One of the reasons I'm behind on economics, and why I'm still continually wary of it, is exactly because of the coupling between human perception and economic conditions. I say "coupling", but the disconnect is important as well. Physics is so much more appealing to me than trying to understand anything to do with human behavior.

People will tell you that the high-frequency trading automation is actually a layer of insulation between herd-mentality-driven sell offs (and buy ups too, I guess?). In a perfect world, with no bad actors looking to game the system, that might be true, but it was the lack of a perfect world that drove us to implement the high-frequency stuff in the first place.

We can't save us from ourselves. Like you, I'm obviously convinced that the market is cyclical, but I've been worried about a crash for about four or five years. If I'm right, and we're three-ish years overdue for a downturn, I'm probably not gonna wanna say "I told you so" when the rally ends.

There's a grad-student-run pub on campus. One night I'm out in the beer garden with my classmates, few drinks in, and a couple of young businessmen sit down, ask us a few questions, and offer us six figure jobs at Merrill Lynch to do quant shit. We laughed, thanked them, and left. It's not that I think all business and economic-sector jobs are evil, and I'm better than them. OK, no, sometimes that's part of it, but it's more about the fact that I have no interest in that sort of work. I would lose a major sense of purpose. I'm supposed to do science.