You're not quite the only two, I'm still around. Though in general I'm getting a feeling of "will the last person to leave SI, please turn out the lights".
As it now appears all but certain that Sir Auric's prize will never be claimed, it begs the question of who was really right about how the dot-com bubble would end.
Folks like Auric and Roger Babb claimed that the end of the bubble would be swift, severe, and there would be no chance for those in it to get out.
Others, among which I count myself and Jim Cramer (then still the manic trader), disagreed, saying that if one kept one's eyes open one would be able to ride it all the way to the end and still manage to keep the lion's share of our gains.
Ostensibly, the fact that the prize was never won would indicate that Cramer's and my side won the argument. And, maybe we did, at least for ourselves. And in cold, hard logical retrospect, there was indeed plenty of time to escape.
And yet most did not. Even after the shock of mid-April 2000 nobody wanted to believe it was over. Even though there was no physical reason they could not simply cash out and live happily ever after, the psychological barrier from doing so was insurmountable for most.
Eight days of collapse, or eight hundred, in the end it really did not matter. In their way, Auric and Babb were right, too. |
