The article below provides an interesting glimpse, comparing today’s Nasdaq to the bubble of the late 1990’s. There is no doubt that conditions in the index aren’t anything near as frothy as during that period, particularly for the “old” technology stocks such as Cisco (CSCO), Microsoft (MSFT) and Intel (INTC). Even newer stocks that are dominating their respective markets such as Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG) aren’t trading at extremely high multiples. Instead I believe that it is in “Cloud” stocks such as Salesforce.com (CRM), Amazon (AMZN) that are quite expensive. These companies clearly are in very good nitches, particularly Amazon, which is dominant, but the market has extrapolated their revenue growth rate too far into the future, while bolstering margins at the same time. Just as bad are the valuations of Netflix (NFLX), LinkedIn (LNKD) and Tesla (TSLA). Once again, these are exciting businesses but price is what you pay and value is what you get, and the value just doesn’t seem to be there at current valuations. Don’t be surprised to see market participants speculating on these stocks to see 50-60% losses at some point when valuations correct. It could take quite some time for this to happen but there is far more risk than reward in my opinion. The Nasdaq itself is reasonably priced so I certainly agree with the premise of the article but I’m surprised the author didn’t talk about the frothy parts of the Nasdaq currently.