We’re in the third biggest stock bubble in U.S. history

By Brett Arends, MarketWatc

Here’s a quick question for you. What do the following years have in common:

1853, 1906, 1929, 1969, 1999

Pass the question around your office. Call your money manager and ask him or her, too. Post it on your office notice board.

Give up?

Those were the peaks of the five massive, generational stock-market bubbles in U.S. history.

Investors who bought into stocks around those peaks ended up earning terrible returns over the subsequent 30 years. Forget “stocks for the long run.” They ended up with “stocks for a long face.” The bigger the bubble, the worse returns.