Pop quiz. No cheating, no Googling, no asking the group chat.
There are three quotes below. All from real, credentialed, smart people. Your job is to guess when the quotes were said. I’m guessing you land every single one in the last eighteen months.
- “The world is on a slow-motion train wreck.”
- “We’re still dancing.”
- “Stocks have reached a permanently high plateau.”
Got your guesses? Good. Now let’s see how you did.
#1 was Nouriel Roubini – the economist who correctly called the 2008 crash. In December 2022 he predicted a severe recession for the year ahead. 2023 turned out to be one of the better years for stocks in recent memory.
#2 was Chuck Prince, then-CEO of Citigroup, in July 2007. He was out of a job within four months, the global financial crisis arrived within a year, and very few people were dancing.
#3 was economist Irving Fisher, October 1929 — days before the crash that made his name a punchline for the next century.
None of these people were fools. They were smart, well-informed, and completely sure of themselves — which is exactly the problem. Certainty isn’t a signal. If anything, it’s a warning label.
The next time a headline or a podcast host sounds very sure of what happens next — that’s your cue to get a little more curious, not a little less.
The reality is that nobody rings a bell at the top or the bottom. Not Roubini, not Fisher, not the guy on your neighbor’s favorite podcast, and certainly not me. We can’t time the market — but we can build a plan sturdy enough to survive both the “train wreck” headlines and the “we’re still dancing” ones.
If you’re curious about your planning, I’m here to talk through it with you.
Stay the course,
Barbara
August 2, 2026
Sources:
Roubini: https://www.aol.com/dr-doom-economist-nouriel-roubini-113934861.html
Chuck Prince: https://hbr.org/2015/12/the-overvaluation-trap
Irving Fisher: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Fisher
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