Wednesday December 06, 2006 About Spec Posted by Richard Hodge December 2006 Speculative Bubble started in June of 1999 as a blog about the dotcom bubble. As an ex financial planner / stock broker from the 90's I used it as a way for me to get all my investment knowledge in one place for reference. Back then I didn't know what a blog was - I just called it 'investment tip of the day' and kept writing article after article and even built up a pretty good glossary of terms. At its peak it was close to a thousand pages of content. By the early 2000s the internet bubble had burst, and my love for all things stock market had turned into a love for all things programming. After some hosting issues, I basically abandoned the site but let it sit there and cook incase anyone ever wanted to read my thinking on investment fundamentals. It's been several years and several hosting companies since then and some of the content has been lost (all the comments, etc.) but the basic shell of the site still remains and gets a bit of traffic. While I was away from Spec, I was busy building numerous other websites in many different industries and still love running websites. All the while though, I've been keeping a side eye on the markets and with the way the housing market has become I find myself too drawn to it to ignore. I've decided to work on speculativebubble full time for 2007 and follow along. When I left it, Speculative Bubble was a very active website heavily linked and referenced throughout the industry - but sitting dormant for so many years has really taken its toll. It hasn't even been in google for the last two years. Imagine that. I look forward to bringing it back up to speed and re-establishing its community of enthusiasm and becoming part of the new community of investment bloggers and mainly the bubble bloggers covering housing. I still plan on blogging about the other areas of investing such as stocks, bonds, commodities, and currency but have a feeling that 2007 is going to be an exciting year to be following real estate. So that's the focus and that's why I'm here. Stay tuned as a full time programmer attacks the housing part of the internet - I plan on building any housing related tool I can think of. News aggregators, blog watch, housing stats and data, charts, graphs, calculators, etc. Currently I am putting together a listing of all the posts by the bubble bloggers. It is a work in progress but you can see it here. I am also working on building a blog back end here as well as on this page you're reading. I feel that by the first of the year Spec will be ready to roll and I can really start posting! Thanks for visiting and remember to check back every month or so to see the progress (you can still access the old site (glossary and articles) at the very bottom of this page.)

	HB Bear	2007-03-16 07:16:15
	Rich, Love the site. Would love to add my blog to the army of blog you have listed here. Stop by the site and have a look. HB Bear
	Speculative Bubble	2007-03-16 08:39:43
	Nice site HB Bear - I'll add it today :)
	Darin	2007-04-03 11:33:37
	Rich, Very nice site. We work with home owners who are in foreclosure for various reasons. We help them keep their homes and avoid the foreclosure by negotiating with their Mortgage Companies. Is there any way we can be added to your links page to help people save their homes that come to your site. Please check out our site and see if we can be a resource to any of your readers. Thanks, Darin
	Marcus	2007-04-05 08:55:31
	LOVE the Rollercoaster Tycoon effort. So popular it took down the site, eh? Now THAT'S what I call 'linkbait'! I added the video to my condo blog. Would love to exchange links... Happy Thursday from Orlando!
	Roman	2007-04-13 11:09:31
	Richard, I just found your site through cnn.com & the housing roller coaster blew my mind. It's a very creative way of showing history, present & the future. I sent it to all of my friends. I suggest you prepare for a lot of volume on your site. Great Idea - Great Site!!! Congratulations. Roman http://www.letsgobble.com/
	Ed	2007-04-16 23:10:23
	Found your site through a webmaster forum actually. What a great theme with great potential. You're sitting on a real treasure trove, hope it develops the way you want mate. Best of luck. /Ed
	Peter Comitini	2007-04-20 07:17:31
	Richard: Love the rollercoaster, a very creative visualization of the data and have posted a link to my site at http://www.comitini.com. I also worked in tech in the 90's and am a Real Estate broker now. Here in New York we are already talking about the bubble in past tense as we experience fundamentally strong market, although we have our eye on the rest of the nation too. Best of luck with the site design, we need all the POV we gan get. Cheers, Peter
	Mingus	2007-04-27 15:40:29
	hey - very cool! you should be on broadcast tv. you are an excellent explainer - i will share this with friends/family. keep up the great work!
	ladyphoenixx_1999	2007-09-30 18:24:59
	I live in Ashland Kansas, I am also a flickr member another member has made quite a few members aware of this site. I have looked up Ashland and found a bunch of my photos there, while I don't mind the use but my ID name is nowhere to be found. I found the link" Ashland photos from flickr" I clicked it and it went to a search page and photos from me came up. The photos in your page need to be attributed to the url which they came from or as a feed needs to have a direct feed to my main streams page You are not allowed to use a indirect feed for individuals photos with a general link to a common name, there is at least 6 Ashlands that I know of in the USA alone, the link is too a general of a link as I searched Ashland in flickrs data base and found many other photos also marked Ashland. please either remove the feed, or put in a hotlink under the feed linking directly to my streams page please.I don't mind you using them, glad to have them here but please give me direct stream credit, that is all I ask. Please feel free to e mail me if you need too tammouracurry(at)hotmail(dot)com
	Speculative Bubble	2007-09-30 18:59:17
	Thanks ladyphoenixx_1999 Will do. I'm still building those pages they are incomplete and I will add specific links. Flickr users can also opt out of having their photos displayed outside of Flickr here: http://flickr.com/account/prefs/apioptout/ Once again thanks :)
	ladyphoenixx_1999	2007-10-01 03:34:01
	Thank you for your fast reply. I am aware of that link to opt out, but I really enjoy others to use my phtos, as I said before I don't mind them here, I have you fans here enjoy them also. Good luck and I will be looking here to see the wonderful changes you make, you have a well put together site. Tammoura
	Mike	2007-10-10 12:40:30
	Are you planning to update the roller coaster? Now that home prices are actually falling....just a thought.
	StuccoLady	2007-11-22 06:38:06
	I was browsing images, and saw photos of our Exterior Stucco on this site. I'll be checking ya'll out, for sure
	Econometric	2008-02-06 11:02:50
	Hey Richard, Love the rollercoaster US Home price simulation, but have one suggestion/idea/request. Any way you could add a year ticker to make it more relative and/or educational?
	Velochicdunord	2008-03-29 13:28:37
	Any thought on doing other national housing prices for comparison? For instance, the Canadian market never hit the heights of the US for 1) economic reasons and b) we can't write off our mortgage interest!