The financial markets are the perfect laboratory for the study of cyclicality because they’re driven by investor psychology, which veers perennially between euphoria and despondency, greed and fear, credulousness and skepticism, complacency and terror. Humans get carried away, so the trend always overshoots in one direction or the other. But Marks operates on the assumption that the cycle will eventually self-correct and the pendulum will swing back in the opposite direction. The future may be unpredictable, but this recurring process of boom and bust is remarkably predictable. Once we
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