As America embarks on its latest pre-IPO tech bubble, driven by a fundamentally broken Ponzi system which relies on the marginally disappearing greater fool, it is time to look back in time to this day in 1637, when the granddaddy of all irrationally exuberant bubbles died: the Dutch Tulip Mania.
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Source: Wikipedia [3]
What was tulip mania, you ask [4]?
Tulip mania was a period in the Dutch Golden Age during which contract prices for bulbs of the recently introduced tulip reached extraordinarily high levels and then suddenly collapsed. At the peak of tulip mania, in February 1637, some single tulip bulbs sold for more than 10 times the annual income of a skilled craftsman. It is generally considered the first recorded speculative bubble.
And for fun here are a few recent 'exciting' opportunities...
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UniCredit +89% in the last 3 weeks
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FriendFinder +120% in the last week
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And everyone's favorite Zynga +81% in 3 weeks.
Charts: Bloomberg