The first possibility allowed for a bubble peak anywhere between 2004 and 2008 with the middle of that range appearing most probable. The second possibility allows for the bubble peak anywhere between 2010 and 2014 with the middle of that range also appearing most probable.
Which gets me to the point of this post. For the most part, the events that I'm timing off of have no specific resolution dates and are often multiple events occurring in various countries. For example, I've discussed on several occasions the destruction of Moscow in 1571 by the Crimean Tatars and there were many similar events that same year and the year after. There is one exception, though. One of the overlays on the second timeline has the Holland Tulip Mania corresponding to the peak of the 1929 bubble, and the South Sea Bubble corresponding to the peak of this bubble.
Accounts give various dates as to exactly when these 2 bubbles peaked but to the best of my knowledge they peaked almost exactly 83.5 years apart within perhaps a couple days. 83.5 years from the peak of the 1929 stock market bubble is tomorrow.
It's always been my thought that the 1929 bubble peaked a month later than it should have ideally. I won't go into all the reasons but that was part of my thinking as to why this bubble would peak in early February and to some extent it has, as the stock market indices have made little or no progress since then on average. Another part of my thinking had been that a bubble in an oddball item like tulip futures or South Sea shares is less tethered to earth than the Bernanke Bubble, which basically runs through everything imaginable that is part of the US economy. But I've found time and again that it's more often better to let history do my thinking for me rather than to look for reasons why history is "different this time".
From August 1, 2012 post:
"At the top of every bubble at the end of every age it seems to me that humans come up with some silly idea as to how a society can be organized or what it can deliver, which is completely unrealistic at that time and place.
One of the best examples I can think of is the South Sea Bubble. There was a time when I understood in great detail what that idea was, and my best recollection now is that the idea was to extract goods from the 4 corners of the earth and make those goods available to the public. In 1720, while enough technology existed to imagine that fantasy, it was unrealistic. Yet, almost 300 years later that has been realized and we can walk into a Wal-Mart and buy goods from all over the world or order things on the Internet from companies all over the world and receive those goods in 2 days, which I think is some version and realization of what the South Sea Bubble fantasy was about. At least, that was my thought as I studied it in detail. As Mackay described, there were many concepts and many frauds put forth besides just the South Sea Company."
This is why I think the news I posted a couple weeks back from Wal-Mart is so very critical. I've noted from the news that Wal-Mart executives were very optimistic about February sales going into the month, then sales unexpectedly worsened. The timelines of history tell us that is the likely marker to expect if the bursting of the South Sea Bubble will indeed correlate in theme and in time to the bursting of the Bernanke Bubble.
“In case you haven’t seen a sales report these days, February MTD sales are a total disaster,” Jerry Murray, Wal- Mart’s vice president of finance and logistics, said in a Feb. 12 e-mail to other executives, referring to month-to-date sales. “The worst start to a month I have seen in my ~7 years with the company.”
The world’s largest retailer’s struggles come after executives expected a strong start to February because of the Super Bowl, milder weather and paycheck cycles, according to the minutes of a Feb. 1 officers meeting Bloomberg obtained.