STREET DOGS: A junk market may be a phase of the end-game
There is a stage in the market cycle when people buy newly created shares at prices not connected to reality
“I can feel it coming, SEC. or not, a whole new round of disastrous speculation, with all the familiar stages in order — blue-chip boom, then a fad for secondary issues, then an over-the-counter play, then another garbage market in new issues and finally the inevitable crash. I don’t know when it will come, and I can feel it coming, and, damn it, I don’t know what to do about it” — Bernard J (Bunny) Lasker, then chair of the New York Stock Exchange (1972).
Quality growth has appreciated beyond what we think is rational. Fraudulent growth companies (of which there are many) have been even stronger. Companies with dodgy Covid-19 treatments abound. At the dodgier end of the market, old-fashioned disinfectants reborn as Covid treatments (yes, they kill the virus on contact, but then so does soap) were rewarded with big market caps. Further up the chain we find people with a history of dodgy stock promotion piggybacking on the new hot— but real — thing, namely RNA vaccines. And th...
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