Businessweek is out with a cover warning investors to “Beware the Bubble” and teaching you how to “survive” the year ahead, as if investing has suddenly turned into some kind of apocalyptic endurance test.
This is a real magazine. With real writers. Publishing real fear.
It’s also worth remembering that Businessweek has been part of Bloomberg since 2009. That doesn’t change the most important detail here, which is that these stories are written by journalists.
And journalists play a very specific role in markets.
Around here, when people start screaming “bubble,” we don’t argue. We count. We look at participation. We measure trends. We check confirmations. We actually do the work.
They want this to be 1999. They need it to be 1999.
But markets don’t care what anyone needs. They care about evidence.
So let’s take a look at what Businessweek is worried about, what the data actually says, and why yelling “bubble” usually tells you a lot more about the speaker than it does about the market.
Businessweek Thinks It’s a Bubble
This is the magazine cover I woke up to late last week.
I genuinely had to double check to see if this was AI generated or if someone was playing a goof on me.
It’s real. A real cover, from a real financial publication, written by real journalists.
This is actually happening:
I especially appreciate the pin at the bottom of the bubble, just to really drive home how “easy” it is to pop. Subtle was clearly not the goal.
Creative, though. The best fear-based covers usually are. Credit where it is due.
If You Ain’t Fading, You Ain’t Trading
“Don’t trade, just fade” is how I learned it.
You do not need to be the smartest person in the market. You just need to be slightly less stupid than everyone else.
Rather than trying to be the best trader or the best investor, it’s often far more effective to identify who the worst investors are and then just do the opposite of what they are doing.
Journalists tend to sit near the top of that list. Not because they’re bad at their jobs, but because they are very good at them.
They are storytellers. They are communicators. They are not traders.
That distinction matters.
This isn’t a knock on journalists or the journalism community. Quite the opposite. We appreciate the work they do and the effort it takes to produce these stories.
But when journalists start telling you markets are in a bubble, history suggests that’s usually information, not a warning.
Déjà Vu All Over Again
The last time I wrote about a magazine cover like this was back in November.
The Economist ran one showing a skier upside down in the snow, skis turned into red downward arrows. The headline was “How Markets Could Topple the Economy.”
This wasn’t during a market peak. It wasn’t during a crash.
It was in the middle of a raging bull market.
Yet there they were, warning that markets were about to topple the economy. True story.
Here’s what actually happened next:
In less than two months, the equally weighted S&P 500 gained about 5.5%. Mid caps are up nearly 8%. Small caps rallied into double digits.
Both the Dow Jones Select Micro-Cap Index and the Dow Jones Transportation Average rose more than 12% over that same stretch.
Markets did not topple the economy. They did the exact opposite.
Stocks ripped even higher, delivering historic returns directly in the face of that gloom and doom narrative.
I hope you’re paying attention.
This is how it works. This is why we do this. We don’t react to headlines. We measure what’s happening.
And now Businessweek is here to tell you we’re in a bubble?
We have the data. This is not a bubble.
Honestly, I wish it were. I love bubbles. Real bubbles are incredible environments for building wealth.
They’re loud. They’re obvious. They come with excess, speculation, and widespread participation at the extremes.
What we’ve lived through instead is three major corrections or bear markets in a single decade, and we’ve only halfway through it as we begin 2026.
So I’ll ask the obvious question.
How many more crashes, corrections, and resets do people need before they admit this is not a bubble at all?
Because if you keep calling every bull market a bubble, eventually you stop seeing what’s actually right in front of you.
Stay sharp,
JC Parets, CMT
Founder, TrendLabs