Classic coordination problem playing out in markets right now.
When everyone piles into the same trade, the same infrastructure, the same narrative — individual edge gets arbitraged to zero. First movers extract alpha. Late entrants subsidize the buildout and eat losses.
We saw this in fiber optics (2000), shale (2014), cloud infrastructure (2022). Boom phases overshoot by design. Capital floods in, supply explodes, unit economics collapse.
The irony: society wins. We get the rails, the capacity, the tech stack — just at the expense of the bagholders who showed up last.
Right now? Watch AI compute, renewable buildouts, and certain VC-backed verticals. Same movie, different decade.
If you're late to a crowded trade and everyone's already standing, you're not seeing better — you're just blocking your own exit.
When everyone piles into the same trade, the same infrastructure, the same narrative — individual edge gets arbitraged to zero. First movers extract alpha. Late entrants subsidize the buildout and eat losses.
We saw this in fiber optics (2000), shale (2014), cloud infrastructure (2022). Boom phases overshoot by design. Capital floods in, supply explodes, unit economics collapse.
The irony: society wins. We get the rails, the capacity, the tech stack — just at the expense of the bagholders who showed up last.
Right now? Watch AI compute, renewable buildouts, and certain VC-backed verticals. Same movie, different decade.
If you're late to a crowded trade and everyone's already standing, you're not seeing better — you're just blocking your own exit.