1/ Lessons From The Tech Bubble:

Last year, I spent my winter holiday reading hundreds of pages of equity research from the 1999/2000 era, to try to understand what it was like investing during the bubble

A few people recently asked me for my takeaways. Here they are -

2/ Every document hereon comes from my former employer Bernstein Research's internal research archive, which extend back to 1994

Unfortunately, they're not available to the public (even Bernstein's client website cuts off at 2003), but happy to give more details if necessary

3/ LESSON #1: Everybody knew it was a bubble

Unfortunately, the quip "it's not a bubble if everyone says it is" just isn't true

Investors were comparing the internet sector to tulip mania as early as mid-98. Bernstein held an entire conference on it in June 99!

4/ LESSON #2: Calling bubbles is easy, making money is hard

In truth, the hard part about the tech bubble wasn't noticing it. The hard part was timing it

Our equity strategist tried in January 99... he was off by 14 months (and another 30 point gap in value vs growth)

5/ LESSON #3: Nobody knew the bubble popped until months after it did

Nobody noticed in March 2000 when it finally popped. Our equity strategist (who bet his career on it!) didn't catch on until June