🫧✨ The Magic of Bubbles — But You Don’t Have...

A Wand.

Earlier this morning, I was pouring a glass of milk and—for reasons known only to the mischievous gods of breakfast—there were bubbles. Not tons of them (it’s air after all), but enough to make me pause.

And think.

There are so many kinds of bubbles. Come to think of it, they’re everywhere. The danger is that we hardly notice them anymore.

Do you dive? 🏊♂️ I’ll spot the shark circling the delicious fresh meat that I am long before I notice the thousands of bubbles around me—the tiny proofs that I’m still alive. Yes, still breathing.

Liquid bubbles. Soap bubbles. Stellar-wind bubbles 🌌—yes, those are real: vast cavities carved into space by a star’s energy. Bubble wrap. Champagne. Superbubbles. Mephedrone (a synthetic stimulant—not that I’ve ever tried). They’re everywhere.

It’s an invasion!!! 🫧😄

And the list goes on.

Dot-com bubble. The dot itself is a bubble, isn’t it? Real-estate bubble. Tulip bubble. Chinese equity bubble. Chinese property bubble. When does it stop?

Everywhere.

Only somehow, I couldn’t see them—until now. Finally, I’m aware. It’s about time. And suddenly I realize how my life—our lives, yes, I’m talking about us, dear—runs on thin air. 💨 Just like bubbles.

So I rushed to an old little masterpiece by John Kenneth Galbraith: A Short History of Financial Euphoria. The book itself feels like a bubble. So light you barely notice you’ve read anything by the time you’re done.

110 pages. That’s it. Who doesn’t have time for such a jewel? 💎
I loved it. It’s entertaining, elegant, almost… elusive. So fun, in fact, that you nearly forget how heavy it really is.

Because it does weigh a ton.

Galbraith reviews the great speculative episodes of the past three centuries and finds the same patterns repeating. He writes:

“Recognizing them, the sensible person or institution is or should be warned. And perhaps some will be. But… the chances are not great, for built into the speculative episode is the euphoria, the mass escape from reality, that excludes any serious contemplation of the true nature of what is taking place.”

That rings uncomfortably true, doesn’t it? 🔔

According to Galbraith, two devilish ingredients fuel every bubble:

First: financial amnesia—or as he calls it, “the brevity of financial memory.” Crashes get forgotten fast. A new generation comes along, confident and enthusiastic, and hails the latest setup as a brilliantly innovative discovery.

Second: the charming belief that the richer someone is, the smarter they must be. In short: more money = more brains. 🧠💰
If they’re making money buying this, they must be smart. So… my turn to buy it too.

Galbraith continues:

“Uniformly in all such events there is the thought that there is something new in the world. (…) In the 17th century it was tulips… later the joint-stock company… yesterday it was the Internet.”

So what’s next?

🫧 The magic of bubbles… Let’s just not forget, dear investors — not just in stocks, but in life — we don’t have a wand.