I've had a theory for years that the free market is mostly a myth, that really most business execs are herd animals who form their strategies by copying others. Usually they copy the ones in the same industry, making them all look pretty much the same.

That's one of the reasons we have economic cycles. It's because trends come and go in waves. When one wave bankrupts a bunch of companies, they start to dig out and then the next wave hits, endlessly.