Instead of Criticizing Tech Valuations, Embrace Them
Most investors in the stock market haven’t figured out how to price in products that have yet to be created.
Elon Musk’sTesla has led technology stocks to record highs.
Photographer: Saul Martinez/Getty Images
The Covid-19 pandemic may have hurt the economy, but for technology stocks it feels like 1999 again. The Nasdaq Composite Index just reached a record high having rebounded about 50% from its low of the year in March. The stock market is not the economy, but it does feel strange for stocks to be soaring in the middle of a deep recession.
The difference is timescale: stock prices represent revenue and earnings very far out into the future, not today. If plans for new technology are sound, the outlook can still look bright even though the present seems gloomy. The rationale for sky-high valuations for tech stocks in the late 1990s also came from projected profits in the decades to come. These so-called concept stocks won investors through a compelling story about future potential, even though the company in the near term would generate little-to-nothing in terms of real revenue.