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I'm generally with the naysayers and the skeptics, but this point makes sense to me: This though, is why concern one — the lack of access for retail investors

I'm generally with the naysayers and the skeptics, but this point makes sense to me: This though, is why concern one — the lack of access for retail investors — is arguably a firewall against this truly being a bubble. This seemed to me one of the key necessary factors to the dotcom bubble and the housing bubble after it: online brokers allowed people who previously didn't have a lot of experience to buy stocks and even daytrade. (Count me in!) Similarly, ARMs and the various other exotic mortgage tools opened up the housing market to lots of people who traditionally wouldn't have had access. (Thankfully learned my lesson with the NASDAQ bubble.)

maxxxxx 12y ago
A lot of the money comes from sources like pension funds. A collapse won't hurt retail investors directly but their pensions will hurt. If Uber at $20 billion is such a great deal, why don't Larry Ellison, Bill Gates or Warren Buffet buy it outright?
- adamlett 12y ago
  Nobody said it was 'a great deal'. It could be that it is simply priced right. In which case a savy investor might be able to find investments elsewhere. And don't forget that just because the three you mentioned didn't jump at the investement (maybe because only one of them is actually a professional investor), it doesn't mean that nobody else did. Obviously somebody did.
a8da6b0c91d 12y ago
The fracking boom was obviously a huge bubble. It has mostly burst in recent months. There was no direct involvement of retail investors.
ghaff 12y ago
There was also arguably much more connection between the tech industry as a whole and the dot-com bubble. When all the startups and web companies went down, they dragged companies like Cisco, Sun, and EMC--indeed just about everyone--down with them. (Admittedly those companies had profited handsomely by selling to all the free-spending dot-coms and had also over-invested in overhyped technologies as well.) But if all the snapchats and instagrams--heck, even Facebook--come crashing to earth, it's not clear to me there's a huge amount of collateral damage outside of the companies directly involved and their (mostly non-retail) investors. Not zero of course. But a lot less than post-2000.

maxxxxx 12y ago

A lot of the money comes from sources like pension funds. A collapse won't hurt retail investors directly but their pensions will hurt. If Uber at $20 billion is such a great deal, why don't Larry Ellison, Bill Gates or Warren Buffet buy it outright?

adamlett 12y ago
Nobody said it was 'a great deal'. It could be that it is simply priced right. In which case a savy investor might be able to find investments elsewhere. And don't forget that just because the three you mentioned didn't jump at the investement (maybe because only one of them is actually a professional investor), it doesn't mean that nobody else did. Obviously somebody did.

a8da6b0c91d 12y ago

The fracking boom was obviously a huge bubble. It has mostly burst in recent months. There was no direct involvement of retail investors.

ghaff 12y ago

There was also arguably much more connection between the tech industry as a whole and the dot-com bubble. When all the startups and web companies went down, they dragged companies like Cisco, Sun, and EMC--indeed just about everyone--down with them. (Admittedly those companies had profited handsomely by selling to all the free-spending dot-coms and had also over-invested in overhyped technologies as well.) But if all the snapchats and instagrams--heck, even Facebook--come crashing to earth, it's not clear to me there's a huge amount of collateral damage outside of the companies directly involved and their (mostly non-retail) investors. Not zero of course. But a lot less than post-2000.