Adam Fischbaum

Bill Gates, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT ) founder and internet godfather, penned an essay in 1996 that contained the now famous quote "content is king." Gates' thesis was that the internet would become a marketplace for content. Twenty-two years later, the Oklahoma-style land rush to produce and acquire the most and best content continues at a breakneck pace. AT&T (NYSE: T ) acquired content powerhouse Time Warner (NYSE: TWX ).

From a demographic trend standpoint, the 20th century in the United States was the "Century of the Named Generations". Ok, cut me some slack. It's hard to come up with catchphrases sometimes. The second decade of the 20th Century saw the rise of the post-World War I Lost Generation, so named because of the horror of the world's first, truly modern war inflicted on those who served and returned forever scarred.

Today's vernacular is riddled with acronyms ending in the letter "O": IMO, YOLO, BOGO, and the newest one that's most relevant to the investing racket, FOMO, which stands for "Fear of Missing Out". FOMO can often drive the type of investment behavior that can lead to bubbles and mania. We saw lots of FOMO during the dot-com bubble of the late 90s. However, professionally speaking, "fear of missing out" sounds almost as absurd as "fear of success".