1/ In September 1993, then-Microsoft exec Nathan Myhrvold wrote his landmark memo "Road Kill on the Information Highway", laying out a dozen-ish predictions on the rise of the internet

27 years later, I think it's a super interesting case study. Let's evaluate the predictions -

2/ PREDICTION #1: The rise of a surveillance society - police bodycams, CCTV, 24/7 personal recording, and deepfakes

GRADE: A-

Pretty close!

3/ PREDICTION #2: Telecommuting, an end to the "tyranny of geography" and gerrymandering

GRADE: B-

Alas, the electoral college still matters today. The WFH prediction hits closer, but turns out it took two and a half decades + a pandemic to get things going

4/ PREDICTION #3: Telco convergence - phone companies become cable providers and vice versa

GRADE: A-

Honestly this one was a bit of a layup, although it took 15 years longer than anyone expected

5/ PREDICTION #4: The rise of online neo-banks

GRADE: C

Three decades later, and physical banks still exist. Neobanks have a presence in emerging markets, UK, and basically nowhere else. Regulatory inertia: officially a thing

1/ Lessons From The Tech Bubble:

Last year, I spent my winter holiday reading hundreds of pages of equity research from the 1999/2000 era, to try to understand what it was like investing during the bubble

A few people recently asked me for my takeaways. Here they are -

2/ Every document hereon comes from my former employer Bernstein Research's internal research archive, which extend back to 1994

Unfortunately, they're not available to the public (even Bernstein's client website cuts off at 2003), but happy to give more details if necessary

3/ LESSON #1: Everybody knew it was a bubble

Unfortunately, the quip "it's not a bubble if everyone says it is" just isn't true

Investors were comparing the internet sector to tulip mania as early as mid-98. Bernstein held an entire conference on it in June 99!

4/ LESSON #2: Calling bubbles is easy, making money is hard

In truth, the hard part about the tech bubble wasn't noticing it. The hard part was timing it

Our equity strategist tried in January 99... he was off by 14 months (and another 30 point gap in value vs growth)

5/ LESSON #3: Nobody knew the bubble popped until months after it did

Nobody noticed in March 2000 when it finally popped. Our equity strategist (who bet his career on it!) didn't catch on until June