No. of Recommendations: 12
If you lived through the .com crash and the 2008/08 financial crisis, you will no doubt recognise patterns in the financial markets today (Meme stocks, crypto treasury companies raising capital, huge capex going into AI as the future cash gushers are built.)
What was your personal recollection of the .com crash?
Can you remember what it was like in the months leading up to March 2000 (businesses valued at multiple to sales; cash burn; mergers; helpers; IPOs popping 50% on day one; young people with knowledge of how these new businesses would dominate the world; experts on cnbc).
And importantly, what triggered the beginning of the collapse (Greenspan signalling higher rates, leading to concerns about the ability of loss making .coms to pay higher interest; funding drying up and then insolvency for companies like pets.com; share prices declining and declining until eventually the Nasdaq dropped 80%)?
What was your recollection? Do you sense any of that today? Unknowable but if you had to bet, what might trigger the next proper crash, that might enable Berkshire to deploy large amounts of its war chest?