Avalanche

 A fragile system.

It looks like thats where we are.

Pvt credit using insurance subsidiaries to raise capital, and magically have no NPAs to speak of.

Cryptogeeks justifying 'underlying' whatever and using leverage from lenders who like 8-10%. Apparently there is an entire market where lending is happening to crypto stuff that is disguised as treasuries or other currencies. And this is lending is outside of the banking channels almost like the private credit mania. 

Companies getting equity capital and pre-IPO capital to keep bankrolling their acquisitions or ventures, while keeping negative ROE (something a lender would definitely not like)

The everything bubble is scary.

My wife asked me when I doubted a particular crypto: "But if its going up, and has gone up for 5 years or even 10 years, doesnt it mean that you are wrong or plain envious?"

I said: "Yes, it means that I have been wrong until now."

Akshay Khanna from Taal said it well : "Aaawaaz unchi karne se, ya chillane se, aapka jooth sachh nahi ban jaata"

But beyond whether i am right or wrong (I am right of course), the big factor is the interconnectedness of things.

The wealth effect, and the leverage effect is probably the most I have seen even if I count the IT bubble of 1990s.

I asked chatgpt this:

Here’s the “Magnificent 7” + Oracle + Broadcom market caps at 2019-12-31 vs 2025-09-17 (USD, billions). Sources are shown per row.

Company	2019-12-31	2025-09-17 (yesterday)
Apple	1,304.76	3,550.00. (StockAnalysis)
Microsoft	1,203.06	3,791.06. (StockAnalysis)
Alphabet (Google)	923.77	3,017.82. (StockAnalysis)
Amazon	916.15	2,470.21. (StockAnalysis)
NVIDIA	144.02	4,138.05. (StockAnalysis)
Meta Platforms	585.32	1,948.71. (StockAnalysis)
Tesla	75.40	1,420.00. (StockAnalysis)
Oracle	169.94	856.52. (StockAnalysis)
Broadcom	125.71	1,634.74. (StockAnalysis)

Group totals (Mag7 + Oracle + Broadcom)

• 2019-12-31: 5,448.13

• 2025-09-17: 22,827.11

• Absolute change: +17,378.98

• Multiple vs 2019: 4.19× (≈ +318.99%)

(Arithmetic shown using exact figures above.)

Notes on sources & dates

• All figures are end-of-day market caps from StockAnalysis pages that list both historical (Dec-31-2019) and current values for Sep-17-2025; Apple and Amazon pages explicitly show “as of Sep 17, 2025.” Tesla’s page shows Sep-17-2025 in the header (“Market Cap … as of September 17, 2025”) and the 2019 figure in the history table. (StockAnalysis)

So; basically, even from pre-covid highs, we have $17 T of wealth sloshing around the world economy just from these 9 companies.

I am quite scared of a 1987 crash kind of scenario...

A fat finger, or a Meta saying that capex will drop from the guided 70 B to only 35 B would lead to quite the avalanche. 

Again - I highlight the interconnectedness risk, and the euphoric wealth effect where social media is full of people who got the right stock, and right portfolio, etc.

"We may not know where we are going, but we sure as hell ought to know where we are" - Howard Marks

Where we are is close to the summit. 

And just like the 1989 Japan, or the 1999 IT bubble, the narrative is: "dude, the world is going to change around this new epicenter, and all we have to do is sit tight."