Bubble Watch: Joe Average Is Ready to Play the Market
In the financial world, as in the world of teen fashion, what is popular today will inevitably be reviled tomorrow. With that in mind: you simply must buy some stocks. They're absolutely divine, I hear!
The stock market hit another (ho hum) all time high on Friday. This upwards momentum will probably never end! Following the age old wisdom, "Wait to buy in until prices are at all time highs," average Americans, who are notoriously bad at math, are plunging their money back into the stock market, after presumably pulling it out when prices were low. "Investors have sent $76 billion into U.S. stock funds in 2013. From 2006 through 2012, they withdrew $451 billion," notes the Wall Street Journal, in a story which also features a children's treasury of Famous Last Words From Average American Investors, such as "I want to get more aggressive," and "[the market] always seems to spring back up."
Meanwhile, the Journal also reports that IPOs are at their highest mark since just before the tech boom, and stock issuance is the highest it's been in decades. Because companies know that you, The Average American Investor, will buy just about any old god damn stock right now, so why not sell you some? Even hedge funds now are giving up on the idea of "hedging" and plunging right in with a strategy of betting that everything will go up.
A booming market at all time highs, "dumb money" flocking to stocks, which companies are issuing at a record pace, with hungry hedge funds chasing the rocket to the moon. What's it all add up to? A parade of constant good times which will never end, that's what. This is America. Our new paradigm of ingenuity soars like an eagle on top of a flag and god bless the troops, and the entrepreneurs. Anyone who would seek to "rain on the parade" of American value creation on this Veteran's Day is little more than a communist and/ or homosexual.
I hear that Twitter stock is a winner!
Other bubble candidates today: Indian real estate, Bitcoin, and Kordell Stewart's butt.
[Photo: AP]