Declan Boyham

[Declan Boyham @DBoyham]

@kyletrades_ Curious what caused your hesitation on day 1 Kyle?

[Declan Boyham @DBoyham]

@ConcretumR @mars10p @chatwithtraders why did you stop at the 5min orb and not to lower timeframe orb's?

[Declan Boyham @DBoyham]

@CFlanders7 do you cap your # trades per day @CFlanders7?

[Declan Boyham @DBoyham]

@Scot1andT Also what has ALAB done relative to the recent SMH move?

[Declan Boyham @DBoyham]

@haventberoy hey mate, same timezone. Be keen to chat, share ideas etc. Got an email I can reach you on?

[Declan Boyham @DBoyham]

@TheShortBear @TheShortBear did you keep this on watch and capitalise on it today? Keen to see how you attacked, if you did, on the gap down first red day

[Declan Boyham @DBoyham]

@lesse_jivermore book? pls share more deets!

[Declan Boyham @DBoyham]

@DojiStar11 get back on the saddle 😉

[Declan Boyham @DBoyham]

@TMLitalia @jfsrev also allows for potentially much more gains if you do get a runner. A good strat

[Declan Boyham @DBoyham]

@DojiStar11 Shows us the real strength

[Declan Boyham @DBoyham]

@lesse_jivermore @Clement_Ang17 this man doesnt miss

[Curbstone Research @lesse_jivermore]

This Isn’t 1999 Yet
Why today’s AI boom looks more like 1995 than 1999

I. The Spark — Gold and the Bubble Question

On Friday, a guest on CNBC was asked whether this market is a bubble and if we’re near a bust. He made a fascinating observation: during the 1990s dot-com boom, the price of gold fell nearly 40% from 1996 through the late ’90s. Today, by contrast, gold is having its best year since 1979. That difference tells you everything.

In a true bubble, nobody — especially professional managers — would be allocating a meaningful chunk of their portfolio to gold. When incentives and sentiment are fully captured by mania, the pressure to chase the “obvious winners” becomes overwhelming. The fact that gold is thriving today reflects uneasiness, not euphoria. That alone should make us question whether we’re truly in bubble territory.

II. How Real Bubbles Work — Incentives and Herd Behavior

During the late 1990s, fund managers were incentivized to chase internet stocks or risk underperforming their peers. Analysts faced career suicide if they issued “sell” ratings on high-flyers their firms were invested in. One of the most infamous examples was Henry Blodget in 1998. When Amazon ($AMZN) closed at $243, Blodget raised his price target to $400 — a number he later admitted he’d completely made up.

That one call sent $AMZN up 150% in a few weeks and triggered a stampede of similar moves. It was a feedback loop of hype and fear: analysts raised targets to avoid ridicule, managers chased to avoid underperformance. That’s what real bubbles look like— when skepticism becomes career risk.

III. The Psychology of a Bust

One thing is certain:

If many expect a bust, a bust is the least likely outcome.

A bubble bursts only when the fewest number of people expect it. The market, as I like to say, is a manic-depressive sociopath — not intentionally cruel, but a reflection of our collective psychology. It lures in as many as it can with the siren song of easy money, then ruins them at the peak. So the fact that people are worried about a bubble is actually good news. It means we’re not in one yet. In every cycle, the bubble comes only after years of disbelief.

IV. Where We Are in the Cycle

After studying every year since 1877, one thing is clear: each major bull market has typically been hotter than the last.

Liquidity keeps rising, participation keeps broadening.
Even from 2020 to today, the market’s liquidity profile has changed massively. Yet trillions of dollars remain sidelined because many investors still don’t believe the AI boom is real. That disbelief alone makes a true bubble impossible right now. If we do get one, odds are it’ll be more extreme than 1999 — but we’re nowhere near that point. This feels far more like 1995 than 1999.

A good rule of thumb:

If your barista or Uber driver isn’t giving you stock tips, it’s not a bubble yet.

V. Historical Parallels — What True Bubbles Look Like

The 1920s and 1990s manias were psychological transformations. In both cases, skepticism didn’t just vanish — it became heresy.

Nine days before the 1929 crash, famed economist Irving Fisher declared, “Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.”

During true euphoric peaks, you were seen as a fool if you weren’t “playing the market.” Nothing like that exists today. It’s also worth noting how short this supposed “AI bubble” has been. ChatGPT was released only three years ago. If the bubble burst now, it would be the fastest bubble buildup-to-collapse in history — missing half the classic ingredients of a real one.

History suggests this is not mania, but a hot, optimistic phase like the mid-1960s, 1980s, or mid 1990s. A bubble comes later — and lasts longer.

VI. The Numbers — Then vs. Now

Whenever prices rise, someone cries “bubble.”
But the scale of real bubbles dwarfs anything we’ve seen so far.

The Nasdaq 100 ($NDX) is up roughly 140% from the 2022 lows. From 1994 to March 2000, it rose 1,250%.

In the 18 months from October 1998 to March 2000, it exploded 350%. Yahoo ($YHOO) gained 19,000% in five years. DELL, AOL, and $CSCO all rose over 100,000% from early-1990s lows.

Compare that to today:

$OKLO, one of the flashiest AI-adjacent stocks, is up about 2 300% from its 2023 low. $NVDA, the leader of the AI boom, is up 6,000% since 2020. Even Microsoft ($MSFT) rose 8,000% between 1990 – 2000, and that took a full decade without a 2020-style collapse to pad its stats.

By those standards, today’s run isn’t even close to mania. It’s barely adolescence.

VII. The Missing Ingredients

True bubbles share two defining features:

Widespread belief that the future is guaranteed.
A frenzy of new listings feeding that belief.

We have neither.

The 1920s had automobiles, utilities, aviation, and radio IPOs. The 1990s had computer hardware, software, and internet IPOs. Today? We’ve had $CRVW, and that’s just infrastructure.

The real AI companies — Anduril, Figure AI, Anthropic, OpenAI, Perplexity — are all still private. Until we see the YAHOO or AOL of this cycle, this isn’t a bubble. It’s a prelude.

VIII. The Potential Catalysts Ahead

Several under-the-surface events could still accelerate things: Tariff rollbacks — large manufacturers are lobbying hard for relief; any surprise cut could ignite optimism. An AI support bill — think of it as a modern version of the 1950s space-race funding.

Regulatory or tax breaks — the 1998 Internet Tax Freedom Act (signed just one week before the bubble’s ignition) was a powerful spark.
Fed rate cuts — the 1995 cutting cycle helped launch the dot-com surge.

Technological leap — once AI visibly replaces teams or becomes a profitable “super-app,” enthusiasm will explode.

Hot-sector IPOs — Anduril, Figure AI, Anthropic, or Perplexity coming public would be the modern Netscape moment. Earnings acceleration — if AI starts showing up in actual revenue growth, that’s fuel for the next leg.

Right now, those catalysts remain ahead of us, not behind.

IX. The Bigger Picture

We’ve endured higher rates, inflation, trade wars, real wars, labor-market worries, and central-bank drama — and the market keeps climbing. That resilience alone tells you something extraordinary is under way.

If this were truly a bubble, it would have already burst under the weight of bad news. Instead, we’re seeing the early innings of belief being built.

So:

This isn’t 1999.

It’s 1995 — early, volatile, and full of disbelief.

Every major bull run has been hotter than the last, and history says this one will be too.

We may not know when the mania begins,
but history suggests it won’t end quietly.

--------------

This was adapted from my new Substack, Market Master Essays — a paid publication where I’ll be posting full-length essays like this one and turning them into subscriber-only podcast episodes.

Over time, I’ll also publish deep-dive writeups on single stocks, market periods, and historical stock charts — completely revamped in my new app with proper MAs, volume, and true red/green candles (no X compression).

Founding members get 3 pre-1950 charts in the upgraded format, complete with annotations and news flow — or 1 extended historical chart of your choice (like GM 1914–1929) with a full writeup.

I’ll still post free charts and podcasts here, but if you want more, you can read the full piece here:

https://t.co/4u2C4TGuI3

Thanks!

[Kristjan Kullamägi 🇺🇦 @Qullamaggie]

That's the market we were in back then. People doing 1999 analogies lately, bitch please this isn't even close to 2021 yet lol

[Declan Boyham @DBoyham]

@Qullamaggie Forever goated

https://t.co/SV7dAQUw63

[Declan Boyham @DBoyham]

Chat - "How did you get LCID target of $50?"
Q - "I put my thumb in my asshole and put it up in the air, and first number I thought of was $50" LOL @Qullamaggie

[Declan Boyham @DBoyham]

@JasonLeavitt the morning weakness allowed us to easily see where the real strength is

[Declan Boyham @DBoyham]

@kulturdesken AGQ nice undercuts and reclaims of the 50. Weekly looks neat

[Declan Boyham @DBoyham]

The game never changes, but the players do. Love your deep dives @lesse_jivermore

[Curbstone Research @lesse_jivermore]

I'm still working on the next podcast episode which I should have out soon. But in the meantime here is a chart from one of the hottest groups of the late 1970s.

The market of the 1970s is remembered today as a lost decade for stocks. With a market that generally was rangebound for the entire decade with high levels of inflation, low growth, and high interest rates, it would seem that opportunity was hard to come by. However, there were several big rallies throughout the decade with a number of hot sectors that provided plenty of opportunity to outperform the market. Oil and gas, gold and silver, mobile homes, hotels, and other groups had hot periods. Among the groups that saw massive growth during the decade was the casino group.

In 1977, New Jersey passed a law allowing for casino gambling to be legalized in Atlantic City. Casino stocks surged and quickly fizzled out on the initial news. But as it became clear how much of a boon Atlantic City could be to their businesses, the casino stocks were turned into Wall Street poker chips and became the hottest speculative bets in the market.

Caesar's World Inc. was one of the casino stocks that was a prominent feature of the group alongside Resorts International, MGM, Playboy, and Bally Manufacturing (maker of slot machines). Caesar's was publicly making a strong push to enter Atlantic City through the acquisition of the Regency Hotel. Casino expansion into Atlantic City was quite quick and was spearheaded by Resorts International, which was the first company to open a legal casino hotel in the city.

The incredible boom in business they saw fueled further speculation in all the other gaming stocks as hordes of tourists flooded Atlantic City to try their luck in Resorts International's newly opened casino. They reported profit for the first half of 1978 was up 400% and they expected Q3 profits to be even more than all of the first half's profit.

Resorts' profit surge caused CAW (Caesar's World) to break out of its 8 week base on elevated volume. Then, it emerged from a tight consolidation as Florida introduced a bill to legalize casino gambling like Atlantic City. At the same time, some unnamed "prominent" brokerage house issued bright reports and recommendations on the casino group which sent CAW straight up 130%. On its march toward Valhalla, CAW received final approval for its plan to expand the Regency Hotel in Atlantic City.

The stock had a short term peak when the market panicked on news of major banks in the country raising their prime lending rates to as high as 10%. The market was also worried about potential actions from the Carter administration, increased inflation, and potential Fed responses, and it was also reported that some big investors and funds were hesitant to be in the market because of the froth they were seeing in these gaming stocks.

Subsequently, CAW imploded by about 70% in 8 weeks. Near the bottom of its decline, Florida voted a resounding "no" on its gambling bill. it sent gaming stocks lower still, but by that time it didn't really matter too much as they were already down so much.

The group bottomed along with the market, but unlike the market, they saw a V recovery on no real news specific to the group. As the market went nowhere for the next couple of years, CAW bottomed out at $5 and rose to a high of $36 in 1979 as the Atlantic City gaming story continued to unfold.

1977-1979 CAW went from a low of $1 to a high of $36, an increase of 3,500%.

[Linda Raschke @LindaRaschke]

People think good decision-making is about being right...It’s not. It’s about lowering the cost of being wrong & changing your mind. When the cost of mistakes is high, we’re paralyzed with fear. When the cost of mistakes is low, we can move fast and adapt. Make mistakes cheap, not rare. - This thought is from Farnam Street and I thought it applied well to trading!

[Declan Boyham @DBoyham]

@nickschmidt Additional screen + strategy hop just to be sure

[Declan Boyham @DBoyham]

@Scot1andT 😂 one way to put it