The eternal claim of bubble-deniers is “This time it’s different!”
This does not prove or disprove anything, of course. But it does make “This time it’s different!” an insufficient proof of something not being a bubble.
This does not prove or disprove anything, of course. But it does make “This time it’s different!” an insufficient proof of something not being a bubble.
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Is d4vlx mistaken? If so tell us how.
My comment does not show that it is a bubble, nor was I trying to do so. The most that could be claimed is that I was trying to show that the possibility that it is a bubble still exists.
"This time is different" is normally referring to "tech is changing the world, we don't need he profits, it will grow forever, this time it's different" or "they don't make any more land, housing prices will grow forever, this time it's different". It's not at all the same things to point out that the scale of the bubble is much smaller. Lumping the two together produces a strong impression that your comment is disingenuous.
1) I don't see it effecting the tech industry as a whole to the level it did then.
2) It's not leaking out of the tech industry into the media, other industries, the financial world or popular perception to the same extent.
3) The amount of money flowing into tech and especially startups is significantly less now (proportionally).
4) There are many established business models that use the internet now while in 1999 there was much more speculation and few proven models.
I'm not denying it mind, but I too was there in the 90s. It was a crazy time. You would get in a taxi and the driver would be talking about stocks, giving out tips, talking about his portfolio. It was everywhere. Nowadays not so much. And outside Silly Valley, allowing for inflation tech wages have been basically flat since '01. A few years later it was the housing bubble, and everybody, everywhere was talking about property, buying, selling, renovating, letting. Now, if you put your ear to the ground, it doesn't sound like before.
But then as now, money is too cheap and money cannot stand still, it has to go somewhere, then a bit later it just evaporates. So it's bubble, but a different kind of bubble.
At any rate, there's a lot of, shall we say, underperforming froth in the tech startup world at the moment. Stuff that doesn't appear to have a direct connection of value to what's being offered. Whether it constitutes a broad marker of the tech market being in a systemic bubble is debatable, but certainly some of the ridiculousness of a bubble is visible if you watch the news float by.
It's my opinion that we don't have a broad bubble in tech. The stock market is probably getting close to a bear market. That's true enough, we've had a long bull run. But it might (I bet it's more likely) be the case that there's a "Startup" + VC/angel market inflation.