What will be the next bubble?

[gcol]

I would love to know the next bubble, preferably a short term one. A surefire way to get rich. (In at the bottom, out at the top, run off with the suckers' money and sit on it until the next bubble). The greed is good mantra will always drive the markets. Don't like it, but that is human nature. Law of the jungle, survival of the fittest.

 

The analogy model I like is the pendulum and bandwagon. The bandwagon pushes the pendulum, but gravity always wins in the end and eventually the pendulum swings back strongly in the opposite direction. Boom and bust.

 

Our attention (fired by tabloid headlines) is fired only by big bubbles which unfortunately are only newsworthy when they hve burst. There are many embryo bubbles growing quietly and unnoticed, and many have burst without newsworthy effects. Some are deemed to be politically, socially and culturally "good" and are puffed up and encouraged. Communism was a bubble, religion is a series of bubbles, foreign aid and social welfare too.

 

There is a testable "Bubble Theory" lurking here somewhere, with lots of associated mathematical mumbo-jumbo. In fact, I just happen to have.... But then I would not tell you until I have made my pile from it. I wish.

[Realitycheck]

As I suspected several years ago and predicted to a friend of mine who I suspected had reincarnated himself in the form of iNow, massive unpaid personal credit card debt nationwide will be the next "bubble". Too bad that the only way to make money on it will be to sell short, but that's what BOA CEO says.

 

http://www.yahoo.com/s/975645

[iNow]

As I suspected several years ago and predicted to a friend of mine who I suspected had reincarnated himself in the form of iNow...

 

I'm like a celebrity tonight. People often tell me that I remind them of old friends. I guess I have "one of those" faces.

[gcol]

Hedge funds seem to be a potentially disastrous bubble. more worryingly, they are not at the top of the pile. If a top bubble bursts, it does not bring down the underlying matrix.

 

But the hedge fund bubble is central to the matrix. It bursts, the whole structure is alterred forever.

 

A good article about Hedge Funds and associated high leverage dodgy dealing is here:hbswk.hbs.edu/item/3698.html (Harvard Business School)

[iNow]

With the craziness going on over in Asian markets Friday I'm beginning to think that "bubble" is the wrong term. This is looking more like a Jenga game.

 

http://www.forbes.com/markets/2008/10/24/briefing-asia-closer-markets-equity-cx_tw_sg_1024markets04.html