The tech bubble that never burst
The Florida Land Boom of the 1920s was a bubble:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_land_boom_of_the_1920s" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_land_boom_of_the_1920s</a><p>But after 1935, Florida took off and grew like crazy. Even if you bought at the peak of the bubble, by the 1940s you had still gained some value.<p>The USA stock market went through one of histories greatest bubbles from 1927 to 1929. Afterwards, it took the stock market 24 years to recover. But by the mid 1950s, the stock market was rising to new heights.<p>The DotCom boom was clearly a bubble in 1999, but eventually many of the ideas became far more valuable than the heights of 2000.<p>If the bubbles form because investors are looking too far forward into the future, eventually the future does arrive, and then you see a period of sustained growth. That is exactly what happened in Florida, with the bubble in the 1920s, and sustained growth beginning 15 years later, at the end of the 1930s, and lasting for several decades.<p>My point is, if you wait long enough, the economy will often grow beyond even stupidly famous disasters. To be sure, you can probably find better investments. Buying into the stock market in 1929 and then waiting 24 years to get back to that level is not great for growing your wealth. But given time, many assets do grow beyond even the bubbles.