Is there another boom/bust cycle currently ongoing in something other than housing

The World is still turning and people all over it are thinking about the future, here I found some interesting finance news that are scary to say the least...

"My impression is globally there is several trillion in capital that isn't being invested. I know that in the US the housing recovery is in large part due to wealthy individuals buying houses with cash and renting them out to get better returns than they could get elsewhere. I don't recall the exact number but I think about 40% of home sales are cash purchases nowadays (far more than before the recession).

Precious metals seems like it is in a boom/bust cycle, but who knows. With all this capital floating around and such low interest rates are there things people are investing in that seems like a stereotypical boom/bust type of investment? If so, does anyone know what the repercussions could be?

As far as housing, are some housing markets heating up due to all the cash purchases and going far too high in price? Even if so, does it matter (it isn't like people who buy homes with cash will ever be unable to pay their monthly mortgage and have to foreclose). "

"IMHO the way bubbles work is people want to park their investment money in something promising. Others follow the trail, and others learn to sell the sizzle to further investors. The people on the receiving end of the money mistake incoming investment money for actual market growth; what appears to be riches generated by the business growing is actually the growth phase of a pyramid of investment, waiting for the point in this inadvertent pyramid scheme where the new money stops covering the necessary level of cash flow and the whole thing collapses.

From the IT perspective, we have the next phase of the IT bubble in "cloud computing". Instead of owning your own hardware, move your MS office, your email, your accounting systems, your phone system, your entire company software infrastructure to the "cloud". It all runs in a computer farm run by a major provider, and backups, upgrades, capacity, etc. are someone else's problem. You'll hear more and more about this until the downside hits some big players like a brick wall - imagine your company's entire computing capability goes down one day because of a careless upgrade (remember Blackberry's last year's messaging troubles? Multiply that by 100).

Companies will jump on the bandwagon because replacing their hardware in a 5-year cycle to stay current is expensive, replacing or upgrading their software to stay current is expensive. They think they'll save money, they are only signing up for a different set of problems. Meanwhile, the companies signing them up will show incredible growth (easy when you start from almost zero) and promise unrealistic growth, attract investment, and grossly overexpand on optimistic projections. "

Is there another boom/bust cycle currently ongoing in something other than housing - Straight Dope Message Board

 

Good article SM. I think Cloud Computing is the big thing now but I can tell you there are large companies who used to be hardware providers are now selling Cloud Computing while their 'think tanks' with brilliant scientists and others are working on the next generation offerings. Always will be a boom in technology, I believe.