An undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is: Bubbles and gullibility
@inproceedings{Odlyzko2020AnUO,
title={An undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is: Bubbles and gullibility},
author={Andrew M. Odlyzko},
year={2020},
url={https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:210116130}
}One of the most famous anecdotes in finance is of a promoter in the 1720 South Sea Bubble who lured investors into putting money into “an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is.” This tale is apocryphal, but it is only a slight embellishment of some documented cases. Most were slightly less preposterous than the anecdotal one, when considered in the context of the time, but they all reflect the high level of credulity displayed by the investors of 1720. However, it is…
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