The market hasn’t and it’s condemned to repeat it — again!
Experience is the best teacher. And she is cruel mistress!
- Anonymous
Building Arks with Jason Clendenen recently posted his article Elon Musk And Mark Cuban Are Trying To Make You Poor and he couldn’t be more right. Fear of missing out and greed is taking over the market just like it has so many times in the past.
In the 1920s, there was a similar fervor about the stock market. It was called the “Roaring 20s” partly because of this. Joseph Kennedy, the father of President John F. Kennedy, told a story about a shoeshine boy giving him stock tips. That’s when he decided to get out of the market. Having this insight, he became a multi-billionaire in today’s dollars when he shorted the market in 1929!
Similarly, in the late 90s, the market got overvalued during the DotCom bubble and could have been called the Roaring 90s! The stock market, especially the NASDAQ, was flying high. Unemployment was extremely low, especially in areas like the Silicon Valley.
DotCom companies that had the fundamental value of a gas station had a market capitalization of $100s of millions! This couldn’t last and it didn’t. After the negative downturn, there were stories lamenting the fact many near-retirement seniors had their 401ks cut in half. The joke was that they now had…