CONCEPT
Revulsion
The final stage of Kindleberger's taxonomy — the overshoot downward that mirrors the euphoric overshoot upward, pricing assets below fundamental value as pessimism overwhelms analysis with the same force that optimism did.
Revulsion is the mirror image of euphoria. Where euphoria prices assets above fundamental value because optimism has overwhelmed analysis, revulsion prices assets below fundamental value because pessimism has overwhelmed analysis with equal force. Kindleberger documented the symmetry across every mania he studied. The downward overshoot is typically as severe as the upward overshoot, driven by the same psychological mechanisms operating in reverse. The rhetorical transformation of a repricing into an 'apocalypse' — the 'SaaSpocalypse' narrative — is characteristic of the phase in which the language of participants shifts from measured analysis to hyperbolic catastrophism.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Revulsion serves a structural function in the financial cycle: it purges speculative excess, destroys the weakest participants, and creates the conditions for a more sustainable allocation of capital. This is cold comfort to the participants being purged, who experience the structural function as personal catastrophe. The SaaS industry will not die during the revulsion phase. It will be repriced with the same