{"id":651623,"date":"2025-03-07T15:30:34","date_gmt":"2025-03-07T14:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ftmo.com\/?p=651623"},"modified":"2025-03-12T14:41:58","modified_gmt":"2025-03-12T13:41:58","slug":"a-quarter-of-a-century-since-the-dot-com-bubble-have-we-learned-our-lesson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ftmo.com\/en\/a-quarter-of-a-century-since-the-dot-com-bubble-have-we-learned-our-lesson\/","title":{"rendered":"A quarter of a century since the dot-com bubble. Have we learned our lesson?"},"content":{"rendered":"
When the Nasdaq Composite Index closed at 5,048.62 points on March 10, 2000, few expected it to reach that level again after fifteen long years. That day marked the peak of the technology bubble, followed by one of the biggest falls in the history of the US stock markets.<\/em><\/p>\n The rapid rise in the prices of selected technology stocks is beginning to remind some analysts of the situation at the turn of 1999 and 2000, when the Internet fever was at its peak, which eventually led to the bursting of the dot-com bubble and a significant fall in stock markets, led by the Nasdaq Composite technology index. It reached its peak before the bubble burst exactly 25 years ago, on 10 March 2000.<\/p>\n Several factors contributed to the bursting of the Internet bubble, including the spread of the Internet, the availability of investment capital, the willingness to invest in companies that were not making any profits, and the unprecedentedly long economic growth that led economists to believe in a new economy with no room for recessions.<\/p>\n The conditions for the Internet bubble began to take shape in the early 1990s, when the Internet began to expand quite rapidly, so that it was no longer the domain of scientists alone, but could be accessed by an increasing number of households. By 1996, according to the US Department of Commerce, Internet use was set to double every three months, so that by 2000, Internet business was already in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Unfortunately, in reality, Internet use doubled perhaps once a year, but investment in networks and infrastructure corresponded to the much faster growth of the Internet.<\/p>\n Economic conditions also favoured rapid development. After the last brief recession in the early 1990s, economic growth picked up a lot in the mid-1990s, and the economy was shifting from industrial to technological. Labour productivity was rising rapidly, unemployment was low and inflation was falling. In the late 1990s, there was increasing speculation that we were living in a “new economy”. The development of technology, which was supposed to have a positive effect on economic growth, was supposed to ensure steady growth without recessions. Investment was also helped by low interest rates and a reduction in capital gains tax from 28% to 20%.<\/p>\n The beginning of the Internet bubble is generally considered to be August 1995, when Netscape Communications made an IPO of its stock, with the share price rising from an initial $28 to $75 within the first day, closing at $58.25. The possibility of a market bubble had already been raised in late 1996 by then US central bank chief Alan Greenspan in a speech at the American Enterprise Institute, when he used the now legendary phrase “irrational exuberance”. Despite the market decline on the second day of the conference, however, the rise was only at the beginning.<\/p>\n In the years that followed, investment in technology companies literally blew up, and anyone who did not have money in technology was as good as gone. Virtually any company that had anything to do with the Internet was guaranteed to have a lot of interest in its stock. Even though most of them were just star-ups, investors weren’t looking at the fundamentals and financial health of the companies, but rather how many new customers the company would get in the future.<\/p>\n Companies were not generating profits, so they needed investment, and going public was often the ideal way for them to raise funds. Most of the new IPOs in the US markets before 1999 were Internet companies, and in the first quarter of 2000 alone, when the bubble was already at its peak, 91 IPOs were added to the market. Nearly 40% of venture capital at that time went to Internet companies.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
How and why the bubble was created<\/h2>\n
Irrational exuberance<\/h2>\n