In 1929 if the shoeshine guy was giving you stock tips, it signaled a very different level of market euphoria than today when your gym trainer is talking about stocks.
Also, today we live in a world where there's just so much more accessibility to information. Only about 1.3% of the planet has ever owned Bitcoin. About 13% of Americans have ever owned Bitcoin but 90% of Americans surveyed have heard of Bitcoin.
I don't mean this to be about Bitcoin, only trying to point out the massive gap between something that is relatively niche, and the number of news articles/stories, discussion, etc about it.
>With one study suggesting ~25 million cryptocurrency traders outside the USA & Europe, it seems quite likely there are over 100 million owners of bitcoins.
>If true, it means about 1.3% of the world's population owns bitcoin.
I've seen a few other sources make a similar estimate using different methodologies.
>In fact, only approximately 10 percent of American households held stock investments and speculated in the market; yet nearly a third would lose their lifelong savings and jobs in the ensuing depression.
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/atd-hostos-ushistory/chapt...
Yet, this poll seems to indicate that around 55% of Americans now hold stocks.
>Thus far in 2020, Gallup finds 55% of Americans reporting that they own stock, based on polls conducted in March and April. This is identical to the average 55% recorded in 2019 and similar to the average of 54% Gallup has measured since 2010.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/266807/percentage-americans-own...
So if slightly more than one out of every two people you meet owns stocks, I would assume you're bound to run into a lot of people talking about stocks.