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Opinion

A long shadow hung over this week’s meeting of the Federal Reserve.

In September 1998, the US central bank made another important interest rate decision, also 16 years into a long bull market.

It turned out to be more consequential than investors could have foreseen at the time, inadvertently kicking off one of the stock market’s most dramatic melt-ups.

Once in a generation or so, investors take leave of their senses. They are gripped by a mania. Greed overwhelms fear until the music stops and those emotions are dramatically reversed.

For anyone who lives through such a period, this shapes their attitude to investing and, in extreme cases such as the Great Depression, their entire world view.

My formative period in the markets was the dotcom

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