Wall Street may be heading toward a 1929-style stock market crash — as inflated share prices, speculative bubbles, and eroding financial guardrails feel alarminly reminiscent of the Great Depression, according to financial journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin.

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“This is either a gold rush or a sugar rush — and we probably won’t know for a couple of years which one it is,” Sorkin said, as the New York Post reports.

Sorkin, co-host of CNBC’s Squawk Box and founder of The New York Times’ DealBook newsletter, told CBS News’ 60 Minutes that he was “anxious” about the markets possibly being on the verge of a devastating collapse.

The author of a new book about the 1929 crash compared today’s soaring, AI-driven market to the “Roaring Twenties” that imploded nearly a century ago.

“The crazy part about this is, from 1928 to September of 1929, the stock market was up 90%,” Sorkin said.

“I’m anxious — I’m anxious that we are at prices that may not feel sustainable. We are either living through some kind of remarkable boom … or everything’s overpriced.”

When 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl began to ask, “Or we’re reliving…,” Sorkin completed the sentence: “1929.”

The S&P 500 has climbed roughly 13% in the past year, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 9% through October 2025. Despite periodic market volatility tied to politics and the tariffs that President Trump rolled out in April, both indexes have continued to hit record highs, powered by surging technology and AI stocks.

For context, the trailing 12-month P/E ratio for the S&P 500 is around 28, compared with a post-1980s average of about 20 — signaling valuations well above historical norms.

Sorkin acknowledged that artificial intelligence is driving bona fide innovation, but warned that the flood of investor money into AI feels increasingly unsustainable.

“I think it’s hard to say we’re not in a bubble of some sort,” he said. “I would argue to you that the economy is being propped up almost artificially by the artificial intelligence boom.”

He likened today’s frenzy to the debt-fueled speculation of the 1920s, when ordinary Americans were lured into markets through easy credit and the promise of “democratized” access to wealth.

Sorkin warned that modern investors are being tempted in very similar ways — through private markets, venture capital, and lightly regulated startups where risk often masquerades as opportunity.

“It’s not that we’re going off a cliff tomorrow,” Sorkin said. “It’s that there’s speculation in the market today. There’s an increasing amount of debt in the market today.”

He added that the post-1929 protections designed to prevent mass speculation — including SEC disclosure rules and consumer protection agencies — are “tumbling down.”

“The Consumer Protection Bureau practically doesn’t exist anymore. That’s what concerns me,” Sorkin said.

Sorkin said today’s push to “democratize” investing — by opening riskier private markets to small investors, including retirement savers in 401(k)s — could ultimately backfire.

While guardrails have protected many from financial ruin, Sorkin noted, “some would say they protected people from getting rich.”

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“There’s a view that it’s been only the elites who’ve had access to these investments — Facebook before it went public, Uber before it went public,” he said. “There’s a real push — partially by the Trump administration and partially by the industry itself which wants to get more money in — to open up the market to more and more people.”

Sorkin’s new book is titled 1929: The Inside Story of the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History (and How It Shattered a Nation) (Viking, 2025).