I'm feeling a little lonely out here. Of course, some winners will emerge. It's easy to project out from what's happening and get ahead of the market. He looks for 50 to 100 companies to survive but concedes that it's hard to tell now given the weakness of the overall economy, especially the tech sector. We're clearly in Internet Meltdown, Phase Two, where dot-com failures are being followed by a wholesale rethinking of the value of Internet technology.
Many analysts sum up today's speedy downturn as the mirror image of the earlier ascent.
It was the unprecedented growth at some of the early stars that created the excitement over the Internet's potential. In many ways, this spectacular growth fed the boom in the technology sector. Whether it was a desire to participate or the fear of missing out, traditional businesses spent big to keep up. Meanwhile, telecom companies borrowed billions to rapidly build out the networks. It hasn't worked that way.