Boom Bubble Bust: Part II - The ETF Mania

Last week, in part 1, we looked at past bubbles, and noted that a key ingredient in the euphoric bubble stage is some form of extreme, irrational, investment behaviour. Is there such evidence now? Is there a “mass escape from reality”, as JK Galbraith put it?

Our view is that the behaviour of investors buying passive funds, particularly exchange traded funds (ETFs), are increasingly marking out 2017 as the euphoric, bubble, stage in a bull market which began in 2009. Here is the fascinating, and equally worrying, evidence