Merely having a correct investment thesis isn't enough to make money - you have to also get the trade timing and execution correct, and bubbles have a nasty ten

Merely having a correct investment thesis isn't enough to make money - you have to also get the trade timing and execution correct, and bubbles have a nasty tendency to stay inflated long enough to squeeze out the shorts. Like, the more profitable plays are often the ones that contribute to the boom/bust cycle. In the 2008 crisis, the big winners were people who took out as much mortgage debt as possible and aggressively did cash-out refinancing, ending up strategically defaulting on houses they got more money out of than they put in. When you're in a bubble, people tend to assume that the worst-case scenarios won't happen, so they'll extend credit that you cannot pay out in those scenarios, and you wind up getting some free expected value and positive skew that way.