Because our markets are no longer efficient at allocating capital. These companies are too large, they don't compete. They can buy a company for half a billion and write it off a few months later, at the whim of someone deranged by hype. How many businesses in competitive markets can afford to do that?

And the reason is all of you dumping cash into the market no matter what because John Bogle said so half a century ago.

I disagree - yes, some companies are overvalued, but it isn't because of index investors.

> this looks too close to money laundering, just like buying art

Yep. Concur with this conclusion. It is getting really ridiculous now. No way most of these companies are at the valuation they are in.

Or the investors are just plain stupid.

I hear you, and mostly share the point of view, but that’s what people were saying about the instagram valuation too.

Survivorship bias, I think. Our go to is the big, high profile success. But look at the amount of money Zuck has wasted on the Metaverse. He’s most definitely fallible.

What's the dollar-per-user figure between these two examples?

Instagram only had approx 10mn users when acquired. That was a long time ago though, and Facebook was at a very different stage in its lifecycle.

Because we are at a historic moment where governments are propping up fiat money using whatever they could.

All these crazy valuations is just a manifestation.

> I’m wondering why these companies are so hyped and valued at these astronomical levels.

That’s all VCs do! They hype it to recover their money and some more :-)

It's all very speculative and line keeps going up forever

The crypto bros switched over to AI.