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Comment by siidooloo | Hacker News Reader

That’s why they’re called bubbles. Everything looks great until they burst. And you’ll likely only retroactively see why.

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This isn't what a bubble looks like. Service workers aren't asking if they should by bitcoin or some random tech stock in 1998. In 1998, I remember tech stocks regularly going up percents per day. Or cable TV shows in 2007 about flipping houses. There's a lack of general mania.

Are thing's overpriced? Maybe, but we've gotten to used to saying everything's a bubble.

Not sure what bubble original commenter was referring, but would you not agree that the past couple years' hysteria over AI and ML suggests that the tech sector, at least, is experiencing a bubble? I don't think it'll be an extremely dangerous bubble because most of the cash being thrown at these startups is out of the pockets of risky VC funds rather than your Lehmann Brothers savings account, but it's still a bubble.

This is all fine, and bubbles do pop. But look at the DJIA, nearly every point looking back looks like a bubble. So if bubbles pop do they drop to zero? Or can we say that while the highs we see today may drop compared to where they are now, that we have continued to move the average in the right direction?

My second point is, it is also hard to tell if you are not in a bubble, and you won't know until retroactively you see why.

You really should plot it on a log scale when you look back. And the Dow is interesting because it's been around so long, but it's a really bad index. It's cost-weighted, probably the most naïve way to weight an index.

The only sector that doesn't seem to be doing well right now is the agricultural sector but it's only 1.3% of employment compared to like 30% in 1929, so I'm not too concerned, the stock market seems grossly overvalued - this does concern me.

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