Nasdaq Peaks at 5132: Dot-Com Boom Climax
The Nasdaq Composite Index reached its all-time peak of 5,048.62 on March 10, 2000, capping a speculative frenzy that had driven technology stocks to valuations divorced from any rational assessment of their earning potential. Companies with no revenue and no clear path to profitability were valued at billions of dollars. Pets.com had spent .8 million on a Super Bowl advertisement and would be out of business within nine months. Webvan raised million in its IPO and burned through it in eighteen months. The crash, when it came, was devastating: the Nasdaq lost nearly 78 percent of its value over the next two and a half years, falling to 1,114 by October 2002. Over trillion in paper wealth evaporated. Companies that had been celebrated as the future of commerce simply ceased to exist. The handful that survived, including Amazon and eBay, did so by finding actual business models. The Nasdaq did not return to its 2000 peak until 2015.
March 10, 2000
26 years ago
Key Figures & Places
What Else Happened on March 10
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