And the magazine’s history is peppered with coincidences that support the theory. Politicians who suffer crushing defeats because of their appearance, business tycoons whose stocks plummet, and celebrities whose reputations are murdered under sudden, intense criticism.
As an example, Elon Musk appeared on the cover in 2021. In 2022, he bought Twitter, his reputation was hit and he lost $200 billion in net worth as Tesla’s stock price plummeted 72 percent from its peak on November 5, 2021 through early 2023.
Another recent example is Jeff Bezos, who was TIME’s Person of the Year in 1999, right at the height of the dot-com bubble. When the bubble burst in 2000, Amazon’s shares fell more than 90 percent.
That AI and its architects made TIME’s 2025 cover is an ominous sign for investors.
Image source: TIME
He is also the author of the best-selling investing guide to the stock market, Value.able – how to value and buy the best stocks for less than they are worth.
Roger regularly appears on television and radio, and in the press, including ABC radio and TV, The Australian and Ausbiz. View upcoming media appearances.
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