While stock markets gyrate it seems investors are also resorting to the kind of investment screening applied near the end of the dot.com bubble to justify their bets. NYT reports that Silicon Valley start-ups are awash in dollars, again as investors apply convenient metrics, like number of users, to justify paying billion dollar prices for companies with no revenues. Article quote:
Consider Facebook, the popular but financially unproven social network, which is reportedly being valued by investors at up to $15 billion. That is nearly half the value of Yahoo, a company with 38 times the number of employees and, based on estimates of Facebook’s income, 32 times the revenue.
Apparently there remains much exuberance among investors despite a creaking US economy. And obviously there is more cash than sense around San Francisco. Given the close ties with Asia, it is surprising that more interest in Japan, Taiwan, China and SE Asia is not seen.
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