What is a Bubble & a Crash?

What is a Bubble?

A bubble is a type of investing phenomenon that demonstrates the most basic type of "emotional investing." A bubble occurs when investors put so much demand on an asset that they drive the price beyond any accurate or rational reflection of its actual worth. In the case of a stock, the actual worth would ideally be determined by the performance of the underlying company. Like the soap bubbles a child likes to blow, investing bubbles often appear as though they will rise forever, but since they are not formed from anything substantial, they eventually pop. And when they do, the money that was invested into them dissipates into the wind. 

The term "bubble," in the financial context, generally refers to a situation where the price for an asset exceeds its fundamental value by a large margin. During a bubble, prices for a financial asset or asset class are highly inflated, bearing little relation to the intrinsic value of the asset. The terms "asset price bubble," "financial bubble" or "speculative bubble" are interchangeable and are often shortened simply to "bubble."

Characteristics of an Economic Bubble
A basic characteristic of bubbles is the suspension of disbelief by most participants during the "bubble phase." There is a failure to recognize that regular market participants and other forms of traders are engaged in a speculative exercise which is not supported by previous valuation techniques. Also, bubbles are usually identified only in retrospect, after the bubble has burst.

In most cases, an asset price bubble is followed by a spectacular crash in the price of the securities in question. In addition, the damage caused by the bursting of a bubble depends on the economic sector/s involved, and whether the extent of participation is widespread or localized. For example, the bursting of the 1980s bubble in Japan led to a prolonged period of stagnation for the Japanese economy. But since the speculation was largely confined to Japan, the damage wrought by the bursting of the bubble did not spread much beyond its shores. On the other hand, the bursting of the U.S. housing bubble triggered record wealth destruction on a global basis in 2008, because most banks and financial institutions in the U.S. and Europe held hundreds of billions of dollars worth of toxic subprime mortgage backed securities. By the first week of January, 2009, the 12 largest financial institutions in the world had lost half of their value. The economic downturn had caused many other businesses in various industries to either go bankrupt or seek financial assistance. 

What is a Crash?

A crash is a significant drop in the total value of a market, almost undoubtedly attributable to the popping of a bubble, creating a situation wherein most investors are trying to flee the market at the same time and consequently incurring massive losses. Attempting to avoid more losses, investors during a stock market crash often resort to panic selling, hoping to unload their declining stocks onto other investors. This panic selling contributes to the declining market, bringing about the eventual crash that affects all the market participants as well as seemingly unrelated aspects of global finance. Typically crashes in the stock market have been followed by a depression.