The ride before the fall. An inside scoop on the high-tech stock market bust

The market capitalization of many high-tech firms came down in a short period of time right around the turn of the millennium. There is no question that this was a shock to many people and disruptive to the economy as a whole. Stock options became worthless, Some investors lost a fortune in paper wealth. Other people lost their jobs. To be sure, some part of reevaluation of technology companies involved the absence of clothes on the dot-com emperor. Many did not want to admit their earlier, overoptimistic economic forecasts, and so did not recognize the beginning of the fall. Further, the events of 11 September made an already bad situation worse. That said, this event only provides part of the story; the reevaluation of high-tech firms started prior to September. The reevaluation also extended beyond new firms to the big leaders among them, such as Yahoo.