Glen, I couple of things that jumped out at me from this LA article
< All of this activity, and the huge price swings of Internet stocks as this mania has ebbed and flowed in recent years, have made for both big winners and big losers among individual investors.>
< No one can quantify the Internet's ultimate commercial potential, but it must be vast, most reasonable people would agree. Thousands of new users get online daily, worldwide. Tens of millions will get online in the years to come. So how could growth-oriented investors ignore these stocks? >
<Like Vegas, the Internet stock mania is a game with legal tender. And like every mania before it, this one will most likely end badly for a lot of the players--which is pretty Vegas-like as well.
But is there real harm being done in this game, in the big picture?
The appetite for Internet-related stocks is providing the capital that the companies involved need to develop the Net's full potential.
Surely, much of that capital will turn out to be used in ventures that don't provide a decent economic return. In that sense, some people would argue, the capital will be "wasted"--and the investors who put up that capital will lose. >
<But like it or hate it, that's the nature of our capitalist system: Many investors take risks that don't pay off well or at all.
Most investors are searching for what Lynch used to call a "10-bagger"--a stock that provides a return of 1,000% or more over time. (AvTel was a 10-bagger in one day, but we'll see where the stock is a week from now.)
Well-known 10-baggers in our era are stocks like Wal-Mart, Microsoft and Coca-Cola. By definition, they're going to be few and far between. And in their infancy, they were almost a total gamble--just like today's Internet stocks. >
< Charles P. Kindleberger, in his book "Manias, Panics and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises," notes that speculative manias often are generated by a "displacement" of the old order.
What is a displacement, exactly? Kindleberger defines it as "some outside event that changes horizons, expectations, profit opportunities, behavior--some sudden advice many times unexpected."
What is the Internet if not all that? >
William has been trying to tell us that we are being "displaced by the new order".
Gosh I wish I could change my old thinking and become one of Williams new order. |
