> some semblance of rational thought and expectations

The other day I overheard someone asking when investors would stop caring about profit so their company could get back to focusing on growth.

It was really a testament to how long we've been in the bubble. There are people out there who earnestly don't understand that the raison d'etre of a publicly traded company is to generate profit and value for shareholders. Their entire careers, which may be nearly a decade long, have been in a world where revenue growth was all that mattered. I've seen people sincerely perplexed with a company's stock drops when they beat revenue at earnings while ignoring that their cost growth outpaced revenue growth.

From what I've seen we're still only at the borderlands of rational thought.