> It was absolutely typical of any bubble throughout history --
> everyone knows a price collapse will spell doom, some
> people also understand that a price collapse is inevitable, but
> no one can profit from it or stop it before the end arrives.
I think that there's a whole distribution of abilities here, as you note in your smart vs. dumb money classification. I mean, for many, a big part of the risk was indeed not knowing *whether* prices would collapse in the first place, let alone when and how and how much, etc.
Even *that* risk was hidden to them, without being hidden to others. For JP Morgan or Goldman Sachs, things were different. What was hidden for them was really really hidden.