Dotcom fever has made the leap from the financial pages of broadsheet
newspapers to the tabloids鈥攕o trouble must be brewing. Suddenly, the Net
is big money. Companies that have never earned a penny are 鈥渨orth鈥� millions. If
you had been shrewd enough to invest in technology shares back in January 1999,
you would have doubled your money鈥攊f you matched the dizzying climb of the
Nasdaq index (www.nasdaq.com), that is.
Netropolitan doesn鈥檛 know if the Net bubble is about to burst, but there
are several cautionary tales about speculation on new technologies. Railway
mania is an early example. In 1848, The Illustrated London News was
warning of 鈥渇airy-like tales . . . of men going to bed worth nothing but a
letter of allotment and getting up in the morning possessing thousands鈥�. At the
height of speculation, avarice quickly replaces reason. 鈥淭he desire of gain has
become so strong that a railway to the Moon would have found speculators,鈥� the
paper wrote. For more, hit the politics link
at www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/ind_rev/iln/iln.html.
Fast forward to the next craze in 1907: the fraudulent wireless telegraph
bubble which was the subject of a splendid expos茅 in Success
Magazine by Frank Fayant (http://www.ipass.net/~whitetho/fool1907.htm).
The come-ons have an uncannily modern feel.
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For a tongue-in-cheek take on today鈥檚 technology bubble, visit
www.itulip.com鈥攖he website of The Internet Stock Mania Company: 鈥淲e make
worthless junk for you to buy over the Internet 鈥檆ause it鈥檚 cool,鈥� they say. The
site has a sobering comparison between today鈥檚 tech stocks and those in 1968.
And if you didn鈥檛 buy into lastminute.com and are feeling smug because you don鈥檛
have any tech shares, bear in mind that Net stocks are now part of the
investment mainstream. So where鈥檚 your pension invested?
