Examining the New Bubble

abb_road writes "Whether or not we're in the midst of another boom-bust cycle in technology is a matter of fierce debate. BusinessWeek discusses what constituted that last bubble and looks at current trends to see if we're on the verge of a new one. From the article: 'The Great Bubble of the late '90s shaped a generation of Internet entrepreneurs and investors much as the Great Depression shaped a generation of economizers in the mid-20th century. 'The bubble generation is much more attuned to the fact that things can get really out of hand,' says Bill Burnham, a former partner at Mobius Venture Capital. 'There's a level of caution that has been ingrained.'"

Comments

Completely different!

[Otter]

The last boom was based on the principle that all stock prices were justified, regardless of whether any of them were profitable. The new boom is based on the principle that all stock prices are justified as long as Google makes some profit. Totally different reasoning.

Boy, people sure were stupid in the 90's, huh?

So I've missed another bubble?

[bogie]

I gotta fire my broker. Should I still be holding on to my Pets.com stock?

Less alcohol...

[Anonymous Coward]

I read that as, "Examining the New Bible". Almost thought I had missed the second coming of Jesus in my drunken stupor last night...

Re:Agree with article

[RobertB-DC]

It sure does feel like 1998. That's why, this morning, I just moved almost all of my 401k out of US-based stocks.

Ha! I'm way ahead of you. I sold off half my 401(k) last month and invested the whole thing in a guaranteed 17% investment. I paid off one of those damned credit cards. One down, three to go. ph34r my 1337 1nv357m3n7 sk177z!

not a chance

[jafac]

I don't know about the rest of y'all, but in the last bubble, there was such a high labor demand, that if a person could switch on a computer, they could get a salary of $70k/yr. If you were more competent, you could get more. And the icing on the cake was that they were handing out stock options like candy, to everyone, even the janitors. And NASDAQ was doing so well - frankly, I bought a house I would never have had a chance at getting into otherwise (though I totally screwed up how I structured my stock sales, so I got fucked by the IRS, and wasn't able to really take advantage of what would have been about $1 million worth of options).

Many techies were seriously debating whether there was any point to higher education because of this tight labor situation.

Nowadays, it's very different. Most of us feel lucky just to have jobs. My salary has finally caught up with what it was in 1998. Only now, I'm not getting stock options.

We're most certainly not in the midst of another tech bubble. My take on this is that most likely, the reason for recent higher earnings has been due to the NSA buying lots of hard drives. When they've got enough, we'll be right back in the 2000-2003 toilet.

Re:Bubbles

[misleb]

Tech won't really be in a bubble unless there's a mindset of irrational exuberance in the general public.

Right, and in this current climate, the irrational exuberance seems to be limited to web developers (web 2.0, ajax, etc). So there isn't too much to worry about. Just a lot of smart people wasting their time trying to immitate desktop applications in a browser.

-matthew

prayer

[denidoom]

"The bubble generation is much more attuned to the fact that things can get really out of hand," says Bill Burnham, a former partner at Mobius Venture Capital. "There's a level of caution that has been ingrained."

As I look out into the parking lot at the sea of import luxury cars and eat my free bagel on Free Bagel Friday, I say to myself,

I sure hope so dude. I sure hope so.