Remember when MSFT and DELL were the hottest stocks around? Many of you young punks were in diapers when MSFT and DELL were ripping higher 4 points per day. Or how about when INTC had separately traded warrants INTCW? I made a fucking killing in those.
Before DELL won the PC battle, Gateway computer, ticker GTW, was just as hot. They had that cow shit going on and people loved GTW. Anyone remember when U.S. Robotix was independently traded? The ticker was USRX.
Into the dot com bubble, naturally American Online, ticker AMER, was supreme. Then the idea of high speed internet access resonated, sending shares of At Home, ticker ATHM, through the roof. I made a million in that stock. All of the network plays were on fire and the big theme was “B to B” stocks or Business to Business internet names.
Remember when QCOM split at $1,000 per share?
To get stock quotes, sometimes I called up an automated service provided by Charles Schwab from a subway payphone.
One of my largest positions in 1999 was a little telecom company called Global Light Telecom. I rode it from $7 to $20. Eventually it went to zero, like most stocks back then. But before the bubble era, during the 1990’s, there was stock market nirvana. Set aside the fucktarded LTCM and Asian contagion crisis, it was smooth sailing.
OZ Email (OZEMY) or Infoseek (SEEK) anyone?
One day I will take a picture of one of my old posting pages. Back then, at the end of each day my sales assistance would log every trade into a ledger. It was a big black book, sorted in alphabetical order, and every broker cherished it. Today everything is automated, but some retarded brokers still maintain a book. Anyway, during one of my hot streaks, I remember going 30 for 30 in successfully profitable trades. Clients were mesmerized by the percentage gains and would send money in, even when I wasn’t asking for it. I was so young and making so much money, ignorant to the world around me.
Nothing was hotter than CSCO.
Fast forward to today, I am older and much angrier. I don’t have an interest in booking day trades anymore. Back then, I was the king of day trades.
Futures are up big and Italian yields are cratering. I am guessing the ECB is stepping in here, supporting Italy. However, don’t look now, but French yields are up 4%+ to 3.35%. If it breaks 3.5%, the people on the teevee will talk about it.
Bottom line: this is fucking bullshit. None of what you see makes any sense and it is one giant clusterfuck. I am making arrangements to travel back in time, as we speak, to re-trade the bull market of the 1990’s when oil was at $10 per barrel.
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I rode a pos called Rare Media ticker RRRR from
8 to 90 and back again. They were a air conditioner repair company that rebranded itself an internet company to cash in.
Good times.
I remember it well
My blessing (and curse) was ELON. Rode it from $7 to $114, and then almost round tripped it.
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HCT, dot.com-era penny stock. Made 100% gains in one hour with the girlfriend looking over my shoulder, challenging me after she suggested my trading was worthless.
AMD from $4 and change to about $90 then cashed out around $6. Hey, 50% gain can’t complain about that (rolls eyes).
VerticalNet – VERT started the B-B internet craze…but you could make money trading those names.
Now the valuations are too high at IPO and leaves nothing for the traders and the public. All these new IPOs will be lousy stocks from day 1.
EXTR was smoking hot too.
An old relic of the dot com era is SCMR. They did a secondary when the stock was $300 and held onto that money.
That is why they do like 50 mill in rev, but has a billion in cash.
Correction: they had a billion. Recent acquisitions reduced cash to 400 mill, still almost $14 in net cash.
Shotgun!
CMGI baybee!
SFE, ICGE, BYND
TASR
http://www.xcelera.com/
Was this the XLA of years ago? That co stock action was insane.
Good one. I owned it.
XLA started out as SCA (Scandinavian Company) It was some Nordic types that owned a couple of Hotels in the Bahamas. They bought a company called Mirror Image and transformed themselves into an Internet company.They changed the name of the company to Xcelera and the symbol to XLA. They were supposed to speed up the internet by putting server banks all over the world that would duplicate and relay the information along. The stock went from around $2 in early 99 to around $250 per share after George Gilder endorsed it about a year later. The stock made insanely wild swings during that year.
Indeud!
11-11-11 The future is almost here!
Oil to one million…
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/report-u-k-government-expects-israel-to-attack-iran-within-2-months-1.394760
i just started working on wall st before the dot com but was my job was to program fixed income trading systems and had no idea what was going on in stocks. got a tip from a friend to buy CMGI. wow. also got a tip from the same guy to buy Lucent systems – we all know how that turned out 🙁
I remember being enamored with stocks back in 7th grade and would stay an extra 1/2 hour after school every day to check my imaginary portfolio on the school computer(we did not have internet at home yet). It was like porn to me at the time. I watched Go2Net, now $INSP, like a hawk and convinced my father after weeks of pandering that he should buy it because it was the next Yahoo. The day after he bought some it surged over 20% and my mom told him to sell and take the money. The old man said he did not want to pay the short term capital gains tax and he would hold long. He is still holding today….
YHOO and AMZN were so thinly traded back then. RMBS came public around the same time and was equally retarded.
You are correct. This is BS.
I would enjoy seeing your old posting pages from the old days.
Even before then (you may have been in HS)there was TDM (Tandem),DEC (Digital),etc.
I started trading Fidelity Select funds (early ’80s w/ hourly quotes). It was like picking dollar bills off the tree as the quotes on some of them were about 15 minutes behind reality. Then they put in a 1% early redemption fee.
So, I switched to Scudder, Franklin,GT Global and traded Asia as they followed what the US did the day before.
After about 5-6 years they kicked me out and restricted me. I still have the certified letters.
Those were the days when the markets were not efficient (if you knew what you were doing). Make 1 trade a day and then go do something else.
ARBA CMRC
And don’t forget INKT and NSOL
Wow, INKT and NSOL. Yes.
of course “nozzle” got taken out for a song by VRSN
best throwback post i’ve read in forever. thx, Fly.
those days were great for long trading but also shorts.. remember NSOL being an ole Herb Greenberg special. soon after, there was TYC, and some Greek fraud supposedly shipping used cars to Africa where huge $$ was made. Herb nailed these.
long side, biggest/quickest winner for me was Phone.com .. PHCM.. inventor of the WAP browser.. became OPWV (chart still shows all since IPO under that ticker).. ya knew smartphones were the future.. remember going to New Orleans for 1999 CTIA convention for due diligence i since thought that sector was gonna boom.. but like GOOG/YHOO portal/search domination, later entrants buried those with 1st-mover DISadvantage.
traded that period well, banking solid long $$ on NXTL, and ironically both WCOM and ENE frauds. but believing Craig McCaw was onto something with Nextlink NXLK (later XO Communications) was largest single undoing back then. TheKnot.com website co apparently took over XOXO ticker this year. Hopefully their fade into oblivion will at least be slower than XO Comm.
most importantly, Cheers to that period of markets and more importantly, life.
bid.com
US Web.
The only stock I traded back in the late 90s was AOL since I had a real job back then. It would go up 20 points in a day and double every six months.
VRTS (Veritas Software) had a regional office near me (next door to Ticonderoga-pencil co.).
I used to see a Bentley driving around the area with tags that said “THX VRTS.”
I thought one of the most absurd names was CMDX (B2B play for the chemicals industry? who they trying to kid…). Great for swing trades, so no complaints, but it really was a total piece of shit…
good one.
I was in on the Dell IPO at $13 and had a wad of cash lined up. Then, about a week before the offering I was told that my order would be cut in half. Word on the street was that the banks wanted to gorge themselves even more and fuck the rest of us…but who the hell is complaning after 7 splits…
INSP in every place
IOM was a hottie once
IOM made my uncle enough dough to buy my aunt a sporty Jag-YOU-ARE (sic). Which she then get the NY Plate “IOMEGA” for.
_______
GCTY.
Remember when companies were renaming themselves to fit in a “.com” at the end of its name. Just on that alone, the stock would double.
Skymall
Zapata, fish oil company turned dot com
Some were not obvious like Pets.com- the sock puppet company.
Indeud. Great post. Whatever to our market?
I was working with a security SAAS (before that was cool) client back in the late 2000 period, and we went out to the Robertson Stephens conference for B2B companies in San Fran.
They had two books, one for public and one for (still) private companies. They were each about 2.5 inches thick, with one or two page descriptions for each.
I bet there are maybe 5% total of those stocks/companies still in business today. I have one of the books (the public cos) to this day and sometimes take it out to marvel at it, like it came from a different planet.
_______
I might have attended that exact conference too!
5%? I think not.
You think that’s high?
I’ve looked it over… there’s not many tickers left.
Remember it was “B2B”… remember that implosion?
________
I love Dell, I made my first buck in the stockmarket trading it. I still remember that trade – up 10% in something like a week, and I sold it for a profit.
My first great trade was a Peter Lynch type thing — TMB — Timberland… I loved their boots in college.
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Newt Gingrich says Bernanke should be fired. Penn State prexy is fired. Good shit is starting to flow uphill.
MFB sagging. The implications are frightening.
Wow Fly, INTCW..Boy do I remember those…Hotshot broker colleague shorted those and lost his ass. Then did it again by levering up IDTI from 10 to over 90. He was worth millions, and lost the whole enchilada. Lets just say he never fully recovered….
ALSC SPTR BWAY SCAI EGGS… in early 90s used to head down to my school’s lobby and call in trades on those old school monstrous phone booths… great times..being able to read the value line in the school library was golden!
BWAY was a B2B. I made a killing in that one too.
I lost my ass in Onemain, ONEM and Autoweb
Those were goog old days. My wife and I were working in San Jose. Jumping jobs every 2 years for the stock options, mid 6 figure salaries, etc etc. We saved a fair bit of that money but lost a lot more in the crash. It was fun.
mid 6 figures is $500k…i don’t think you were making that much as programmers even with stock options. More like $120k.
Anyone remember the name, “NORMAN FOSBACK”?
I read his book like the Bible. I couldn’t wait to get to the school library and read Barron’s. Seemed like I was the only one. Then IBD came out and I thought I found the Holy Grail….
Where is that magic Hot Tub????
I remember him.
I used to the public library and read the newletter for Joseph Granville.
He wasn’t too swift on market turns (except for calling the ’82 bull run) but was a genius when it came to gold stocks like ECO (Echo Bay), SSC (Sunshine Mining), HM (Homestake), PDG (Placer Dome), etc.
He invented the OBV (on balance volume) indicator.
The Gilder Report.
Do you remember when he dressed like Jesus and came out walking on water? It was a couple of years nefore I started, but they never let hom forget it. #HUBRIS
Our neighbor made $75k in a year off of one stock, probably more than she made at work. We called her Miss TLTK. Remember that one?
And don’t mention UFEM. (“Feminine products”)My wife’s female broker had her heavily invested in that. Apart from the products being terrible, they had a CEO sexual harrassment issue, too.
effin’ ONVI and FMKT
I also remember how much money I almost made from Beanie babies. Bought those little fuckers at $5 and they would be worth $100 once they retired. I had no idea why I didn’t sell, if only to sell 1 at $100 and buy 20 more with the money and then realizing how much money I had made, I would have at least tucked some away.
I remember the biotech craze. AMGN went vertical and doubled in a year.
Meanwhile HGSI made AMGN look like a treasury bond. HGSI was like a nuke toa firecracker.
Of course I was super young like in my early teens trading paper money accounts on the dial up internet thinking I would start investing my allowance and be a millionaire by the age of 20.
Anything with the ending GEN or GN in the ticker symbol or company name was good.
Everyone was waiting for a company to cure cancer.
As for tech
Intel I remember very well, and dell. yahoo and other dot com. OH and lets not forget CSCO! and JNPR!
They were all going to change the world!
I made 4000% in 2 months and lost 100% in a matter of days. All with options. Those were great times.
Cybercash CYCH
They were Paypal before Paypal.
Time machine! Go back and buy everything and then short and buy gold in 2000.
Other periods worth going back in time for are
1)1920 to buy stocks
2)1929 before the crash to go short
3)1932 toget long anything.
4)1970 to get long silver 1980 to sell my gold and get long stocks
2007 right at the top to go super leveraged short.
All you old timers are going to lose your shirts to the younger guys on the street. Just like any sport – it’s the young blood that wins..
This market is like a video game (and not the Commodore64 type) .. this shit is in 1080p !!
I win – you lose!
I was working at a dot com during the dot com era so I was quite close to the day to day changes. I made 700% gains in just over a year, I shit you not.
INSP and CMGI were my two favorites.
Then it all crashed and I rode that gain down 70%. I flew across the country to install a $1M piece of equipment for a contract with AOL. One month later AOL took the contract away and repo men showed up at the datacenter to pull that equipment. That should have been a warning sign, but back then stocks only went up.
Take a look at archive.org and punch in a few of your favorite websites. You will crack up at how bad your favorite websites from 2000 look now.
Back then I worked for a ERP company called Baan (BAANF). Back then, it was the biggest competitor to SAP. One day it was revealed that the founders – two dutch twins – were doing some shady business with their stocks and it went from $60 to $1.90 within 6 months, right in the middle of the golden era of the tech bubble.
I’d be remiss not to mention PurchasePro.com (PPRO).. created many millionaires (before drama kicked in) here in Lexington KY.
http://www.webpronews.com/purchasepro-founder-gets-9-years-2008-11
Perfect opportunity to ask.. anyone know sites/services that have old stock charts/data for defunct companies ?
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