I heard them first in 1999 from a guy who paid $2 million for Boo.com shares because “the internet changes everything.”
I heard them again in 2007 from the banker who swore housing only goes up.
I whispered them myself in January 2021 while YOLOing weeklies on GME at $450: “Reddit is the new Fed.”
I mouthed them last week when the AI coin pumped 400 % in six hours and every Discord parrot sang the same four words in perfect unison.

This time it’s different.
This time it’s different.
This time it’s different.

Four little words, softer than a lullaby, deadlier than a landmine.
They feel like courage when you type them.
They taste like ashes when the margin call hits.

Every cycle has its own perfume:

• Tulips in 1637
• Dot-com in 1999
• Subprime tranches in 2007
• JPEGs in 2021
• GPU tokens in 2025

Same drug, new wrapper.
Same graveyard, fresh headstones.

Sir John Templeton didn’t warn us because he was boring.
He warned us because he’d seen the bodies.

I keep a Post-it on my monitor now, written in the same blood-red Sharpie I used for the -58 % page:
“Different how, exactly?”
Every time my finger twitches toward 10x leverage on the new shiny thing, I read it out loud.
Most nights it works.
Some nights I still hear the siren.

Because the market doesn’t punish greed.
It punishes amnesia.

And the four most expensive words in history are always spoken by someone who’s never paid the tuition.

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Image to pair with the post
Hyper-realistic, 3:42 a.m. photograph:
Close-up on the trader’s scarred wooden desk, lit only by a dying candle that throws long, dancing shadows.
Center frame: the crumpled trading journal open to a fresh page.
In dripping blood-red ink:
“THIS TIME IT’S DIFFERENT”
underlined so hard the pen tore the paper.
Below it, in tiny black letters added hours later:
“-73 % in 9 days. Same as last time.”

Scattered around:

• A torn screenshot of an AI coin at +400 %, timestamped yesterday.
• An ancient yellowed printout from 1999: Boo.com at $180.
• A coffee-stained 2007 Lehman mortgage bond prospectus marked AAA.
• One sticky note stuck crooked: “Templeton was right.”
• The candle has burned so low the flame licks the wax pool; any second it will drown.