Saturday, October 27, 2007

Is This a Bubble?

Last Wednesday, Microsoft acquired a 1.6% stake in social network site Facebook for $240 million, outbidding Google (which is stock-priced at $674 today). You probably heard of this, and it got more chatter started asking... is this a bubble? Here are some related quotes.

The Washington Post:

If you blindly accept the generalization that Internet investments are “a bubble,” you’re being had.

From David Henry, USA Today:

The bull market money machine has been running so long that you no longer hear much from those who say it has to stop. “Most of the naysayers have been discredited and are on the run,” says Jim Bianco

Chet Dembeck comments:

I believe the IPO bubble is not in danger of bursting anytime soon. In fact, I don’t think it’s even reached its peak inflation

David Gardner writes:

It is ALL THE RAGE to say that the Internet stocks are insanely overpriced, a “bubble,” or at the very least, way ahead of themselves. In fact, that herdlike conventional Wisdom is exactly what enables Rule-Breaking Fools like us to make good money on the markets.

From Business Week’s Christopher Farrell:

... simply wagging a finger at the excesses misses a fundamental point about emerging markets and Net startups. In both cases, we’re talking about frontier economies with few rules or traditional guideposts. It’s a Wild West where no one really knows what will work and what won’t.

Joelle Tessler in the Wall Street Journal.

Looking at the smaller, more speculative names, Steve Harmon ... said these companies “have been given a chance to prove themselves in the Internet space” – and now must do just that.

“They were undiscovered and now they are discovered,” he said. “Now they have to produce the goods. ... People are expecting a happy ending.”

I should probably add that these quotes were picked very selectively. And that they’re all from the years 1998 and 1999.

Is This a Bubble? by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (11)

>> More posts

Advertisement