What Will Stocks Do When “Consensual Hallucination” Ends?
The phenomenon works – until it doesn’t. What’s astonishing is how long it works.
This is the transcript from my podcast last Sunday, THE WOLF STREET REPORT:
There is a phenomenon in stock markets, in bond markets, in housing markets, in cryptocurrency markets, and in other markets where people attempt to get rich. It’s when everyone is pulling in the same direction, energetically hyping everything, willfully swallowing any propaganda or outright falsehood, and not just nibbling on it, but swallowing it hook, line, and sinker, and strenuously avoiding exposure to any fundamental reality. For only one reason: to make more money.
People do it because it works. Trading algos are written to replicate it, because it works.
It works on the simple principle: If everyone believes stocks will go up, no matter what the current price or the current situation, or current fundamental data, then stocks will go up. They will go up because there is a lot of buying pressure because everyone believes that everyone believes that prices will go up, and so they bid up prices and chase stocks higher.
I call this phenomenon “consensual hallucination” – “consensual” because everyone eagerly smokes the same stuff in order to be able to get the same hallucinations everyone else is having, and to be part of the movement, because they believe that this movement will make them rich, and if enough people have this consensual hallucination, and if algos are programmed to trade with it, then it works wonderfully.
Until it doesn’t. The moment it doesn’t is when this hallucination begins to fade. And what happens then?
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