<story><title>It&apos;s 2019, but It Sure Feels a Lot Like 1998 for Stocks</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-11-26/2019-markets-and-economy-feel-like-1998-tech-bull-market</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mikestew</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m trying really hard to think of a recent IPO of a profitable company. Companies in 1998 had &amp;quot;actual revenues and profits&amp;quot;, Pets.com was just not one of them. I worked at Microsoft during that time, and they were making money hand-over-fist. Pretty sure Oracle was raking it in. Hell, even Sun wasn&amp;#x27;t looking &lt;i&gt;bad&lt;/i&gt;. Same deal today: MSFT is &lt;i&gt;still&lt;/i&gt; making it by the semi-load, Apple is still making me money (and a dividend, which you weren&amp;#x27;t getting in 1998). I could go on.&lt;p&gt;But you&amp;#x27;re not wrong, there is a difference: crap like Uber doesn&amp;#x27;t shoot to the moon on opening day. Or, as you put it, people aren&amp;#x27;t throwing money at them, hence Uber (et. al) still sitting under IPO price. That&amp;#x27;s what I think might save us from a repeat of early 2000s. Hair stylists aren&amp;#x27;t giving me stock advice these days, either.</text></item><item><author>imgabe</author><text>I was only in high school in 1998, but at least old enough to be aware of things like the stock market. It doesn&amp;#x27;t feel anything like the Internet 1.0 bubble. For one thing, the companies today have actual revenues and profits. People are not blindly throwing money at every .com IPO that comes out.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Ididntdothis</author><text>“crap like Uber doesn&amp;#x27;t shoot to the moon on opening day”&lt;p&gt;I think the main reason for this is that all the upside and speculation has already been taken by earlier investors and an IPO is done only when there is basically no upside left. In 1998 Uber would have gone IPO much earlier and retail investors would have driven up the price, not the VCs as it’s done now.&lt;p&gt;What’s common is that we have a lot of companies who don’t even have the slightest idea how to become profitable other than a miracle happening.&lt;p&gt;Not sure how this will end but judging from 2002 and following it won’t be pretty for a lot of people that are flying high in the current market.</text></comment>
<story><title>It&apos;s 2019, but It Sure Feels a Lot Like 1998 for Stocks</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-11-26/2019-markets-and-economy-feel-like-1998-tech-bull-market</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mikestew</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m trying really hard to think of a recent IPO of a profitable company. Companies in 1998 had &amp;quot;actual revenues and profits&amp;quot;, Pets.com was just not one of them. I worked at Microsoft during that time, and they were making money hand-over-fist. Pretty sure Oracle was raking it in. Hell, even Sun wasn&amp;#x27;t looking &lt;i&gt;bad&lt;/i&gt;. Same deal today: MSFT is &lt;i&gt;still&lt;/i&gt; making it by the semi-load, Apple is still making me money (and a dividend, which you weren&amp;#x27;t getting in 1998). I could go on.&lt;p&gt;But you&amp;#x27;re not wrong, there is a difference: crap like Uber doesn&amp;#x27;t shoot to the moon on opening day. Or, as you put it, people aren&amp;#x27;t throwing money at them, hence Uber (et. al) still sitting under IPO price. That&amp;#x27;s what I think might save us from a repeat of early 2000s. Hair stylists aren&amp;#x27;t giving me stock advice these days, either.</text></item><item><author>imgabe</author><text>I was only in high school in 1998, but at least old enough to be aware of things like the stock market. It doesn&amp;#x27;t feel anything like the Internet 1.0 bubble. For one thing, the companies today have actual revenues and profits. People are not blindly throwing money at every .com IPO that comes out.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>paulpauper</author><text>Uber did not shoot to the moon because all the gains were made in the private instead of public market.&lt;p&gt;Today&amp;#x27;s companies , even if they have losses, are cash-flow positive. They are operating at a profit but reinvesting those profits on large capital expenditures, which produce  losses. This is similar to Amazon, Tesla, Netflix, and Salesforce.</text></comment>