[bryanlarsen]

And some of those articles were from 1998. It can take a long time for a bubble to burst. I remember hearing about the housing bubble in 2001. It even made the front cover of the Economist in 2005.

As Keanes said "The market can stay irrational for longer than you can stay solvent".

[yummyfajitas]

The housing bubble was a special case. It was more or less impossible to short until fairly late in the game (i.e. approximately the time when Burry actually did) - the market for CDS was not very liquid until synthetic CDOs came into the picture.

[nissimk]

I'm pretty sure that it's also quite difficult to go short on non publicly traded equity.

[Ankaios]

Are there any swaps or other tools that provide a reasonable mechanism?

[marcosdumay]

As a rule, bubbles only burst after everybody gives up on claiming they will.

[vegabook]

Because that's when even the bears have been stopped into longs.

[marcosdumay]

And it's when the press has already moved full power into bringing more people to the market, and when people with doubts (and thus some spare money) have already invested, and people that didn't invest are feeling foolish, so they won't convince other people.

And, probably, more reasons. That's one contrary indicator that seems to be very reliable.

[andrewpbrett]

Spelling - it's John Maynard Keynes, not Keanes :)

[ocdtrekkie]

Exactly. When I say things that seem outrageous, and get downvoted or called out, like claiming Google is past it's peak, I'm aware it may take a couple years for public opinion or actual monetary figures to catch up. I called the antitrust investigations around Android which have been opening up this year, a couple years ago.

People are quick to downvote and say you're crazy, but often, you're just early. And it can definitely take time for public opinion (which drives things like stock) to catch up.

[jacquesm]

I have a watch in my drawer that's exactly right twice every day.

[ocdtrekkie]

Your watch is wrong for 1438 out of 1440 minutes each day, or 99.86% of the time, assuming minute precision. I haven't made a very high percentage of bad calls yet, AFAIK. Clever one-liners that are barely relevant to the topic really don't add anything to the conversation.

[jacquesm]

If you use milliseconds you can even make that 99.99% or higher!

The point is, that watch is verifiable accurate twice daily, you can look at it and will tell you exactly the right time. It will do so 365 days per year, which is 730 times. This is a very large number of accurate predictions without being useful at all.

The only kind of useful predictions are the ones that you are prepared to back with either money or deeds. Words alone really don't cut it, in fact, with words alone your accuracy decreases.

A good way to find out where people stand on a prediction is to ask them to back that prediction with money. If you're willing to stake $500 on each of your predictions then you may still be wrong but you'll be a lot more careful with what it is exactly that you predict than if there is no downside to you for your prediction being wrong.

[ocdtrekkie]

It's nice to see you only value opinions of people as wealthy as you are. ;)

[jacquesm]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Schopenhauer