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Investing28 Sept 20269 min read

The everything bubble: why I think it pops, and a plan for when it does

Shares, property and debt are all too expensive at once, I think. The numbers, the prophets’ track record and a crash plan that works even if I’m wrong.

What I mean by everything bubble#

I think we’re in an everything bubble. Shares, property, debt: all priced as if nothing could ever go wrong. When everybody agrees that nothing can go wrong, I start looking for the exit.

That’s my opinion, not a forecast. I don’t have a date. Neither do the two people I follow on this, Michael Burry and Robert Kiyosaki, and their track record proves it.

The bubble is only part of what worries me. I think several big shifts are arriving together: expensive markets, industry leaving, debt and interest, ageing and AI. That whole argument is in Own your future.

An opinion without numbers is just a mood. So here are the numbers. One gap: for property I found no single global figure I trust, so that part stays opinion.

The numbers, before anyone calls me a doomer#

Guess first

MeasureLatest valueFor comparison
Shiller CAPE, S&P 50041.48 on 25 September 2026Average 17.42, September 1929: 32.56, December 1999: 44.19
US share of the MSCI World72.14% on 31 August 202623 countries in the index
Ten largest companies in the MSCI World26.61% on 31 August 20261,280 companies in the index
Global debt$348 trillion at the end of 2025About 308% of world GDP
US margin debt$1.45 trillion in August 2026$1.06 trillion in August 2025

Quick translation. The CAPE takes the price of the S&P 500 and divides it by its average inflation-adjusted earnings of the past ten years. At 41.48, US shares cost more than twice their long-run average. More than before the crash of 1929, too. The record is 44.19, set in December 1999.

Then there’s concentration. A “world” fund on the MSCI World is 72% one country, and ten companies carry more than a quarter of it. Some world.

Now debt. The Institute of International Finance counted $348 trillion at the end of 2025, nearly $29 trillion more than a year earlier. Its September 2026 report puts the total above $365 trillion. The part that speaks against me: measured against GDP, the ratio has fallen five years in a row. Private debt shrank relative to the economy. Government debt kept climbing. Of course it did. Spending other people’s money is the one thing governments are reliably good at.

And margin debt, which is money borrowed to buy shares. In the US it grew by about 37% in twelve months.

The prophets, fact-checked#

You can look up their track record in one minute. So I did it before you do.

Michael Burry#

Burry ran the hedge fund Scion Capital. From May 2005 he bought credit default swaps on subprime mortgage bonds. Think of it as insurance that pays when the bonds fail. The crisis came in 2007. According to Michael Lewis, the fund returned 489.34% after fees between November 2000 and June 2008. He was two years early. And right.

What came after is less of a movie. It’s all documented in his posts and in the filings of his second firm, Scion Asset Management:

  • 31 January 2023: he posted one word, “Sell.” On 30 March 2023 he posted that he’d been wrong to say so. The CAPE was 28.34 in January 2023. It’s 41.48 now.
  • 30 June 2023: the filing shows put options on 2 million shares each of the two big ETFs on the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100, reported at $1.63 billion. That’s the value of the underlying shares, not what he paid. One quarter later the position was gone.
  • 30 September 2025: put options on 5 million Palantir shares and 1 million Nvidia shares, reported at $1.10 billion, about 80% of the filing.

In October 2025 he wrote to his investors that his estimate of value had not been in sync with the markets for some time. The firm’s registration ended on 10 November 2025. These days he writes a newsletter. Does his bet against AI shares pay off? Nobody knows yet.

Robert Kiyosaki#

Guess first

The author of Rich Dad Poor Dad has been warning of the biggest crash in history for more than twenty years. His book Rich Dad’s Prophecy came out in 2002. That’s a lot of “any day now”. The recent scorecard:

  • In February 2023 he declared that the crash was here. The S&P 500 ended the year up 24%.
  • In February 2024 he wrote that stock and bond markets were about to crash. The index rose 23% that year.
  • Then he named February 2025. And US shares really did fall that spring: the CAPE dropped from 37.19 in February to 32.63 in April. By July it was back at 37.48.
  • In April 2026 he said the everything bubble was bursting.

He tells his followers to buy gold, silver and bitcoin. This site doesn’t. I share his worry about debt, not his shopping list.

A high CAPE is not a crash date#

Being early looks exactly like being wrong. Sometimes for years.

On 5 December 1996, Alan Greenspan, then head of the US central bank, asked in a speech whether “irrational exuberance” had pushed up asset values. The CAPE was 27.72 that month. The peak came three years later, at 44.19. So the head of the central bank was early by three years. But sure, the guy on YouTube has the exact date.

Vanguard tested more than a dozen signals on US data from 1926 to 2011. Valuation was the best of the bunch, and even it explained only about 40% of the variation in real returns over the following ten years. For short periods? Useless, all of them.

So a high CAPE has meant lower returns over the next decade, on average. It has never handed anyone a date.

What a crash actually did to a saver#

The MSCI World lost 57.46% between 31 October 2007 and 9 March 2009, in US dollars with dividends reinvested. It first closed above its old peak on 10 April 2013. Almost five and a half years of staring at red numbers. Most people don’t last five weeks.

Guess first

Why the difference? The plan kept buying in the cheap months too. Boring beats brave. Historical returns are not promises, and in euros the numbers look different. The pattern is what matters.

The crash plan#

  1. Emergency fund. Three to six months of expenses in cash, as in Fix the leaks.
  2. No leverage. No shares on credit, no margin account. None.
  3. The five-year rule. Money you need within five years has no business being in shares.
  4. A safe part. If you live from your portfolio, or will soon, keep some years of living costs outside shares.
  5. Spread wider. Beyond one country and beyond the ten largest companies. The options are in MSCI World vs FTSE All-World.
  6. Lump sums in steps. Vanguard found that investing at once beat a three-month phase-in 68% of the time, measured after one year with MSCI World data for 1976 to 2022. So steps cost return on average. I’d take them anyway if they keep you from selling in a panic.
  7. A written rule for minus 30%. Written, because in a crash your brain is not your friend. The template is in Don’t break it.
  8. Income you control. A business of your own earns money when the portfolio doesn’t. Start at Build.

Want to see what a crash in the first years does to your withdrawals? Test it.

If your business is past the hobby stage, its structure is part of your crash plan too.

What if I’m wrong?#

Then the bubble keeps inflating for years and I look like the prophets above, minus the book sales. That’s why the plan has to be cheap.

That’s the price of the insurance, and I can live with it. The expensive version is staying out of the market until the crash comes: from 1996 that would have meant three years of waiting.

And the savings plan that keeps running? Give it your own numbers.

$ compound --monthly 300
€
years
%

Open the full check

This article is education, not investment advice. It contains my opinion, no forecast and no product tips.

Sources#

Education, not advice. I don’t know your situation, and past returns promise nothing. Check my numbers, then make your own call. You’re a grown-up.

// keep going

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