Memory lane 1999: could I have become a dot.com millionaire after all?

Recently I cleaned out old brokerage records from the boomtimes of the late 90ies/early 2000. Like probably all of us around that time, I had traded in the in-stocks like Amazon, AOL, Dell, Cisco, Intel and CNET that showed infinite promise and riches (Apple at that time was of course a complete no-go as the most unexciting stock right after Philip Morris).

While I was looking at the sheets of buy and sell, I thought to myself: what if I had not traded but had done a simply invest-and-forget strategy. Could I have been a millionaire by now?

So let's take a look where I would stand today with a typical investment of 10.000 USD in each of those stocks from let's party 'til it's October 5th, 1999 (Stock splits already factored in, all before taxes, amounts rounded for simplification)

What do you think? Gain or Pain after 13 years? The answer after the break.



Amazon: Gain of around 19800 USD - the clear winner, the only solid company after 13 years with good returns.
Dell: Loss of around 6400 USD - well, WTF is Dell after the return of Apple and the resurgence of HP and Lenovo.
Cisco: Loss of around 5000 USD - Interestingly Cisco is still a major player in the Enterprise market, but clearly not from an investors perspective.
Intel: Loss of around 2100 USD - A company as strong as Intel, still around to kick butt, but could never make up the bubble burst.
AOL: Loss of around 7000 USD - Clearly the loser of our little game. The Time Warner debacle and failure to reinvent into whatever brought the medium of the masses into nothingness.
CNET: Loss of around 6500 USD - Close second. CNET had started out in the portal game with interesting subdivisions like Buy.com and Download.com but metamorphed into blogger and consumer advice platform in the first decade of the 2Ks before being snatched by CBS in 2008 (I factored that trade into the calculation). Hadn't CBS brought CNET, they would have come first loser in our little game. Saved by the old media bell!


You do the math. On the good side, I didn't need to have worried about the final outcome. Not a chance to become a millionaire, au contraire.  Bubble remains bubble, even after 13 years and the trench is still deep. Overall from an investment of then 60.000 USD, my today cash value would have been around 53.000 USD. When I factor-in inflation over that period my cash value would be even more meagre: 41.000 USD.

But interesting times, altogether. I remember sitting in a mid-town east Manhattan Steak restaurant for lunch, discusssing the heating of the market in April 1998, watching the ticker on the business channel and Pointcast (anyone remember that?).