I don't believe anyone wants to hear what I have to say.
There's quite a bit of evidence that even professionals don't show any ability to pick stocks or to predict market rollbacks. Most of the people we identify as skilled based on returns have probably just been lucky.
I think bubbles are things people see with 20/20 hindsight. If you look at any particular period where prices go up and then they go down, you will always find people who predicted that they would go down. Those are the people you pay attention to.
The investors who generate big returns over five years, the guys they write books about, are supposed to keep winning, right? Well, they don't.
If you go back to the late '50s, there really was nothing called "academic finance." Well, there was something being taught in business schools as finance, but it really had no strong research underpinnings.
With less regulation, I think you would see growth come back. Of course, there are situations where you need regulation. Antitrust regulation, for example, is a good idea because you want competition. But beyond that, it gets very difficult.
Tastes and behavior are important in economics. Nobody denies that. But the question is: How much of behavior is irrational, and how much of the irrational behavior really affects prices? It turns out that's very difficult to answer.
