Sleepy Stock Market

THE BEANIE BABY BUBBLE: HOW A $5 TOY CREATED KILLERS Ty Warner Made $700M. His Collectors Lost Everything. In 1998, one man's pre-tax income from a children's toy exceeded the combined revenue of Mattel and Hasbro — and people were killing for it. Ty Warner launched Beanie Babies in 1994 at just $5 each, then engineered artificial scarcity through 'retirements' that turned plush to...

By inauguration day 1933, unemployment had hit 25% and the money supply had collapsed 30% — Hoover's three years of 'natural recovery' had failed completely. FDR won the 1932 election 57% to 39%, launched six major federal agencies in 100 days, and the Depression finally ended in 1941. But here's the twist: Hoover spent decades blaming Federal Reserve policy for the crash, and in 2...

On August 14, 2001, Kenneth Lay told analysts he 'never felt better about the company' — the same day Jeffrey Skilling quietly resigned and sold $33 million in stock. Three and a half months later, Enron filed the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history, collapsing from $100 billion in revenue to 26 cents a share. Skilling served 12 years of a 24-year sentence. Lay was convicted on all counts b...

Michael Burry personally earned $100 million during the 2008 financial collapse — while his own investors were sending him lawsuit threats. He shorted the subprime mortgage market starting in 2005, purchasing credit default swaps directly from Goldman Sachs, and refused to unwind the trade for nearly two years as it haemorrhaged paper losses. When the crash hit, his remaining investors collected $...

In 1928, the president of National City Bank publicly mocked Felix Somary in front of Berlin's top financiers — then the Dow collapsed 89% by 1932. Somary had predicted the American crash as early as September 1926, warned clients out of Austrian bonds before WWI erupted in July 1914, and told London's Royal Institute of International Affairs in 1930 that the Depression would produce Hitle...

Bill Hwang lost $20 billion in two days — without a single public filing revealing his true exposure. Using total return swaps, Hwang's Archegos Capital secretly held tens of billions in leveraged positions, and when Credit Suisse issued $2.8 billion in margin calls on March 25, 2021, the entire structure collapsed overnight. Goldman Sachs sold $10 billion in stocks in a single day, ViacomCBS...

Fall asleep to the stories of Europe’s earliest financial disasters — the original crashes and speculative bubbles that swept through Holland, France and Britain between 1600 and 1720.From Tulip Mania in the Dutch Republic, to John Law’s Mississippi Scheme in France, to the South Sea Bubble in London, this episode follows the first great experiments in paper wealth, credit and stock markets. Tulip...

Fall asleep to the story of how America turned speculation into a national pastime in the Roaring Twenties — long before the crash of 1929.After the Florida land boom, the frenzy moved to Wall Street. Ordinary Americans opened brokerage accounts for the first time. Shoe-shine boys gave stock tips. Pool operators and investment trusts quietly pushed prices higher. Cheap credit, margin loans and a b...

Fall asleep to the wild story of the Florida Land Boom of the 1920s — America’s first great property bubble, and a dress rehearsal for the crashes that came later. In the space of a few years, swampland and sandbars were flipped for fortunes as Americans dreamed of a tropical paradise. Speculators bought lots they had never seen. Trains arrived overloaded with new buyers. Charles Ponzi himself tur...

Fall asleep to the extraordinary story of the South Sea Bubble of 1720 — the financial catastrophe that shook Britain to its foundations, wiped out thousands of investors, and humbled even the greatest mind in history. The South Sea Company made an audacious promise: it would take on Britain's entire national debt in exchange for a monopoly on trade. Shares went into a frenzy. Noblemen, clergy...

Fall asleep to the extraordinary story of the Great British Bicycle Bubble of the 1890s — the moment Victorian Britain went completely mad for cycling stocks, and one of the most forgotten financial manias in history. In the mid-1890s, the bicycle was the internet of its day. Hundreds of companies floated on the London Stock Exchange almost overnight. Fortunes were made, promoters grew fabulously...

For decades, Jeremy Grantham warned that markets were dangerously overvalued. In 2000, he called the dot-com crash. In 2007, he called the housing collapse. In 2021, he warned of the everything bubble. Almost nobody listened — until it was too late. This is the story of how a boy from a Yorkshire mining town became the most respected — and most ignored — voice on Wall Street. In this episode: - Gr...