Economic Tsunami

Categories: Econ, Trading

An economic tsunami splashes around a whole lot of water...in a metaphorical sense. An economic tsunami refers to one, single event that caused a whole lot of economic problems everywhere else.

Which makes sense, right? Think about how interconnected we are globally, and how specialized businesses are, which makes them dependent on each other. A winter storm might prevent an avocado shipment to the US, which would lead to a shortage in avocados, which would mean millennials would be able to afford houses again.

Eh, okay. Millennials aren’t broke because they spend all of their money on avocado toast, and economic tsunamis aren’t describing positive effects. Rather, an economic tsunami is an event that caused widespread economic problems, potentially across an industry, multiple industries, or a geographic area. The more interconnected we are economically, the more affected we will all be when someone royally messes up (looking at you, all the players causing the 2008 financial crisis).

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Finance: What is a Bubble?5 Views

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Finance allah shmoop what is ah bubble All right well

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this is a bubble See what happened there got bigger

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and bigger and bigger And then it popped and here's

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the stock market from about nineteen Ninety two until about

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two thousand It got bigger and bigger and bigger And

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then it popped And yet was a bubble not just

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a big fat bull market It was a crazy ludicrous

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tulip mania Kind of time like start ups with almost

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no revenues trading and billions of dollars Yep And tulip

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mania That was a really thing One tulip sold for

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forty grand go figure wasn't like if you ate it

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you lived forever So yeah it was a bubble So

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what caused the ninety nine bubble Well greed and it

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wasn't good At least for some The internet had come

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along It was a new thing consumers by the millions

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could download in the privacy of their homes Art films

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Yeah That's what we'll call them art films by the

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terabyte money was flowing from silicon valley investors into startups

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at record pace hoping to take advantage of this new

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amazing internet thing and the valuations of companies got higher

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And higher and higher Nasdaq went up some four hundred

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percent in just half a dozen years and the blessed

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cos traded at one hundred times trailing revenue not earnings

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but revenue So if you think about the idea that

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if you invest a dollar and you want to get

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more than that back and that dollar comes from profits

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of companies than one hundred times revenues cos we're probably

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something like five hundred times earnings or more So for

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one hundred dollars oven investment you've got like a dollar

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of revenues in twenty cents of potential earnings Like maybe

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a a decade later maybe yeah that's a bubble and

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it burst At least you don't have that danger with

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actual tulips or bitcoins Yeah they take bitcoins when you

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buy tulips Would be kind of a good marriage there

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