Peter Atwater on the current financial bubble and coming recrimination phase

Major market tops are a process, not a single event. Markets peak on exhaustion; everyone must be in. Meanwhile, in the background, the weakest leave the party first. 

I don’t pretend to know when the market will top – or if it already has for that matter – but what is already clear is what is ahead: "The Age of Screwtiny." 

By “screwtiny” I don’t mean the plain-vanilla kind of investigation and inspection that naturally arises as confidence falls. That is a given. What is coming will be different. Think scrutiny but with an angry attitude intent on finding those responsible and then nailing them to the wall. 

You see, what is ahead will be the third major betrayal in twenty years. After the dot.com debacle and the housing crisis, the crowd won’t take kindly to yet another bubble burst. 

And today’s bubble is different. This time it isn’t tech stocks or real estate; its illusion. Deception has transcended the financial markets. It’s cultural and it is everywhere. From “influencers” on social media to blitzscaled business start-ups, the past decade has been a Gold Rush in fakery.

~ Peter Atwater, "The Coming Age of Srewtiny," LinkedIn, September 22, 2020