And are they saying people shouldn't be pissed at the analysts whom we all remember issued upgrades & higher price targets when dot.bombs were $100 north of here.
Burned investors look for revenge
Now that realities behind the Net bubble have sunk portfolios, investors are seeking anyone to blame ... except themselves
By Dan Briody and Stephen Lucey
Red Herring
June 7 — By Salomon Smith Barney's estimates, between Jan. 14, 2000, and March 22, 2001, about $4.7 trillion's worth of wealth simply vanished from United States stock exchanges. Sure, it was smoke and mirrors that created that Internet bubble of wealth to begin with. We all know that. But now, investors are taking a closer look at how some companies touted their stocks during the boom. And they are angry.
DEATH THREATS have arrived at the doorsteps of some Wall Street analysts and CEOs. Class-action lawsuits are gobbling up the time and precious cash of technology companies, who are turning out to be the prime targets of late: more than half of investors' lawsuits targeted technology companies in 2000, up from 35 percent in the 1990s. Meanwhile, investment banks are under fire from regulatory bodies for allegedly rigging the IPO process during the height of the Internet craze. No one is beyond suspicion; everyone is on edge.
"My kids' ages are off limits, because of security. We get death threats at work from dissatisfied shareholders," says Matthew Szulik, CEO of Red Hat, whose stock plummeted from a high of $143 in December 1999 to a low of $5 a year later, erasing $23 billion worth of market capitalization. "People bought in when the stock was hot and the movement was hot," Szulik groans, "and now they're p—-ed."
In retrospect, the angry — and often unstable — reaction of investors isn't all that surprising. Between 1989 and 1999
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