, Columnist
Nasdaq 100 Peaked a Year Ago. Now We Know It Was a Bubble.
Valuations look somewhat sane again, but the pain may not be over entirely.
The tech-heavy benchmark has tumbled 30% since its peak.
Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg
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If it looks like a bubble, it probably is one. That’s the lesson from the Nasdaq 100 Stock Index on the one-year anniversary of its all-time high. In the ensuing 12 months, the tech-heavy benchmark has tumbled 30%, and some of its most high-flying members have lost three-quarters of their value.
In retrospect, that shouldn’t surprise anyone. A casual glance at the index’s multiples in November 2021 would have indicated a remarkable 30 times price-to-forward-earnings multiple, a historical aberration outside of the dot-com bubble of the early 2000s.