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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."
The rampant speculation has moved right into real estate. Prepare for the next great crash, with greater consequences.
Life in Orange County
Well, that's a little bit strong, don't you think? The .com collapse was really tragic, but it was far from unpredictable, hysterical, or preventable. Just basic macro economics -- when there are economic profits (not just accounting profits) in a market then entrance is encouraged, and when these profits dry up then the market participants take a while to come back down to equilibrium, just likePavlov's dogs took a good while to stop salivating when the dinner bell was rung.
I more agreed with Julie:
Boy, how true did that turn out to be?
adam b.
There is a quote in that article by Rob Hersov that describes the way a lot of people felt at that time:
"Those were incredibly heady days," he says. "Fun - absolutely. We thought we were making a difference. We thought we were getting out there, shaking things up, doing something no one had done before. We really were pioneers - buccaneers."
That statement demonstrates the two truths of the dot com explosion: on one had, we really did make a difference - we built a huge IT infrastructure in, essentially, the blink of an eye. On the other hand, that statement is packed with the hubris and exaggerated sense of importance that also permeated the time.
The analogy was often made in 2000/2001 of the Detroit auto industry and the development of the US national highway system. The same thing happened with scores (or maybe it was hundreds?) of companies popping up with the word "motors" in their name during the period. And now there are 3; the big 3 left in Detroit.
Not only that, but barring e-Bay and a few other notables, the companies that made it out of the bubble are ones with unique brand names: Google, Amazon, Travelocity, Yahoo!, and GoDaddy.
I also disagree with the apparent conclusion that there are no lone wolves anymore. The climate is better for a savvy lone wolf than it was even in 1997, I believe.
Who came up with the e-Idea of e-Appending e-E to e-Everything anyway?
I Want To Believe
only the End of the Beginning. Startups continue to get funded although they now have to have some reasonable idea of how they will actually make money. There was a report on the San Francisco public radio station yesterday that said that if you look at growth in Silicon Vally over the last 20 years and "flatten" (whatever that means) the growth around the bubble, Silicon Valley continues to grow at relatively the same pace as before.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Paul Graham has an interesting essay on "What the Bubble Got Right". It's worth remembering that some of the companies that lost 90% of their value are still worth billions today - e.g. Yahoo.
Looks like the server's smoking already - you can at least get the text from Google's cache.
Meep meep
I remember there was a pretty interesting comparison to the railroad boom and bust posted here a couple of years back, unfortunately I couldn't find a link to it. I think the railroad boom came in two waves, the second boom started about 5 years after the first and was much larger, and the bust was more devastating too. So we could be in for another bubble soon.
Also, here is an interesting read. I don't see the date on the article, but the wayback machine has it on Mar 2001, so it was probably written right at the peak.
Come on, just for old times' same, won't someone please give me $50MM to start my online Post-It sales portal, www.yellowsquare.com?
We give away the Post-its, so we can GET BIG FAST.
If NASDAQ levels equals DotCom boom, then a 78% loss of value over the next 18 months sure seems like a DotCom crash. Anyway, I would like to apologize to everyone... I bought my first stock ever (not counting 401k) in a Sure Thing called Constellation 3D (currently trading at 0.0001) in March of 2000. I feel somewhat responsible.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
Read about the California Gold Rush, and mentally timeshift the dates and where appropriate substitute gold oriented things with computers.
The biggest difference between the two is that California was not settled at the time and it was most difficult to get basic necessities. Otherwise, same shit different day. People think they can get something for nothing.
Look at Apple's stock price over 5 years, for instance - it's higher now than it was at its peak in 2000.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
I don't know about that; more like finding its proper level again. Take a look at a comparison between the NASDAQ (^IXIC) and the Dow Jones (^DJI) and you'll see what I mean.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
No, it was March 10th, 2000 when the NASDAQ peaked. Was this story submitted yesterday and the editors didn't bother to update the reference to the anniversary being today? The anniversary was yesterday.
At the time I thought it would be humorous to do my own IPO calld $2Bob.com*. There would be no business plan save that all of the money invested would be spent. The IPO sheet would also specifically state that investors should expect no return on their investment and that all of the money would be pissed away on quasi corporate frivolities. If I had been a corporate paralegal instead of a litigation paralegal I might have actually tried it;-)
*The fact that "$" is invalid for a web address made it all the more entertaining to my young self;-)
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
I have to say, after reading this article and Paul Grahm's I have to agree that if you're going to start a tech company - which almost any net company is - then you need tech people.
.com happened - I had a good time. I was probably one of the only ones who never got around to investing in it (in fact, I told companies I worked for I'd rather have cash over stock) so I didn't really lose anything. However, it was a pretty silly time and unless you had a really good idea with some good people behind it, then you probably deserved to fail. Asking if it'll ever happen again is like asking if the gold rush of the 1800's will ever happen again.
When we (my partners and I) merged our startup with another leader in our industry, everything at first was rosy. But within a matter of months, the misunderstanding of not just our business but also our tech, ended up being responsible for everyone running for the door. I, the principal technology guy, was out the door in six months. And needless to say, our product was dropped from their system within a year. Today? The VC's pushed everyone out and the company assets and name were transferred (from San Francisco) to east coast ownership.
Not to say I and many friends didn't have a good time during the days. In fact, when I headed off to a tech consulting company after the startup, I and my co-workers probably spent more time at parties than at the office. But, would I do that again? Probably not. While I'm still fond of the fast paced energy that was was it was back then, I look at ideas like Boo (jesus, esp those guys), Pets, and others of the time and think "ugh."
But I'm still hopeful for business on the net only because it has such a global reach now. One of my partners and myself are at round two of our startup lives. We're targeting the same industry, but with completely different tools. And one noticable difference is we're seeking no funding at all - which is good and bad. Like Graham suggests, we're goin lean all the way and tech guys are running the show. However, after almost a year of development on my part, it's starting to wear and the mantra now is persistence.
Everyone has their own story and unlike some I've come across, I'm glad the
your financial tree falls in the forest,
and you're too broke to hear it
did the money really exist?
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Home prices have yet to crash. Everyone keeps talking about how we had a 'soft landing'... it was soft because of low interest rates that have allowed people who really can't afford housing to get into the game. Wait until the housing bubble pops. Then, we'll get what we should have got when techs crashed... it's gonna be painful, real painful. All one needs to do is read a bit of history to understand how insane real estate prices in America have become. American debt is at an all-time high. We owe way too much money. Home prices have been going up by 20 and 30% annually in many areas... pay checks haven't... is it just me, or do others find this odd?
Ah yes, Decapitalism.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Drop me your email address, I get hot stock tips everyday in my inbox. Maybe if I feed them yours they'll leave me alone.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
It is often said that people who risk money by buying a stock deserve the dividends they get by the risk they taking buying the stock. This is kind of tautological within the economic system however. The economic system consists of corporations producing commodities (PCs, bread, a colocation rack) and exchanging them for other commodities - a few decades ago money backed by gold, nowadays money which is theoretically worth something because one can pay taxes with it. Corporations often produce commodities which no one wants, which is the main risk of capital investment, it's a loss. Virtually everyone recognizes this as true, from former GE CEO Jack Welch to socialists like Paul Sweezy. Thus, the economic system commits the error of misplacing resources. This error produces capital risk, and this capital risk is the common explanation of why people deserve dividends from capital investment, instead of, say, the workers at the corporation who created that wealth.
As far as the US economy, productivity was extremely poor throughout the 1930's, then from the mid 1940's to the mid 1960's were 20 years of enormous productivity. It began slowing down in the mid 1960's, and by the early 1970's everyone realized there was an enormous problem. Nixon went off the gold standard, imposed wage and price controls, and dismantled the Bretton Woods system. Productivity has been pretty poor since the mid-1960s, there have been arguments of whether it had a decent bump in the late 1990s or not. The late 1990s bump is obviously from the Internet, an R&D project the US government poured billions of dollars into from the 1960s until the mid 1990s, it was a state project (DARPAnet/NSFnet) handed over the corporations when it had been developed after 25 years of taxpayer funding. Anyhow, this long slowdown in economic productivity in the US has resulted in the average inflation-adjusted hourly wage in the US being below what it was 30 years before. Asia seems to be the only area with decent productivity growth in thw world, but that creates another problem of who is going to buy all of the commodities China is pumping out since the market is already saturated.
Even before the burst of the "Tech Bubble", my eldest brother, who owns a Canadian mutual fund company, was comparing it to the "Tulip Bubble", which brought down the Dutch economy in 1637. The obvious similarity between the two was rampant speculation brought on by greed and clouded judgement.
Or as it was nicely put by a judge who ruled that four leading investment banks were not to blame for stock market losses following the collapse of the tech bubble [analysts from Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and CSFB had been accused of issuing biased research]:
' investors were "obsessed with the fantasy of Olympian riches", which possibly clouded their judgment.'
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.
Sorry, but you sound vaguely like a Bush proponent. Let me
.
beat you about the ears with the following mantra;
it's made of fine hickory, but was imported from
the Dominican Republic.
(1) US Department of State "VISA Express" program
put unvetted Saudi Arabians on the fast-track into
the USA -- a Bush initiative.
(2) Relegated National Security Council Terrorism
expert Richard Clark to dark closet, while hob-
nobbing with Taliban representatives in Houston
and Washington over gas pipeline contracts.
(3) Cobbled together the slimest threads of intel
over al-Queda links to Saddam Hussein, and African
uranium ore (yellow cake) for Saddam's mythical
WMD as justification for an optional preemptive
war in Iraq.
(4) Thwarted the intent of Congress in illegally
redirecting monies alloted to the conflict in
Afghanistan ($750 Million USD) in the run-up to
the war in Iraq.
(5) Pissed away at least $250 Billion USD in a
totally optional war in Iraq, with 1,500 dead
US servicemen, 10,000+ wounded US servicemen,
and at least 100,000 dead Iraqi civilians (more
than the total Kurds Saddam gassed).
(6) Broke international treaties regarding the
treatment of POWs, and of torturing prisoners,
with absolutely zero accountability by the Bush
administration.
(7) Abridged the US Bill of Rights in the pursuit
of internal "terrorist" threats, all while leaving
US borders and seaports and air cargo largely
insecure. And then boasting about it with the
upcoming "amnesty" program, and statements in the
press about "...not IF, but WHEN another terror
attack would occur..."
(8) Drunken-sailor level spending, including the
war and tax cuts for those that least need it, in
order to justify a neo-con priority -- cutting
the legs out from Social Security and Medicare,
while promoting constitutionally illegal "faith-
based intiatives" as their replacements.
I could go on, in much finer detail, but it's
unnecessary if you have been viewing any news
besides Fox Network, or not listening only to
Rush Limbaugh.
If any of you want to remember the crazy days of the tech bubble check out the documentaries Startup.com and e-dreams.
I still remember being somewhat tech savy, going to investors conferences and "not getting" how these companies that would never make significant money were commanding these valuations. It was like being in some sci-fi movie where everyone has been replaced by pod people.
Furthermore, you are totally ignoring the opportunity cost of investing in a house. It looks like you are assuming a $37K down payment. If you rent for those 30 years, you could apply that $37K to some other investment. Let's say you invest in an index fund in order to avoid taxes until you sell. At an average annual return of 11%, you will have $847K at the end of 30 years, and that's just from saving the down payment! If you are paying more on your mortgage and expenses than you would be on rent for an equivalent place, then you also need to consider the opportunity cost of that money as if you had invested it in something with an optimal return. It will easily beat out the equity appreciation of $864K that you listed, and that is even before you factor in the multiple transaction costs that you left out.
All of this is using your questionable assumption that your equity appreciation will out pace inflation. Even so, renting is a pretty good deal. However, if your home appreciates at less than inflation, the numbers get much, much worse for owning. Historically low interest rates have allowed people to pay more for homes that they could in the past, but now that the Fed is returning interest rates to a neutral level at a measured pace, people are already unable to secure the same magnitude of loans they could not too long ago. Every single indicator points to prices being overinflated (which a fall in prices would resolve): historically low interest rates, historically high P/E ratios (purchase/rent), historically low savings, percent increase in median income falling (way) short of percent increase in median house prices, first time buyers priced out of the market, etc.
A mortgage is basically the best 'debt' you will ever have in your life. It is not like other debt because of two simple facts:
- It is remarkably low interest (below prime rate right now with many banks)
- The interest itself is tax-deductable, at least in the US.
On top of this, the alternative - paying rent - is markedly worse. You are basically flushing money down the toilet, with a 0% return.
The parent was indeed giving good advice. Your advice, however, is not prudent. Every year you delay getting a mortgage, is a full year of rent you could have been using to pay down one. Even if the interest rate on the mortgage was 15% or 20% (which it isn't), and even if there was no tax deduction (which there is), it would still be in your interest to get a mortgage.
It was really an adjustment.
If you look at the fundamentals of all the stocks you listed, with the exception of RedBack, they are pretty much where they should be now, based on P/E and EPS. JNPR still has a slightly high P/E, so there still may be some downward pressure in that stock.
Most investors, that understand the markets, knew that an adjustment was coming, it was just a matter of when. During the "boom" all regard for the fundamentals of a company were thrown out the window, and the valuations of a company's stock were outragious. Juniper, the company, was NEVER worth close to $245/share.
So while people got burned, and they may call it a "crash", most investors call it a correction or adjustment.
"The price of your house might double, but when the price of everything else you buy doubles too, you're back where you started."
Not true.
Let's say that there is 100% inflation in the next 10 years. My house is worth a lot more on paper, but more importantly, my salary has gone up but my mortgage is fixed; it then consumes a lower percentage of my salary, giving me more money to buy toys.
The other advantage of an illusionary increase is that it gives you more equity. I put 0% down on my home, but recent price increases let me have 20% equity in it on paper. This let me refinance to a lower rate. My loan is for the same amount as it was, but my payments are $350 a month less.
I spent a lot of time in San Jose in late 1999. I was going to different training classes (Oracle) for my boring, but steady government job. (I'm still here...)
Every place I went people were talking about their fantastic dotcom business plan. I probably heard 2 or 3 'pitches' every morning while eating at the Denny's next to my Motel 6. I had to stay at Motel 6 because every single room at every single hotel (other than Motel 6) was taken. People were coming from all over the place to get in on this revolution.
Dinner, and going out was the same. Even at night-clubs everyone (even the girls) were talking dotcom this or that.
Then my class was actually worse. I was in a room with 19 other students. I was the only non dotcom worker, and the only one not setting his sights on making millions. (I am also probably the only one who still has his/her job.)
I met two people in class who were the 'Head Programmer' in their company, who did not even know SQL- yet they were being entrusted to create the sites that their business plan depended on. Oddly enough, the class was for Oracle Administrators, but there were there to learn how to pull data from a table. That was some sad mis-management.
After about 4 weeks in San Jose, I finally finished up my Oracle training and left town. I felt like I had to shower for a few days just to get all of the dotcom off of me, it was pretty sick. The focus on money, and the thought that people would become rich from a few months work was depressing. Of course I was also bitter that these schmucks were making a lot more money than I was.
Needless to say, I wasn't too upset about the bust.
No reason to lie.