If there's one thing the markets seem to get tied up in, it's investment bubbles.

Even though the warning signs may be there, it's like watching sheep rush running to follow the lead sheep - just on the off-chance there may be a small quick profit to be made.

I guess that's the nature of the industry itself - rewards for success - but surely when it comes to investing *other* people's money, some kind of restraint is necessary?

The dotcom bubble was long known to be a bubble before it burst. Even as a non-investor I saw that - it was constantly in the media - but people were still buying into it to the end.

Now we have the situation with Google, which is valued not on it's actual earnings value, but instead on a hyped sense of expectation of what the company *might* do.

Is it simply inherent in the investments industry that any smell of any kind of profit must be aggressively chased - no matter the obvious dangers of doing so?

Yes - Adminstrator. I have another word for what you just desribed. It's called GREED. I was the biggest culprit in the dot com boom. Intellectually I knew I was buying crap but emotionally it was different. it was sort of like the same high I get in Atlantic City.

How much regulation is there in the investment industry - in the UK and USA at least?

yes I find it amazing that so many people bought into (and still are actually) the whole Google thing, that's what I call random investing

I think everything is in it's own bubble. Even if we don't see it as a bubble, then those investing in it do. They will all burst or at least force a slow leak at some time or another.

Yeah - again, up goes down and down goes up. I wonder if that's why they call it the Down Jones. Oh, wait. That's not right.