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Ask HN: Did past "bubbles" have so many people claiming we were in a bubble?

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Re: Ask HN: Did past "bubbles" have so many people claiming we were in a bubble?

#11

Post by idontwantthis »

araes wrote: post #9

Yes, here's a couple examples from a quick search on [1] 2006 to 2008 timeframe. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=financial+real+estate+warnin... Reuters, 8/9/2007, "House bubble could be a self-fulfilling prophecy", https://www.reuters.com/article/world/house-bubble-could-be-... "experts fear is that excessive focus on the issue could generate enough fear among homebuyers to lead to the first-ever nationwide hous…

I remember so many "bubble" stories on NPR that I just assumed we were headed for a pop and didn't know why it was a surprise.

Re: Ask HN: Did past "bubbles" have so many people claiming we were in a bubble?

#13

Post by bitlax »

araes wrote: post #9

Yes, here's a couple examples from a quick search on [1] 2006 to 2008 timeframe. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=financial+real+estate+warnin... Reuters, 8/9/2007, "House bubble could be a self-fulfilling prophecy", https://www.reuters.com/article/world/house-bubble-could-be-... "experts fear is that excessive focus on the issue could generate enough fear among homebuyers to lead to the first-ever nationwide hous…

Peter Schiff was right!

Re: Ask HN: Did past "bubbles" have so many people claiming we were in a bubble?

#14

Post by runjake »

I had so many smart[1] friends and acquaintances warn me about the 1999 tech bubble and the 2008 crash 6-12 months before it happened.

1. The kind of people who watched a lot of candlestick graphs and obsessed over sites like Seeking Alpha and OpenInsider.com

Re: Ask HN: Did past "bubbles" have so many people claiming we were in a bubble?

#15

Post by bobthepanda »

kevin061 wrote: post #10
kingstnap wrote: post #7

The classic joke is economists have predicted 11 of the last 4 recessions. In case you've never seen it. There are people posting their takes on some sort of economic catastrophe in China, US, Japan, wherever, basically 24/7 365 days a year on YouTube. It's a very very very common finance bro hobby to do this. Every single outcome that can happen has a million people having "called it" well in advance.

Which is why I'm sceptical of past predictions. Infinite typewriters and monkeys, and such. I've seen "China is collapsing" videos for the past 10 years. They seem to be going rather well over there so far. They're making the best EVs while American and German cat veterans struggle with electrification. Go figure.

I mean there are legitimate problems with the Chinese economy like youth unemployment.

Re: Ask HN: Did past "bubbles" have so many people claiming we were in a bubble?

#16

Post by laughing_man »

I remember hearing about the real estate bubble for about three years before it popped in 2008. Most bubbles are pretty obvious even before they pop, since it's clear the money doesn't work.

And classically, you know it's about to pop when you hear "this time is different".

Re: Ask HN: Did past "bubbles" have so many people claiming we were in a bubble?

#18

Post by dlcarrier »

You sent me down a rabbit hole, but apparently discussions of previous bubbles were quite large:

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=tech+bubble%2C...

and

https://trends.google.com/explore?q=tech%2520bubble%2Creal%2...

Discussions of a bubble are always common in retrospect, so they peak after the bubble bursts. The Google Books data includes magazines and newspapers, but ends in 2022. The Google Search data is newer and closer tracks the interests of individuals than reporters and commentators, but has much lower precision.

The dot-com bubble burst in early 2000, but the term didn't exist at the time. It was called a "tech bubble" or "internet bubble", with usage of the two tracking similarly and "tech bubble" being far more dominant. The terms' usages peaked in 2007, but had already gained some prominence at the time of the bubble burst.

The real-estate bubble (really a real-estate lending bubble) burst in 2008 with the already strong usage of the term "real estate bubble" really accelerating at the start of 2005, and peaking in 2012.

Interestingly, usage of the term "tech bubble" started falling right when the real-estate peaked, perhaps with its prominence relegating the dot-com bubble to history.

Despite AI being an on-and-off overhyped buzzword since the 70's "AI buble", doesn't really show up in Google Books before the 2022 cutoff, which is also the year of the public release of ChatGPT, when LLMs quickly became a hot topic, but before there was enough hype for a bubble. Searches for "AI bubble" overtook "bitcoin bubble" at the start of 2023.

The growth in searches for "AI bubble" started accelerating last April, and report as peaking last November, although with the noisier data from Google Search, it may be a false peak. The AI bubble is itself a tech bubble, but with AI being the buzzword this time around, instead of the internet domains that ruled the last tech bubble. Searches for "tech bubble" are much lower than "AI bubble" but follow the same trend, with both showing a small peak in July, a dip in August, and a strong peak in November.

Re: Ask HN: Did past "bubbles" have so many people claiming we were in a bubble?

#19

Post by kevin061 »

bobthepanda wrote: post #15
kevin061 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why I'm sceptical of past predictions. Infinite typewriters and monkeys, and such. I've seen "China is collapsing" videos for the past 10 years. They seem to be going rather well over there so far. They're making the best EVs while American and German cat veterans struggle with electrification. Go figure.

I mean there are legitimate problems with the Chinese economy like youth unemployment.

Absolutely. And how the CCP essentially controls any company that becomes sufficiently large. Terrible working conditions and all sorts of workplace illnesses due to exposure to chemicals banned in most other countries.

However, China not only has not collapsed, but it is becoming stronger every day.

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