Marcus Padley’s typically matter-of-fact irony about the sharemarket “Don’t let a little bubble spoil some irrational exuberance” in THE AGE yesterday has much to recommend it. He’s spot-on.

You can still do very well in shares whilst making the Chicken Littles looking for the sky to fall (a reversion to the mean) appear extremely stupid.

When the market does eventually correct, the easy response is “Well, even a broken clock is right twice every day!”

So, what someone who studies the fundamentals is up against, whether in the stockmarket or in real estate, is that it’s clearly not over until it’s over.

Seems the fundamentals don’t matter when the bubble money is still running ….. only when the fat lady sings.

As Padley says: “The only people that get caught in a correction are those who think investment is always long term.  It’s not.  It’s about letting your profits run and cutting your losses.”

Nevertheless, it has always seemed more than a pity to me that destruction is repetitively visited upon people and their economies once the music does stop, and that it was indeed our elected governments playing the bubble music, per medium of bubble-inducing tax regimes – as sometimes augmented by quantative easings.