Maggie's Farm

Perhaps, if that's how you define it.
But you have to know all those people and you have to know for sure they don't know squat.

It is true that when my father told me that conversations at the hospital he worked in began and ended with discussions on which stocks people were purchasing, I recommended he reduce his holdings. He asked why, and I replied that if the average person is talking about stocks as if they really know what they are doing, then most of them are probably following hunches and spending money they don't have, or should be more careful with. They were trying to make a quick buck.

He did reduce his holdings and was grateful that most of his holdings missed the crash in 2001 and again later in 2008 (after he'd retired and it would have been more devastating).

But this is hardly a useful macro gauge. It's good for your personal insight, but doesn't, can't and shouldn't inform a larger policy decision.

People have to be allowed to make their own mistakes, and they have to be allowed to learn from them rather than being compensated for making them.

Sadly, the world we live in today compensates the large companies that encourage, and are a leading cause of, bubbles being created and bursting, but we leave the everyday schmuck investor out in the cold. Better to leave them both with their losses than compensating one over the other.

Again, as I pointed out above, you need to know all of them and you need to know that's what they are doing. As Texan99 pointed out above, if you act on that concept and you're wrong (which you're likely to be more often than not), you will get crushed.

We all get lucky from time to time. I bought Apple a long time ago at $15, when Michael Dell said if they folded and paid out cash to investors, the investors would do better. I took that as a good sign. I sold it at $60 - much to my chagrin today. On the other hand, I invested in HP after the Compaq merger. Made a ton of sense and I liked Michael Capellas and Carly Fiorina (still do). I just didn't spend enough time looking under the hood.

I'd have to say my best and luckiest decision was not investing in Florida, and that was a hunch as well. I was told to invest in some new condos being built on my in-law's island. I drove by a few times. Signs saying 100% sold, but units still for sale!
Exciting - except there were 2 problems. The first was 100% sold and very few cars in the parking lots. 2 of the buildings were finished, so someone should have moved in, right? The second was 100% sold and units still for sale - clearly the result of people flipping units over to the 'greater fool'.

I can be foolish on my own time, and I wasn't interested in giving my money to someone to prove it.

My best (and luckiest) calls in this respect are the ones I didn't make a dime on, and would have been likely to lose much if I had done something. I don't put that down to knowing what a bubble is, but knowing that if it doesn't pass the sniff test for me, it's just not worth investing.

Again, that doesn't mean my views should inform policy on how to deal with a perceived bubble. It just means if I know it when I see it, I stay away.