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Comment by hiq | Hacker News Reader

> instead of prices coming crashing down, prices stay stagnant or grow slowly, while earnings grow quickly

Do you have a link where I could read more about this? As a layman I fail to understand how this would work, and I couldn't find a page explaining it.

My naive understanding is that a bubble pops when investors lose confidence in the market, and instead of anticipating growth, anticipates a correction and create a feedback loop down to a certain level (at which some counter feedback stabilizes the movement).

How can earnings increase when investors have lost confidence?

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The market is overvalued when the price-to-earnings ratio is too high (ie, valuations outweigh the actual money that a company makes). When it gets really high, investors can panic, and sell stocks, driving prices down and hence reducing the PE ratio.

The alternative I’m describing is one where panic selling doesn’t occur. Earnings can continue to rise (because earnings reflect consumer spending and other similar trends), whereas prices don’t go up as much because market speculation reduces and people are less bullish. It doesn’t have to devolve to panic selling.

Bitcoin has no earnings so I don't know how that could possibly work in the case of the bitcoin bubble.

I think growth in value could be substituted for earnings in the case of something like Bitcoin or a stock without dividends

I don't think so, because we're using earnings precisely to assess if the observed increase in value is justified. Stocks without dividends are not a problem, because businesses always have earnings regardless of whether they distribute dividends or not.

I think OP was talking about a possible market bubble, not Bitcoin.

It seems like the unlikely alternative. What would motivate everyone to keep money in assets that aren’t moving, or barely moving? Perhaps if there are zero alternatives — nothing is growing faster — then yeah... That’s hard to imagine.

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