Slashdot Mirror
The DotCom Crash Revisited
woginuk writes "At 9:00pm GMT today , it will be exactly 5 years since the Nasdaq reached its highest level, 5048.62. From there on it has been downhill all the way. Most of us have been affected by it, one way or the other. The Guardian has a story looking back on the moment and succeeding events."
Well, I moved to Silicon Valley in 1983. Back then everybody talked about how expensive houses were (a nice house was in the high 100-low 200k) and how overpriced the real estate market was. Save for a minor dip in the 90's housing prices have never fallen in 22 years. The median price in Santa Clara County (not where Larry Ellison & Steve Jobs live... where regular folks live) is $615k.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
The Nasdaq did indeed crash, in every sense of the word. Just look at the declines in ALL the big names, and most of the small names, top to bottom. Many former $100, 200$ stocks traded to oblivion or a fraction of their former highs. Look at former high fliers like CMGI for an example, or RBAK perhaps even better!
QCOM (post split) 100 to 11, 90% decline.
RBAK Now 6.52. When you factor in all the splits it was something like 14,000.
CMGI - was 163ish now 1.92.
JNPR now 22.34. Sounds like an ok stock, until you realize its high was almost 245$.
And the list goes on. And on.
These examples are the definition of a bubble and a crash, a (hopefully) once in a generation event.