While I agree with you, I would say that bubble bursting is more synonymous with larger disasters like the housing crash in 08 or the Dotcom bust in 2000. In my opinion what's happening with overvalued companies is more of a market correction. To me it doesn't seem like people are in panic, people are just saying things along the lines of "well yeah, they were overvalued" and they move on.

Let's see what happens first. The 2008 crash was orderly too up until Lehman Brothers went bankrupt in Sept 2008:

https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&...

Market topped in Oct 2007, and then there was a bunch of debate over whether we were or weren't in a recession through the first half of 2008. Bear Sterns went bust in March 2008, everybody was like "Well duh, they should have known it was coming", people thought it was the end of it, and the market recovered. AIG went bankrupt in Aug 2008, Lehman brothers in Sept 2008, and that's when everybody panicked. TARP passed in Q4 2008.

The dot-com bubble burst actually was pretty orderly - basically the starry-eyed buyers for tech stocks ran out, and companies couldn't get money on the public markets. Consequences were limited mostly to the people who had invested and the founders & employees of those companies. The road downward was actually more gradual than the road upward had been.

https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&...

I think what Kin is saying before in 2008 and dot-com there were fundamental reasons for a bubble to burst which had an navigate reprecussions on the economy(recession/increased unemployment).

dotcom - shell companies, with no revenue or profits. 2008 - excessive/unsustainable leverage both by corporations and individuals.

This time around multiple QE cycles resulted in decreased treasury and bond yeilds. People\funds with captial went to invest other assets classes e.g. equity markets seeking high yeilds and as a result increased the price multiples/valuations while the intrinic businesses valuation and growth remained the same.

Now people are starting to realize that multiples(what you pay for a company and what its actually worth) are too high and started taking money out of equity markets. While the fundamentals of the business has stayed the same.

Hence this bubble bursting or "significant price correction" wont have the same impact on mainstreet as the other two bubbles because the business are still sustainable but the prices weren't.

Prices are not proxy for revenue/profits/growth or value. So unless someone can give actual facts that the fundamentals of the underlying businesses are/will be impacted on a systematic basis I agree with kin.

That's like saying the housing crash would have never happened because real estate always has inherent value.

A bubble's a bubble. This isn't a simple "correction". When your stock's PE is above 1000x, it's a bubble. Overvaluation IS the definition of a bubble, not a lack of "fundamentals".

Amazon and Yahoo had revenue in 2000 and still crashed.

Instead of using an ignorant sarcasm, take a look at facts and formulate an argument:

http://etfdb.com/etfdb-category/technology-equities/

http://venturebeat.com/2016/01/18/there-are-now-229-unicorn-...

http://www.bloomberg.com/research/sectorandindustry/industri...

http://www.bloomberg.com/research/sectorandindustry/industri...

The fact is that LinkedIn isn't a "Unicorn" startup, which is kind of their point of the overuse of tech bubble.

Hm, would be fun to see a plot like Google's n-gram viewer of HN's use of the phrase "bubble burst" over time.

"apparently idioms exist"

What, only 50 pages of occurrences?

It strikes me that you could have said the same thing back in 2012 when Zynga and Groupon were cratering.

Likelier, there isn't much of a bubble at all, and companies tend to be properly valued.

The bubble has been bursting in the last few years (according to commenters) but the overall stocks/valuations were going up.

What we're seeing is a slow-mo burst. The outer balloon shell has given way and has left the inner water ball still, albeit briefly, intact. Only a matter of time before we all take a bath.

So, a bubble-bath, then?

And then they fall 40% in a single day. That's why it's called "bursting"

Have some perspective. It's been a 6 year bull market. This is hardly a correction let alone a crash. You might prove correct, but it's just a guess at this point.

But you would say the same of the period 2002-2008: A 6-year bull market followed by a... correction: https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&...

No bubble burst this time, it will be a sequence of large corrections. Too many small time investors willing to invest for low returns to crash like 2k.

Everyone is taking a hit right now, but especially companies priced on growth that have been unable to meet their numbers (LinkedIn just had a bad quarter and released lower guidance). It's a really bad time to not meet your numbers.

that would be good timing, I sold all my stocks a few months ago...