This article at MarketWatch was very refreshing for me to read. It is by a gentleman named Shawn Langlois, who once upon a time as a mainstream media rookie found himself in a precarious position:
It was 1999, and I had just left a job in finance for the glorious trappings of journalism. One of my first tastes of that profound glory came when my boss offered me the opportunity to spend a whole segment talking shop on some radio program.
Great. What’s the topic?
“Explain why now might be a good time for investors to tap their home-equity lines and load up on stocks!†Welcome to MarketWatch, rookie. Talk into the mic slowly.
At first, it wasn’t so bad. Then the host opened the phone lines.
I’ve long since managed to block out the unsavoriness of those next 10 minutes, and I’d prefer to keep it that way. Needless to say, a few months after I dropped that savvy guidance on listeners, the grand popping of the dot-com bubble occurred, and the NASDAQ proceeded to lose almost 80% of its value over the next couple of years.
Hopefully, and quite likely, my irresponsible performance was far too pathetic to convince anybody to actually try it out; though, at that time, people were eating up just about anything in hopes of hitching a ride on the next big thing.
He highlights history repeating itself:
Tap home equity to buy stocks?
Of course, the very fact that the MSM is highlighting this and providing plenty of reason to be cautious is reason enough to believe a bubble is not going to pop imminently. But I found it interesting nonetheless.
