Barry Ritholtz, Columnist

Looking Back at a Bearish Call on Amazon

Twenty years ago, how could Barron’s or anyone else know what would become of an internet bookseller?

May 31, 2019 at 4:15 PM UTC

Barry Ritholtz is a former Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is chairman and chief investment officer of Ritholtz Wealth Management, and was previously chief market strategist at Maxim Group. He is the author of “Bailout Nation.”

No one saw this coming.
Photographer: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

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So often, it is difficult to distinguish the things we think we know from those we can have no idea about. An especially vivid illustration of this is a column published 20 years ago today in Barron's about Amazon.com. “Amazon.bomb” reveals not only the state of the dot-com bubble and how far markets were off their leash in on May 31, 1999, but the eternal truth that it is impossible to see into the future.

At the time, Barron’s, alarmed at how far company valuations had risen, was warning about market risks, especially in the technology sector. In this, the editors were early, but they would be proved correct.