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Here’s something you might enjoy.

This link will take you to the Yahoo Message board posts for Cisco’s stock on March 27, 2000. That was the highest day for the hottest stock of the era. These posters are so madly in love with their stock it’s almost funny. Absolutely no criticism is allowed. Just look at the posts. They have a religious intensity to them.

Some background: Cisco’s market cap had just surpassed Microsoft’s and it was the most valuable company in the world. Dear lord, what were they thinking? The NASDAQ Composite actually peaked at 5,000 two weeks earlier, but the most popular index, the NASDAQ 100, kept climbing and peaked on this day.

The stock opened at $81-7/16 (yuck, remember those awful fractions) and climbed to $82 that morning. At 10:58 am is the first reference to a downgrade from David F. Powers at Edward Jones (boy, he was not popular with the board). Powers merely downgraded it to a Hold from a Buy, but that triggered a minor sell-off.

Within 13 months, Cisco’s stock dropped by 84%. In October 2002, it reached its low of $8.12 a share, a staggering 90% drop. Even today, the shares are still 75% below the day of these posts.

To browse through the posts, just click on the “>” thing by the date and time. I apologize for the language and general moronic nature of the posts, but this is exactly what the investing mind is like.

Enjoy.

Posted by edelfenbein at August 23, 2006 3:05 PM