I read an interesting book about several people who accurately predicted the housing crash. One was an investment guy that ran a small company for people to put their investment play money in. He had Asperger's syndrome, and apparently as some people with Aspergers do, he would focus obsessively on something unsettling until he understood the problem. He followed all possible outcomes of the subprime mortgage tranches, and realized the whole thing would collapse in a few years, although he couldn't predict any exact year.
While practically everyone else was buying up tranched bundles of worthless subprime mortgages in a heady fury, he was taking all of his investor's money and buying up credit default swaps (basically insurance policies against the failure of mortgage investments). Turns out he could buy them at a song, because early on, insurance companies like AIG would sell them cheap thinking they would never have to pay a dime on something as lovely as bundles of mortgage investments that were puzzlingly triple AAA rated by ratings investment companies. And the strange thing about credit default swaps is you could buy them against someone else's investment. It would be like insuring your neighbor's house, and you collecting the money when his house burned down.
Not being able to predict the exact date of the collapse, he bought millions of dollars worth of these things for three years, and like any insurance, the annual premiums must be paid to keep the policy. This enraged his investors who saw nothing but money going down a rat hole. They began filing law suits against the guy and sending him hate mail. LOL
But of course, the mortgage market did collapse, and when it did, his investors made huge profits beyond their wildest expectations. And none of them gave him so much as a thank you. When there's a big bubble taking place, people don't want to look at reality and get depressed. Never-the-less, you should take reality into consideration. It often has a funny effect on hopes, dreams, and eventual outcomes.
