ShmoopTube
Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.
Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos
Education Videos 108 videos
What is After Hours Trading/Extended Trading? After hours trading describes any trades made after the market closes or before the market opens. Bec...
What is the Dow Jones Industrial Average? The Dow Jones Industrial Average is usually just called the Dow. It’s an average of 30 of the most well...
What do you need to retire? Retirement - think: 401k, pension fund, IRA, roth IRA, etc. All of these savings socked away while you worked hard are...
Finance: What is the Greater Fool Theory? 11 Views
Share It!
Description:
The Greater Fool Theory posits that there is always a greater fool out there to buy an item at a higher price... until there isn't.
- Social Studies / Finance
- Finance / Financial Responsibility
- College and Career / Personal Finance
- Life Skills / Personal Finance
- Finance / Finance Definitions
- Life Skills / Finance Definitions
- Finance / Personal Finance
- Courses / Finance Concepts
- Subjects / Finance and Economics
- Finance and Economics / Terms and Concepts
- Terms and Concepts / Ethics/Morals
- Terms and Concepts / Banking
- Terms and Concepts / Bonds
- Terms and Concepts / Econ
- Terms and Concepts / Education
- Terms and Concepts / Index Funds
- Terms and Concepts / Investing
- Terms and Concepts / Regulations
- Terms and Concepts / Tax
- Terms and Concepts / Tech
- Terms and Concepts / Trading
Transcript
- 00:00
Finance a la shmoop what is the greater fool theory? Oh shiny rocks, tulips,
- 00:09
Bitcoin.....The basic idea in the greater fool theory is
- 00:14
that you're a fool I'm a fool were all fools in the mosh pit [Man standing in a moshpit]
- 00:19
right here and we've all done and will continue to do stupid things like paying
- 00:25
$7,000 for a tulip one that just um you know sits there it doesn't speak it
Full Transcript
- 00:31
doesn't divine the future just sits there nor does it guarantee lifetime you [Man eating a tulip]
- 00:37
know sexual prowess if you eat it it doesn't even reproduce in a particularly
- 00:41
virile manner, it's just a tulip well a short term store of wealth that one fool paid
- 00:47
7 grand for making the big bet that there's another fool even more motley
- 00:52
foolish who will pay 8 grand and in Holland a few hundred years ago there
- 00:56
was one clapping wooden shoe wearing blond paid 9 grand for this tulip and [Man carrying tulip]
- 01:02
then another even greater fool paid 10 grand and then another fool paid 11
- 01:05
grand and so on until this most foolish of all tulips sold for $26,000 then what
- 01:12
there another fool well no there wasn't then the flower stopped selling for
- 01:16
$26,000 and probably ended up selling for about 26,000 cents yeah there were
- 01:21
no more fools even greater than the ones that came before so the price plummeted [Person removes price label of tulip]
- 01:26
back to I don't know what was it 4 cents a tulip actually sold for for a normal
- 01:31
tulip back then it's about what it was intrinsically worth and well that was
- 01:34
all she wrote or germinated or whatever the greater
- 01:37
fool theory posits that there is always a greater fool out there to buy your
- 01:43
stuff at a higher and higher price until there isn't a greater fool out there
- 01:47
yeah it's sort of the game of hot potato where you benefit only by holding the [Woman and man juggling a hot potato]
- 01:50
potato usually a very short period of time before dumping its finger burning
- 01:55
love on to someone else who's foolish enough to catch it and the greatest
- 01:58
thing about the greater fool theory... Well we're a planet with lots and lots and
- 02:03
lots of fools...
Related Videos
GED Social Studies 1.1 Civics and Government
What is bankruptcy? Deadbeats who can't pay their bills declare bankruptcy. Either they borrowed too much money, or the business fell apart. They t...
What's a dividend? At will, the board of directors can pay a dividend on common stock. Usually, that payout is some percentage less than 100 of ear...
How are risk and reward related? Take more risk, expect more reward. A lottery ticket might be worth a billion dollars, but if the odds are one in...