One of my favorite parts of writing over the years is the regular feedback I receive from readers.
People send me questions, ideas, charts, movie recommendations, books, old magazines, and the occasional grammar/spelling check.1
A reader recently shared with me that he has been collecting Wall Street comics for several decades. He wanted to send me the entire collection, clipped directly from newspapers and financial publications over the years.
I’m a sucker for a good financial comic, so I was happy to go through the entire stack and pick out some of my favorites to share.
Comics of the 1990s had two main focuses: tech stocks and Alan Greenspan.
I know there are a lot of comparisons now between AI and the dot-com bubble of the 1990s, where it feels like they’re in a different stratosphere:
While talking about my book, many people asked me: If only we could see another disaster like the Great Depression There was a decline of over 80 percent in the stock market.
You don’t have to go back that far to see this level of pain in tech stocks. The aftermath of the dot-com bubble was brutal.
The Nasdaq Composite is down nearly 80%. Nasdaq 100 crashed more than 82 percent. This is a Great Depression-like crash in tech stocks that happened not so long ago.
It was very painful:
When the Nasdaq fell nearly 40% in 2000, Down was only down 6%. In 2001, the Nasdaq fell more than 20% while the Dow fell 7%.
Investors had a place to hide in the more boring, dividend-paying blue chips:
Alan Greenspan is now famous irrational enthusiastic speech In 1996. The dot-com bubble was just heating up at that point.
Greenspan was a remarkable figure in the markets at the time.
Here’s a good example of bubble times:
And one more:
Greenspan was something of a financial celebrity at the time. Investors hung on his every word:
They even covered Greenspan in the BC comic:
This is one of my all-time favorites about negativity bias in financial media:
This is similar to this:
This came out in 2008 but can easily be used today.
There aren’t many bull market cartoons. There are plenty of good bear market comics.
It’s funny because it’s true!
Here’s another Nasdaq example:
Also true.
This is a good soft landing transition into a bear market:
There were also a series of comics about how difficult it is to predict markets:
This must have come from someone like Barron’s:
Markets can sometimes turn your brain into a pretzel.
This sounds like something I would say:
I’m glad this was included in the collection because it’s the best Wall Street comic of all time:
Perfect.
As kids like to say; no notes.
Further Reading:
“The market rolls because it rolls”
1I’m surprised how much of this stuff still falls into the hands of the AI grammar police.
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