How long will the good times roll?
When it came to picking stocks, folks of reasonably sane mind were absolutely ga-ga about "dotcom" IPOs in 1999.
No matter that 93 percent of the Internet companies going public made no money and that relatively few of them had the remotest chance of making a red cent anytime soon, investors were not going to be denied.
The objective was to get in while the getting was good. And the getting was undeniably good for lots of people.
Perhaps not as many as you might think after reading so many breathless magazine accounts of option-endowed yuppies snapping up fancy cars and high-priced homes. Still, if you were smart or just lucky, it was Fat City, baby.
And what a party it was! The investment houses churned out volumes of weekly reports recounting the ways in which the Internet was transforming the way people communicated and the economy.
THE big deal
Nobody needed to twist arms to buy that argument: This fin de siecle phenomenon was indeed revolutionary -- and sure to remain THE big deal for the foreseeable future.
That enthusiasm helped account for a tripling in the price of the average Internet IPO last year.
But will people retain that voracious appetite? Will -- or should -- the stock market continue to reward every Tom, Dick or Harry dotcom that comes to market?
Tough questions, to be sure, though whenever somebody starts talking about how a "new paradigm" has fashioned a "new economy," I walk away wondering whether I've just been treated to a display of keen insight or certifiable lunacy.
Considering the chronic shortage of the former compared with the overabundance of the latter -- at least during the past two millennia -- I'm going to start the New Year hoping one of my predictions for the Year 2000 turns out to be wrong.
Keeping up with the Joneses
But barring a sudden reversal of human nature, I can't escape the gnawing feeling that it's all about to come crashing down on our heads.
Greed, envy and the gut fear that sitting out the dance will leave the guy down the block doing better than you ... are all as true today as they were in 1929.
Recall what happened to other businesses that wrought major changes to society in the last hundred years.
After early fortunes were made investing in the railroad and auto industries as well as in radio and television, a lot of people lost their shirts during the natural cool-down and consolidation that followed.
Unless you believe the Internet has repealed fundamental laws of business, the day's not going to be far off when people will again embrace the quaint notion that companies should actually make money.
Remember Cassandra
That will be bad news for a lot of soon-to-be-former dotcoms -- as well as any number of junior Warren Buffetts who have cashed in on the passions of the moment. In the meantime, snap on your seatbelts.
Of course that's a distinctly minority view -- "We got past Y2K and we'll get past any Cassandra-like prophesies," goes the rejoinder to the doom-and-gloom crowd.
Well, I do hope I'm wrong, though I do recall that Cassandra ultimately did get it right.