Chanticleer

The great global short squeeze has reached Australia

Investors continue to bet on absolutely everything going right – and they’re betting on it in increasingly aggressive ways.

Jul 28, 2025 – 8.42am

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The dogs are having their day. Wall Street is in the grip of the biggest speculative mania it has seen since the dotcom era or the madness of the COVID period of late 2020-21. Goldman Sachs’ new speculative trading indicator is flashing red after an astonishing few months.

The sense of FOMO is palpable. So-called penny stocks in the US are trading in the 98th percentile since 1990. Stocks with an enterprise value to sales ratio higher than 10 – that’s sales, not profit – are in the 96th percentile. Unprofitable stocks are in the 85th percentile.

James Thomson is senior Chanticleer columnist based in Melbourne. He was the Companies editor and editor of BRW Magazine.