I was 11 years old when Frampton Comes Alive! was released in 1976. I still have my original copy of the double live album, which I bought with money from my Akron Beacon Journal paper route. It was a big hit with my friends and me at Indian Trail Elementary School and played in heavy rotation during inside recess, along with albums from Kiss and Grand Funk Railroad, during fifth and sixth grades (no judging, we were 11). That record mattered to me. Not just because the music was awesome, but because it felt like something bigger than me. A crowd. A moment. A shared experience I could drop the needle onto whenever I wanted. If you've ever listened to the song "Do You Feel Like We Do," especially the live version, you know exactly what I mean. The lights go down, the crowd swells, and suddenly thousands of people are feeling the same thing at the same time. There's energy in that. When everyone around you feels confident and certain, it doesn't just feel good. It feels true. That same dynamic shows up in investing more often than we like to admit.
The markets are full of moments where a story takes hold — about a stock, a sector, a technology or a broader part of the economy. The narrative spreads not just because it's logical, but because it feels right. The dot-com boom, the housing bubble and now AI. When enough people believe the same thing, conviction becomes contagious. And once conviction becomes shared, doubt feels unnecessary. The problem is that markets don't experience feelings the way people do.
