Seminar paper from the year 2012 in the subject Business economics - Banking, Stock Exchanges, Insurance, Accounting, grade: 1,3, Technical University of Applied Sciences Mittelhessen, language: English, abstract: The Dotcom bubble, also known as the ‘Internet bubble’ or the ‘Information technology bubble’ was a speculative bubble of stock prices of mainly American Internet companies during the time from 1995 until 2000 when many investors believed that a ‘new era’ was upon them. In only two years, the Internet sector grew over 1000% of its public equity and equalled nearly 6% of the market capitalization of the United States and over 20% of all public traded equity volume in the US. It had its peak on March 10, 2000 with a NASDAQ score of 5,048.62. This period was characterized by lots of establishments of companies in the Internet sector. They were called ‘Dotcom Companies’ because of the ‘.com’ in the end of an URL that comes from the word ‘commercial’. The bubble burst during the years 2000 until 2002 when the NASDAQ lost nearly 80% of its value, many companies like Pets.com failed completely and over $7 trillion in market value were destroyed. With this paper, the author tries to explain the rise and fall of Internet stock prices during that period. For this purpose, the general causes and characteristics of financial bubbles get described before the application to the Dotcom bubble follows. Additionally, some company examples and survivors and losers of the bubble like pets.com, Webvan or Ebay get introduced. Because the bubble mainly took place in the United States, the author will focus on American company examples and the American stock exchange.

Why do stock and housing markets sometimes experience amazing booms followed by massive busts and why is this happening more and more frequently? In order to answer these questions, William Quinn and John D. Turner take us on a riveting ride through the history of financial bubbles, visiting, among other places, Paris and London in 1720, Latin America in the 1820s, Melbourne in the 1880s, New York in the 1920s, Tokyo in the 1980s, Silicon Valley in the 1990s and Shanghai in the 2000s. As they do so, they help us understand why bubbles happen, and why some have catastrophic economic, social and political consequences whilst others have actually benefited society. They reveal that bubbles start when investors and speculators react to new technology or political initiatives, showing that our ability to predict future bubbles will ultimately come down to being able to predict these sparks.

The authors challenge this view here and develop two alternative interpretations. Both are based on the notion that a bubble (the "dot-com" bubble) has been driving the stock market, but differ in their assumptions about the interactions between this bubble and fiscal policy (the "Bush" deficits). The "benevolent" view holds that a change in investor sentiment led to the collapse of the dot-com bubble and the Bush deficits were a welfare-improving policy response to this event. The "cynical" view holds instead that the Bush deficits led to the collapse of the dot-com bubble as the new administration tried to appropriate rents from foreign investors. The authors discuss the implications of each of these views for the future evolution of the U.S. economy and, in particular, its net foreign asset position."

An analysis of the inflated business potential of the Internet.

This is a sceptical history of the internet/stock market boom. John Cassidy argues that what we have just witnessed wasn't simply a stock market bubble; it was a social and cultural phenomenon driven by broad historical forces. Cassidy explains how these forces combined to produce the buying hysteria that drove the prices of loss-making companies into the stratosphere. Much has been made of Alan Greenspan's phrase irrational exuberance, but Cassidy shows that there was nothing irrational about what happened. The people involved - fund managers, stock analysts, journalists and pundits - were simply acting in their own self-interest.

“An incisive history of the venture-capital industry.” —New Yorker “An excellent and original economic history of venture capital.” —Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution “A detailed, fact-filled account of America’s most celebrated moneymen.” —New Republic “Extremely interesting, readable, and informative...Tom Nicholas tells you most everything you ever wanted to know about the history of venture capital, from the financing of the whaling industry to the present multibillion-dollar venture funds.” —Arthur Rock “In principle, venture capital is where the ordinarily conservative, cynical domain of big money touches dreamy, long-shot enterprise. In practice, it has become the distinguishing big-business engine of our time...[A] first-rate history.” —New Yorker VC tells the riveting story of how the venture capital industry arose from America’s longstanding identification with entrepreneurship and risk-taking. Whether the venture is a whaling voyage setting sail from New Bedford or the latest Silicon Valley startup, VC is a state of mind as much as a way of doing business, exemplified by an appetite for seeking extreme financial rewards, a tolerance for failure and experimentation, and a faith in the promise of innovation to generate new wealth. Tom Nicholas’s authoritative history takes us on a roller coaster of entrepreneurial successes and setbacks. It describes how iconic firms like Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia invested in Genentech and Apple even as it tells the larger story of VC’s birth and evolution, revealing along the way why venture capital is such a quintessentially American institution—one that has proven difficult to recreate elsewhere.

A study of asset price bubbles and the implications for preventing financial instability.

RISE, FALL AND RETURN The Prince of Silicon Valley traces the rise of the foremost investment banker of the Internet stock-market bubble, from the back streets of South Philadelphia to the peak of finance as the highest paid banker on Wall Street. From Cisco to Netscape to Amazon, Frank Quattrone took some of the biggest names in technology public. During the bubble years of 1999 and 2000, his California-based technology banking group led the most hot initial public offerings, which lifted the entire stock market to record heights. But after the bubble burst, the hot stocks cooled and ordinary investors lost billions. It emerged that brokers in Quattrone's firm had created lucrative investment accounts, stuffed with hot IPOs, for banking clients who became known as "Friends of Frank." Some of the brokers, regulators charged, cut off other investors who refused to pay back a share of their IPO profits. And so Quattrone and his firm became embroiled in no less than four different investigations of bubble-related misconduct, culminating in two criminal trials against Quattrone for obstruction of justice, the first resulting in a mistrial, the second in a conviction in 2004. After his conviction was overturned by an appeals court in 2006, Quattrone returned in triumph to the banking business, advising no less than Internet search giant Google on corporate strategy. But the story of his fall from grace, however temporary, remains a cautionary tale of ambition gone wrong--of a Wall Street Icarus who flew too close to the sun. 'The Prince of Silicon Valley' is an absorbing noir detective story of the investigations and trials that brought him to the brink of disaster.

In less than a decade, the Internet went from being a series of loosely connected networks used by universities and the military to the powerful commercial engine it is today. This book describes how many of the key innovations that made this possible came from entrepreneurs and iconoclasts who were outside the mainstream—and how the commercialization of the Internet was by no means a foregone conclusion at its outset. Shane Greenstein traces the evolution of the Internet from government ownership to privatization to the commercial Internet we know today. This is a story of innovation from the edges. Greenstein shows how mainstream service providers that had traditionally been leaders in the old-market economy became threatened by innovations from industry outsiders who saw economic opportunities where others didn't—and how these mainstream firms had no choice but to innovate themselves. New models were tried: some succeeded, some failed. Commercial markets turned innovations into valuable products and services as the Internet evolved in those markets. New business processes had to be created from scratch as a network originally intended for research and military defense had to deal with network interconnectivity, the needs of commercial users, and a host of challenges with implementing innovative new services. How the Internet Became Commercial demonstrates how, without any central authority, a unique and vibrant interplay between government and private industry transformed the Internet.

For a heady nine months, until the spring of 2000, Britain had dot.com fever. Lastminute.com's youthful founders saw their fledgling company soar to a valuation of £750 million, and Martha Lane Fox became a media star. Clickmango.com raised £3 million in just days to sell helth products online. Old-style industrial giantswere edged out of the FTSE 100 by e-commerce newcomers employing handfuls of people and losing a fortune... And then, just as swiftly, the bubble burst. London's hi-tech stocks followed New York's Nasdaq downwards. Boo.com, the flashiest website of all, went through £100 million in mere months in its mission to see designer sports gear. Financial analysts talked about 'burn-rate', and even the most glamorous start-ups couldn't defy the oldest law of business. Why did it all go so horribly wrong? Now, Rory Cellan-Jones tells the full story of this brief, fabulous, often farcical epoch, from our own now-forgotten Net pioneers to the exclusive few who really did make untold riches - like the man who thought up Freeserve - and follows the destinies of the dot.coms all the way from the glitzy launch to the deserted offices after all the cash had been burned through. Dot.Bomb is the compulsive tale of a never-to-be-repeated time when it seemed anyone could become an instant millionaire - at the click of a mouse.