Aug 5, 2026 · 15 min · 9 segments
The bull run is roughly a year and a half old. People are getting nervous. Matt takes the temperature three ways: Fanatics Fest, the National, and the SoCo Expo. Three different reads on the same…
Now, let me set the stage a little bit.
I've seen a lot of creators when I'm surfing around Instagram talking about how it's time to be cautious.
It's time for us to start pulling back a little bit.
I know a great many of content creators and cards guys who have been consolidating from the very get-go, just moving up into those grails, using this opportunity of the bull market to be able to do that.
And the longer a bull market goes on, the more that makes absolute sense.
The most foundational reason for that is due to loss aversion in human beings.
Studies have shown that human beings fear loss twice more than they want to have gain.
And this loss aversion ratio is what keeps human beings in check.
But at the same time, if you look at markets like Pokemon, a little bit of One Piece, you might see these things as rocket ships.
So you might well ask yourself, where's the loss aversion there? In sports cards similarly, we've seen things go up on a rocket ship during COVID and then crash down to earth just as quickly in the year afterwards.
So the most critical question is really, how do we know when we should start selling? Well, the big caveat here, if I knew exactly when to buy and sell, I'd be on my own private island.
But what I'm going to go over this episode is not so much the when and the what, but more the why.
Let's boil this down to the most fundamental of values here.
If we're going to be looking at bull markets and bear markets, we're going to have to understand that these are driven by us, by human beings.
And human beings are going to be motivated by many different things.
I already touched on the loss aversion versus greed ratio.
But just as powerfully, we are herd animals.
The things that we see walking around, the opinions that we hear when we're at vendor tables.
And admittedly, those news flashes and clickbaity things that we see on social media are the things that are going to inform our decisions and going to inform a bull market stop and a bear markets begin.
So learning from each other is how we're going to be able to get a true pulse on where a market is.
Now, let me set the stage a little bit.
I've seen a lot of creators when I'm surfing around Instagram talking about how it's time to be cautious.
It's time for us to start pulling back a little bit.
I know a great many of content creators and cards guys who have been consolidating from the very get-go, just moving up into those grails, using this opportunity of the bull market to be able to do that.
And the longer a bull market goes on, the more that makes absolute sense.
The most foundational reason for that is due to loss aversion in human beings.
Studies have shown that human beings fear loss twice more than they want to have gain.
And this loss aversion ratio is what keeps human beings in check.
But at the same time, if you look at markets like Pokemon, a little bit of One Piece, you might see these things as rocket ships.
So you might well ask yourself, where's the loss aversion there? In sports cards similarly, we've seen things go up on a rocket ship during COVID and then crash down to earth just as quickly in the year afterwards.
So the most critical question is really, how do we know when we should start selling? Well, the big caveat here, if I knew exactly when to buy and sell, I'd be on my own private island.
But what I'm going to go over this episode is not so much the when and the what, but more the why.
Let's boil this down to the most fundamental of values here.
If we're going to be looking at bull markets and bear markets, we're going to have to understand that these are driven by us, by human beings.
And human beings are going to be motivated by many different things.
I already touched on the loss aversion versus greed ratio.
But just as powerfully, we are herd animals.
The things that we see walking around, the opinions that we hear when we're at vendor tables.
And admittedly, those news flashes and clickbaity things that we see on social media are the things that are going to inform our decisions and going to inform a bull market stop and a bear markets begin.
So learning from each other is how we're going to be able to get a true pulse on where a market is.
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