When compared to the blind plunge of largely inexperienced investors into buying Internet stocks, the legendary mass suicide of lemmings begins to look like a sensible move.
The lemmings at least have the chance of being washed up safely on a distant shore. Most of those who fed the Internet craze face simply being washed up, along with many of the firms listed on the Nasdaq.
Other listings are falling by the hour on tech-stock markets all around the world. In the present panic, even that minority of companies with sound business plans and genuine prospects for growth could become casualties as the speculators rush to escape the fallout.
February's Tom.com frenzy was a glaring example of speculators driven by the get-rich-quick instinct. The corollary to that is the get-out-fast urge that is now making the Nasdaq and the Growth Enterprise Market (GEM) yo-yo drunkenly. This leaves even financial analysts unsure whether the bubble has burst or if this is merely a long-overdue correction that should restore sanity to the new economy.
It is ironic that the fall has been triggered by the tribulations of Microsoft, perhaps the world's most profitable and successful tech-stock firm. It is one of the select few in the new economy that innovates and manufactures, and whose earnings growth over time seems assured, whether it is divided up or left intact after its legal difficulties.
Given that most of the Internet firms rushing to list on the new stock exchanges are driven by little more than a promising idea and a surfeit of hope, it is hard to fathom why tech-stocks took off in such spectacular fashion. Once started, the rush prompted all sorts of unlikely sounding enterprises, such as yesterday's announcement that the exclusive Joyce boutiques are launching into cyberspace.
