They said it not me.

Technology Shares Slip, Drag Nasdaq Lower

By Amy Collins

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The red-hot, technology-heavy Nasdaq composite index slipped in early afternoon trading on Thursday as losses in semiconductor and Internet stocks helped erase a week of record gains.

The Nasdaq composite index .IXIC) was down 51 points, or 1.44 percent, at 3,534 after setting a new intra-day record of 3,647.55. The difference between its high and low for the day was 133 points.

The Dow Jones Industrial average .DJI) was up 48 points, or 0.44 percent, at 11,116 after rising to 11,204.21 earlier in the session.

Some analysts were saying the Nasdaq highs have gotten to absurd levels. ``We've been riding an incredibly hot streak and it has gotten into la-la land,'' said John Brooks, a technical analyst at Notley Information Service. ``Look at the deal that came out today -- people should be laughing at these.''

The deal of the day was VA Linux Systems Inc., a maker of computer systems and servers that run the Linux operating system, which was up nearly 800 percent at 265 from its $30 initial offering price.

``The IPO market is out of control,'' said Ricky Harrington, a technical analyst and senior vice president at Wachovia Securities in Charlotte. N.C. ``People are buying stocks for the wrong reasons,'' he said, noting that Nasdaq was up 38 percent in only 35 sessions. ''This market looks extremely dangerous right now.''

Harrington said there is a ``great chance'' that Nasdaq will lose 40 percent to 50 percent of its value before February.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index .SPX) was down 5 points, or 0.38 percent, at 1,398.

The U.S. Treasury 30-year bond was up 5/32 with the yield, which moves in the opposite direction, slipping to 6.21 percent from 6.23 percent Wednesday. 12-09-99

-- y2k dave (xsdaa111@hotmail.com), December 09, 1999

Answers

Irrational exuberance?....+ 3 years?

-- Charles R. (chuck_roast@trans.net), December 09, 1999.

http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/991209/18.html

-- Linkmeister (link@librarian.edu), December 09, 1999.

Gawd!!! How can ANYONE in their right minds not notice the WILD SWINGS of the NASDAQ (and DOW) -- "record high" one minute, plummeting down the next -- and not see that this is MADNESS???!!!! These "hot tech" stocks offer NOTHING of substance. NOTHING!!!!

"Mania" doesn't even do justice, here. The crash of '29 is going to pale by comparison, Y2K or no Y2K.

-- King of Spain (madrid@aol.cum), December 09, 1999.

When Alan Greenspan bailed out LTCM last year, he sent tons of green spanning the financial globe. It's got to go somewhere, even if this action is a perversion. Expect this mania to get even more maniacal,parabolic, as long as CNBC and Bloomberg can invent new "cover stories". I thought a year ago, with y2k coming, that all that extra $$ would be going into hard assets, things that you could use in the new year. But that "paradigm shift" (God, I hate that term) still hasn't happened. It's still digit/paper/pretend money. Virtual economies. Virtual, except for the poor suckers (all of us) whose jobs are being turboed and living conditions destroyed in order for the big boys to be able to keep this Ponzi market going.....like, yeah, my retirment portfolio is up because my HMO stock went up...but I died at the hospital because of HMO conditionalities...

-- TIshaminga (steverromano@eaton.com), December 09, 1999.

This Mania Moonshot will unexpectedly crash-land with few survivors.

-- dinosaur (dinosaur@williams-net.com), December 09, 1999.

TIshaminga, hot money alone does not explain the Nasdaq run up. Hot money, if it was sane, would still head for the better values. Companies with earnings, or at least prospects of earnings. For these net stocks to move the way they do, there have to be just a ton of people willing to gamble, thinking they cannot lose.

And as for dropping by 50%, that wouldn't even begin to put it back into sane territory....

-- You Know... (notme@nothere.junk), December 10, 1999.