Hacker News Reader

Comment by kccqzy | Hacker News Reader

Why do you seem to think that bull markets have to have an expiration date? It seems entirely plausible that with the right "management" (think the right people at the Fed and being the President) the bull market can continue forever with only minor corrections (on the order of the end-of-2018 correction).

View on HN

Every bull run there are people saying this time it will last (forever). Most notable (for me) was the 2000 one where I had friends putting millions of euros in stocks even as it was unraveling fast because "this is a glitch, it cannot die". And then it all falls down. I know plenty of people who, 20 years later, never recovered from that 'optimism'. Same before 2008, but made less of an impact in my circles as people did learn from 2000. Maybe theoretically it can, but practically it won't. And I don't think decade; I think it will be this year.

What are you trying to say? That people that had "millions" went homeless? The stocks recovered in less than two years. If they didn't sell in panic they still had millions after a brief period.

Homeless you don't get in the Netherlands, but yeah, I know people who put all their money (2-3 million at least 2 of them) in WorldOnline[0] and lost it. Having to start all over at an age when they would normally almost retire. You won't end up on the streets in NL anyway, but mentally they were never the same because of that. Greed + weird optimism and then panic selling. But billions were lost in this fraud company and the signs were clear; people just thought it would go on forever and that's what everyone said in the bar. Hence the dumb buying.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Online

Edit: you say 2 years... But people bought this one as well by the millions in those days; https://www.google.com/search?q=kpn+koers&oq=kpn+koers&aqs=c...

That never recovered. While 'everyone' agreed that could never happen as this time there was no roof. And for a brief moment almost everyone believed that.

As a less localized thing; in the tech community, stocks of for instance Borland/Inprise were talked about in the same way. I don't think (but cannot find info fast) they ever recovered.

I don't know enough to speak intelligently about this, but my gut says that people predicting a recession simply because we are 'do' is short-sighted.

I wonder if High-Frequency/Algol trading has anything to do with our current bull run. Maybe removing some of the human response from the equation has stabilized the market to some extent.

That being said, I'd be VERY surprised if a recession does not occur within the next few years.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com