The Strange Psychology of Market Crashes I’ve always been fascinated by how markets, these vast, seemingly rational machines built on numbers, data, and cold calculation, can suddenly behave like a panicked crowd trampling itself at the exit of a burning theater. One day everything is euphoric, valuations are “justified by a new paradigm,” and then—almost overnight—fear takes over and trillions evaporate. What’s truly strange isn’t the crash itself. It’s the psychology behind it. After watching multiple cycles, studying history, and reflecting on human behavior, I’ve come to see market crashes not as financial anomalies, but as profound revelations of how our minds actually work under pressure. The Euphoria Phase: When Greed Feels Like Genius It usually starts innocently enough. Prices rise steadily. Stories of overnight millionaires spread. Media headlines shift from cautious to celebratory. I remember the dot-com era narratives, the housing boom talk in the mid-2000s, and the mem...