Behind the numbers Internet stocks and how they are valued was the subject of paper from Mohan Venkatachalam, assistant professor of accounting at the Graduate School of Business. Venkatachalam debunked traditional measures such as price-earnings ratios. Venkatachalam concluded that managerial actions, such as acquisitions and distribution alliances, were important in driving stock prices. Also highly valued by the market was traffic to companies' websites because it is a predictor of future sales. Varian said printed documents comprise only 0.003 percent of the total, and magnetic storage is by far the largest medium for storing information.
Digital content comprises the largest amount of information and is the fastest growing.
Joyce Routson is a freelance writer.