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Trading Lessons

Are We In A Bubble?

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Written by Timothy Sykes Reviewed by Jack Kellogg Fact-checked by Ellis Hobbs
Updated 11/21/2025 6 min read
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CNBC analysts are debating it.

Twitter threads are dissecting it.

Portfolio managers are losing sleep over it.

One question is dominating financial news right now:

“Are we in a bubble?”

The recent price action is adding fuel to the story:

Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) down 35% from its highs…

Robinhood (NASDAQ: HOOD) down 33%…

Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN) down 46%…

Palantir (NASDAQ: PLTR) down 25%…

Bitcoin (BTC) down 30%…

The talking heads are calling it:

The AI bubble is bursting.

Growth stocks are crashing.

The party’s over.

So what’s my answer?

Are we REALLY in a bubble?

I Don’t Care If We’re In A Bubble

Truthfully…

I don’t care if we’re in a bubble. 

While long-term investors watch their portfolios bleed, I’m doing just fine.

My trading style doesn’t rely on the direction of the major indexes.

A major market crash would actually be good for my strategy.

When the big names tank, volatility explodes.

Short sellers pile in. Fear spreads like a virus.

Which creates the EXACT conditions where small caps can go parabolic.

When blue-chip growth stocks tank, traditional traders and investors lose billions.

But for a small-cap trader looking for explosive intraday moves?

It doesn’t matter at all.

I only care about stocks that can spike 100%, 200%, or even 300% in a single session.

The types of moves these mega-caps can’t even dream of…

Olema Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: OLMA)

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OLMA exploded 197% in premarket trading on November 18.

From around $6 to over $17 in a few hours.

The catalyst? Competitor Roche announced positive Phase III trial results for a rival breast cancer drug.

The market interpreted the news as validation for the entire drug class.

OLMA went vertical.

Press release + Strong chart = The conditions for a parabolic move.

(A move you would NEVER find in mega-cap tech stocks…)

Cypherpunk Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ: CYPH)

CYPH rebranded from a biotech to a digital asset treasury company on November 13.

From around $1.50 in mid-August to over $9 by mid-November.

A 500%+ move in three months.

Low float. High short interest. A crypto pivot during volatile market conditions.

While everyone panicked about Bitcoin dropping 30%, CYPH was actually the best crypto play in the market.

More Breaking News

Safe & Green Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ: SGBX)

From under $2 on November 13 to over $7 by November 20.

A 250%+ spike in one week.

The company pivoted from modular home construction to an integrated energy strategy.

It regained Nasdaq compliance. Management took compensation in stock. Retail traders piled in on the low float.

While Robinhood dropped 33% from its highs and Coinbase fell 46%…

SGBX tripled.*

What Most Traders Are Missing

The people worrying about the AI bubble are stuck in an outdated mindset.

Buy blue chips. Hold for years. Hope the indexes go up.

That strategy requires everything to cooperate.

And it takes forever to make meaningful gains.

Compare that to trading small-caps.

When the market tanks, short sellers flood into small-caps. Low-float stocks get hammered down.

Then one catalyst can trigger a face-ripping squeeze.

OLMA up 197% in premarket.

CYPH up 500%+ in three months.

SGBX up 250%+ in one week.

These types of moves ONLY happen in the small-cap niche.

You just have to know where to look.

A Crash Would Be A Good Thing

Let the big names keep falling…

A real market crash would be perfect for my patterns.

More volatility. More short sellers. More panic.

More opportunities for low-float runners to squeeze hundreds of percent higher.

While long-term investors watch their accounts shrink, I’ll be finding setups, cutting losses quickly, and taking quick gains.

That’s the advantage of trading small-caps and micro-caps.

You’re trading individual setups that have nothing to do with the “bubble.”

What Really Matters

The next time someone tells you the sky is falling because Coinbase dropped 46% or Robinhood fell 33%:

Ask them if they caught OLMA spiking 197% in a morning…

Or if they rode CYPH from $1.50 to $9…

Or if they saw SGBX explode from $2 to $7 in one week…

Spoiler Alert: They didn’t.

They were too busy staring at the big names. Too focused on the indexes. Too distracted by the bubble narrative Wall Street wants them to follow.

All while the BEST opportunities live in the stocks that Wall Street completely ignores.

Cheers,

Tim

 

 

*Past performance does not indicate future results

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Timothy Sykes

Tim Sykes is a penny stock trader and teacher who became a self-made millionaire by the age of 22 by trading $12,415 of bar mitzvah money. After becoming disenchanted with the hedge fund world, he established the Tim Sykes Trading Challenge to teach aspiring traders how to follow his trading strategies. He’s been featured in a variety of media outlets including CNN, Larry King, Steve Harvey, Forbes, Men’s Journal, and more. He’s also an active philanthropist and environmental activist, a co-founder of Karmagawa, and has donated millions of dollars to charity.
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* Results are not typical and will vary from person to person. Making money trading stocks takes time, dedication, and hard work. There are inherent risks involved with investing in the stock market, including the loss of your investment. Past performance in the market is not indicative of future results. Any investment is at your own risk. See Terms of Service here

The available research on day trading suggests that most active traders lose money. Fees and overtrading are major contributors to these losses.

A 2000 study called “Trading is Hazardous to Your Wealth: The Common Stock Investment Performance of Individual Investors” evaluated 66,465 U.S. households that held stocks from 1991 to 1996. The households that traded most averaged an 11.4% annual return during a period where the overall market gained 17.9%. These lower returns were attributed to overconfidence.

A 2014 paper (revised 2019) titled “Learning Fast or Slow?” analyzed the complete transaction history of the Taiwan Stock Exchange between 1992 and 2006. It looked at the ongoing performance of day traders in this sample, and found that 97% of day traders can expect to lose money from trading, and more than 90% of all day trading volume can be traced to investors who predictably lose money. Additionally, it tied the behavior of gamblers and drivers who get more speeding tickets to overtrading, and cited studies showing that legalized gambling has an inverse effect on trading volume.

A 2019 research study (revised 2020) called “Day Trading for a Living?” observed 19,646 Brazilian futures contract traders who started day trading from 2013 to 2015, and recorded two years of their trading activity. The study authors found that 97% of traders with more than 300 days actively trading lost money, and only 1.1% earned more than the Brazilian minimum wage ($16 USD per day). They hypothesized that the greater returns shown in previous studies did not differentiate between frequent day traders and those who traded rarely, and that more frequent trading activity decreases the chance of profitability.

These studies show the wide variance of the available data on day trading profitability. One thing that seems clear from the research is that most day traders lose money .

Millionaire Media 66 W Flagler St. Ste. 900 Miami, FL 33130 United States (888) 878-3621 This is for information purposes only as Millionaire Media LLC nor Timothy Sykes is registered as a securities broker-dealer or an investment adviser. No information herein is intended as securities brokerage, investment, tax, accounting or legal advice, as an offer or solicitation of an offer to sell or buy, or as an endorsement, recommendation or sponsorship of any company, security or fund. Millionaire Media LLC and Timothy Sykes cannot and does not assess, verify or guarantee the adequacy, accuracy or completeness of any information, the suitability or profitability of any particular investment, or the potential value of any investment or informational source. The reader bears responsibility for his/her own investment research and decisions, should seek the advice of a qualified securities professional before making any investment, and investigate and fully understand any and all risks before investing. Millionaire Media LLC and Timothy Sykes in no way warrants the solvency, financial condition, or investment advisability of any of the securities mentioned in communications or websites. In addition, Millionaire Media LLC and Timothy Sykes accepts no liability whatsoever for any direct or consequential loss arising from any use of this information. This information is not intended to be used as the sole basis of any investment decision, nor should it be construed as advice designed to meet the investment needs of any particular investor. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future returns.

Citations for Disclaimer

Barber, Brad M. and Odean, Terrance, Trading is Hazardous to Your Wealth: The Common Stock Investment Performance of Individual Investors. Available at SSRN: “Day Trading for a Living?”

Barber, Brad M. and Lee, Yi-Tsung and Liu, Yu-Jane and Odean, Terrance and Zhang, Ke, Learning Fast or Slow? (May 28, 2019). Forthcoming: Review of Asset Pricing Studies, Available at SSRN: “https://ssrn.com/abstract=2535636”

Chague, Fernando and De-Losso, Rodrigo and Giovannetti, Bruno, Day Trading for a Living? (June 11, 2020). Available at SSRN: “https://ssrn.com/abstract=3423101”