"This time is different!"
—new commenters on my financial blogs
royko
I believe it was a blogger named Kevin Drum who said bubbles usually burst when people start claiming they can't burst and things have structurally changed to go up forever.
J. Frank Parnell
I've always thought of Elon Musk as the guy Donald Trump likes to think he is. They are a lot alike in many ways, except Elon is way richer and way smarter.
bebopman
Good comparison
Midgard
Both are con men who "really" don't impress me with product knowledge or innovation. Musk is just a less obnoxious ahole who milked his cow at the government trough, rehashing old government technology. It's no wonder he is so China and bitcoin is Chinese.
jte21
I don't know if that's quite fair. Indeed, Musk is an asshole with a galactic-sized ego and a penchant for overpromising and underdelivering on all sorts of things, but he's very smart, well-educated and basically self-made, parlaying various internet startups into PayPal and then into SpaceX and Tesla. Trump, by contrast, fell ass-backwards in to a massive inheritance, squandered virtually all of it, went bankrupt multiple times, and considers watching tv to monitor mentions of his name a day's work.
MontyTheClipArtMongoose
His Afrikaaner family were diamond profiteers!
Elon Musk as a tech entrepreneur is as self made as Julian Casablancas or Win Butler as a rock star.
MontyTheClipArtMongoose
Nice to have you back after MotherJones so obnoxiously drew the line on spamtire.
Steve_OH
This is an easy mathematical trap to fall into. All exponential curves look pretty much the same; only the scale is different. So if you have two measures that are both growing approximately exponentially, you can make them appear to be correlated simply by adjusting the scale.
royko
We can say that both have grown (percentage-wise) about the same amount over the same period. I can't imagine they're directly connected in any way. It could relate to some overall trend (People looking for new/unconventional investments right now? People chasing bubbles?) But you'd really need to look at the performance of a lot of other investments (both those that follow this trend and those that don't) over that period to establish that there is a trend and what it might be.
Likeliest explanation is coincidence.
realrobmac
My fear is the entire market is experiencing a bubble right now. Nasdaq is up like 50% over the past 12 months and the S&P 500 is up even more. If I were courageous I'd pull all of my money out of the market and re-invest after the bubble pops. But predicting the timing of a stock crash and recovery is a mug's game so I'm sure I'd screw it up. Instead my plan is to just ride it out and hope that everything recovers before it's time for me to retire.
Chondrite23
I think that is overly broad outlook. Much of the rise has been concentrated in some of the large caps like Apple and Microsoft. Apple has risen a lot but still has a forward looking P/E under 30 (as I recall). Tesla is certainly in a bubble, but no telling when that will end. Could be years. No question, we could see a significant downturn at any time, that is always true, but I don't see the entire market on the precipice, so to speak. We just weathered a year of the pandemic which put a lot of stress on companies without undo damage to the markets.
royko
The Bitcoin bubble popping is going to be interesting with many Bitcoin proponents being a bit conspiracy-minded.
painedumonde
Too rich, and too right. A financial product created with the fundamental belief that money is conspirational.
MontyTheClipArtMongoose
I am ready for the Turner Diaries sequel, The Turner Diaries: Money Never Sleeps.
One interesting contrast between Tesla and Bitcoin.
Tesla has arguably done more than any other company in moving the world off fossil fuels. It's been a force for good in the fight against climate change.
Bitcoin has arguably done more than anything else in escalating use of wasteful, dirty energy. It's been a huge setback in the fight against climate change.
Strange that Tesla's Elon Musk is making a $1.5 billion bet on Bitcoin.
MontyTheClipArtMongoose
Tesla is as profitable as Amazon, but no one will sell a newspaper to Elon. (Or can't, since I am not sure he's a US citizen.)
"This time is different!"
—new commenters on my financial blogs
I believe it was a blogger named Kevin Drum who said bubbles usually burst when people start claiming they can't burst and things have structurally changed to go up forever.
I've always thought of Elon Musk as the guy Donald Trump likes to think he is. They are a lot alike in many ways, except Elon is way richer and way smarter.
Good comparison
Both are con men who "really" don't impress me with product knowledge or innovation. Musk is just a less obnoxious ahole who milked his cow at the government trough, rehashing old government technology. It's no wonder he is so China and bitcoin is Chinese.
I don't know if that's quite fair. Indeed, Musk is an asshole with a galactic-sized ego and a penchant for overpromising and underdelivering on all sorts of things, but he's very smart, well-educated and basically self-made, parlaying various internet startups into PayPal and then into SpaceX and Tesla. Trump, by contrast, fell ass-backwards in to a massive inheritance, squandered virtually all of it, went bankrupt multiple times, and considers watching tv to monitor mentions of his name a day's work.
His Afrikaaner family were diamond profiteers!
Elon Musk as a tech entrepreneur is as self made as Julian Casablancas or Win Butler as a rock star.
Nice to have you back after MotherJones so obnoxiously drew the line on spamtire.
This is an easy mathematical trap to fall into. All exponential curves look pretty much the same; only the scale is different. So if you have two measures that are both growing approximately exponentially, you can make them appear to be correlated simply by adjusting the scale.
We can say that both have grown (percentage-wise) about the same amount over the same period. I can't imagine they're directly connected in any way. It could relate to some overall trend (People looking for new/unconventional investments right now? People chasing bubbles?) But you'd really need to look at the performance of a lot of other investments (both those that follow this trend and those that don't) over that period to establish that there is a trend and what it might be.
Likeliest explanation is coincidence.
My fear is the entire market is experiencing a bubble right now. Nasdaq is up like 50% over the past 12 months and the S&P 500 is up even more. If I were courageous I'd pull all of my money out of the market and re-invest after the bubble pops. But predicting the timing of a stock crash and recovery is a mug's game so I'm sure I'd screw it up. Instead my plan is to just ride it out and hope that everything recovers before it's time for me to retire.
I think that is overly broad outlook. Much of the rise has been concentrated in some of the large caps like Apple and Microsoft. Apple has risen a lot but still has a forward looking P/E under 30 (as I recall). Tesla is certainly in a bubble, but no telling when that will end. Could be years. No question, we could see a significant downturn at any time, that is always true, but I don't see the entire market on the precipice, so to speak. We just weathered a year of the pandemic which put a lot of stress on companies without undo damage to the markets.
The Bitcoin bubble popping is going to be interesting with many Bitcoin proponents being a bit conspiracy-minded.
Too rich, and too right. A financial product created with the fundamental belief that money is conspirational.
I am ready for the Turner Diaries sequel, The Turner Diaries: Money Never Sleeps.
The film will also star Shia Laboeuf.
And now <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoin-to-come-to-america-s-oldest-bank-bny-mellon-11613044810"BNY Mellon bank wants in. If it's good enough for Elon, it's good enough for Wall Street, I guess.
Oops. I didn't close my HTML. The link is:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoin-to-come-to-america-s-oldest-bank-bny-mellon-11613044810
One interesting contrast between Tesla and Bitcoin.
Tesla has arguably done more than any other company in moving the world off fossil fuels. It's been a force for good in the fight against climate change.
Bitcoin has arguably done more than anything else in escalating use of wasteful, dirty energy. It's been a huge setback in the fight against climate change.
Strange that Tesla's Elon Musk is making a $1.5 billion bet on Bitcoin.
Tesla is as profitable as Amazon, but no one will sell a newspaper to Elon. (Or can't, since I am not sure he's a US citizen.)