History doesn't rhyme, it repeats!
From Today's Barrons.
No, the most dramatic evidence of the speculative fervor sweeping the markets comes from the "You Can't Make This Stuff Up" file. According to Friday's Financial Times, Dutch investors face huge losses on their investment in a fund developing, yes, tulips.
This is 21st-century Netherlands, not the 17th century. Some 120 investors plunked down a minimum of €100,000 ($121,600) each, for a total of €85.2 million, in the NovaCap Florales Future fund, a kind of venture-capital outfit for new tulip types. It seems the contracts to sell the new varieties were made through a tulip market-maker that, of course, has gone bust. Now there are worries there will be no greater fools to buy the bulbs. NovaCap, for its part, denies it was a speculative vehicle, adding that it reduced investors' risk by investing in bulbs only in the later stages of development, the FT reports. Not enough, apparently. |
