Bubbles don't pop the moment critics start calling them bubbles, they tend to have a couple more years in them

The day they do pop, there is no further warning. News comes out, and the market reacts billions of microseconds before retail learns about it, an eternity.

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e40 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

The dot com bubble took about 9 months, iirc. Of course, that’s my memory. What do others think?

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tracker1 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

Longer than that... I remember the stories when F-d company posts started coming up, recession camp activities and it started to spread around the later part of 2001. A lot of projects outside CA/WA were still holding on, but funding completely dried up and "future work" was all but dropped after 9/11 as the final tipping point. IMO the tipping point was that September in 2001, but the signs were there upwards of a year sooner.. and a lot of recovery didn't really get rolling until 2003.

Just my own observations and memory.

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dragonwriter 6 days ago | parent [-]

The tipping point on the dotcom bubble itself was the NASDAQ market peak on March 10, 2000, the tipping point on the broader economy that the bubble bursting helped contribute to was the economic peak in March 2001 that marked the start of the March-November 2001 recession.

A number of government policies adopted before the bubble burst under Clinton and before the bubble bursting had worked its way into the public consciousness under Bush (safett net cutbacks, downward tax burden shifts, etc.) made the November 2001-December 2007 aggregate expansion after the 2001 recession and before the Great Recession have very poor distributional characteristics, such that much of it, especially the first couple years, felt like a recession for most outside of a narrow elite, which probably combines with the emotional impact of 9/11 to fix that late date as the beginning of the downturn, even though it was near the end of the downturn in aggregate economic terms.

	▲	tracker1 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		I just know that when 9/11 happened, I had a day job and two side projects and by the end of the month all three were gone and I couldn't find another job for close to a year. edit: and again, I'm in Phoenix so well outside CA/WA, etc...

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dragonwriter 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> > Bubbles don't pop the moment critics start calling them bubbles, they tend to have a couple more years in them

> The dot com bubble took about 9 months, iirc

It took 39 months and 5 days from Fed Chair Alan Greenspan’s “irrational exuberance" description (1996-12-05) until the bubble popped (NASDAQ market peak on 2000-03-10). Greenspan wasn’t the first critic, either, though he was obviously a very high profile one.

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crinkly 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The bubble pops way earlier than the news comes out. You can see it in the investment companies as their analysts start heavily promoting whatever is about to pop to keep stock moving while divesting at the same time. Last thing they want is to be holding the bag.

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Mountain_Skies 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Often there's some kind of event that starts the pop, like when Elon Musk slashed the headcount at Twitter and everyone else saw that as a signal that the hiring frenzy was over and it was safe to start cutting staff. There was lots of discussion before that day about how out of control tech hiring had become but the money was flowing and everyone wanted to look like a great place to park it.

My guess as to what happens here is one of the big players showing that they're cutting back on capacity in a significant manner, which will spook the investors who know a bubble pop is coming but want to time their exit as near the top as possible. By the time the pebbles notice, the avalanche will be in full roll.

	▲	tracker1 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		That's part of it... I would say the real end is closer when you start seeing F*ckedCompany style articles about $Startup closing doors on employees, or hardware repossessions. It was pretty common through later 2000-2001, the finial pop imo was following 9/11 well after a lot of the startup market fizzled, but a lot of more traditional employers started cutting projects/staff too.

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utyop22 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

A bubble that pops is caused by an event that triggers a panic wherein people are looking to sell and are happy to reduce their price of selling sharply in order to dispose of an asset.

The question we have to ask is - what event will trigger this? To the extent that marginal investors (who who are price makers) will seek to exit.

	▲	dragonwriter 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		The thing is, the “event” can be as simple as normal market fluctuations, because once idea of a potential bubble becomes sufficiently widespread, any momentary downturn in any indicator will be seen by some segment of the market as a sign that the burst is here, and if that segment is large enough, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.