The Big Picture

Vincent Boland: Today’s tech rout is a big deal but it’s nothing like the 2000 bust

Technology stocks around the world are tumbling, but the damage doesn’t compare to the great dotcom disaster of 22 years ago – at least not yet

Traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange: tech stocks collectively have fallen by 30 per cent, but we’re not quite at the dotcom crash stage yet. Picture: Getty

In the months after the dotcom crash began 22 years ago, there were some remarkably gloomy observations and prognostications about where things would go from there. One common view was that the Nasdaq stock market would take years to get over the carnage inflicted by the market’s 75 per cent peak-to-trough plunge.

And so it proved. The Nasdaq’s fall two decades ago happened over many months, and its recovery was even more protracted – it ...