Judged by profits, the stock market is much more reasonably priced than it was in 2000. The Dow now trades at 15 times next year’s expected earnings, versus 18 times back at the peak of the boom. The S&P 500 trades at 17 times earnings, versus 30 times. And perhaps most telling,the Nasdaq trades at 22 times earnings, against 102 times back in 2000.

“In 2000, companies were going public as early as they could. It was a rite of passage,” says Kevin Landis, the veteran technology investor who ran the best-performing mutual fund in the U.S. leading up to the 2000 tech crash. “Today it’s a root canal that you keep avoiding.”

In 1999 and 2000, 632 technology companies went public, according to Ritter’s figures. Last year, the total was just 43. So far this year, there were just 46 tech offerings.

“If you look at Facebook and Twitter, the next generation of blue-chip stocks may be on their way to becoming that [size] even before they go public,” Landis says. “It’s a very tempting target for people trying to beat the indexes.”

Whether you view the growth of the private market as an example of institutional investors’ greed run amok, or as a healthy evolution in the capital markets, the good news is that retail investors are fairly well insulated from the most excessive valuations in technology and social-media stocks—at least for now. That could change once outfits like Uber, Dropbox, or Snapchat try to foist their shares off on the public at crazy prices