Dogecoin Symbolizes the Conundrum Facing Investors
As former Citigroup CEO Chuck Prince infamously said, as long as the music is playing, you have to keep dancing.
The Dogecoin dog is still dancing.
Photographer: Yuriko Nakao/Getty Images
I’ve been either investing or writing about investing for 22 years, and I’ve seen a lot of weird stuff, but nothing as weird as Dogecoin, the lighthearted dog-themed cryptocurrency that was created as a joke. It’s now valued at more than $50 billion, exceeding Ford Motor Co. and many other companies with extensive histories. It’s not the first worthless financial instrument that I’ve seen soar to great heights—it happened to dot-com stocks at the start of my career—but the first one intentionally designed to be worthless. Elon Musk thinks this is funny. I don’t find the humor in it.
These are strange times. Stock market operators who have been around for a few cycles know the sentiment implications of something like Dogecoin: time to grab the canned goods and head for the bunker. As a professional investor, common sense dictates that you should be hedging or de-risking, but there seems to be no end to fiscal and monetary stimulus. As former Citigroup Inc. Chief Executive Officer Chuck Prince infamously said in 2007 right before the subprime mortgage bubble burst and caused a financial crisis, the music is still playing, so you have to keep dancing.