The Most Incredible Bull Market Ever

The bulls called it a "new era in investing", the bears called it the biggest bubble in history. There is no question that the bull run the NASDAQ enjoyed in the 1990ies was one of the greatest - if not the greatest - bull market ever. One has to look back at the golden 20ies or at the gold rush to find comparably fantastic performance for investment vehicles in financial history. 
 
The bull market in the NASDAQ exceeded all previous stock booms in a number of categories: 
 
First, public participation was broader based than in any previous bull market, exceeding even the levels of the late 1960ies. 
 
Second, valuation levels at the height of the speculation broke all previous records by a milestone. As a matter of fact, and, incredibly, the bullish comments between 1997 and 2000 often rationalized the valuation levels because the companies showed no earnings at all and hence - so the logic - could not be valued in a traditional way. At its peak the NASDAQ Composite Index traded at an average price earnings ratio of well over 100, with dividend yields being non-existent and book values miniscule. 
 
Third, the length of the bull run was unprecedented in financial history, exceeding the wildest and most optimistic expectations. The bull market in technology stocks lasted for exactly 10 years, with the blow-off phase lasting an astonishing 3 years.
 
Finally, the gains seen in the NASDAQ and in individual stocks were un-paralleled. Percentage gains reached not hundreds but thousands or tens of thousands of percent. One of the high-flyers, Dell Computer actually rose but over 50,000 percent from 1990 to 2000. 
 
As spectacular as the meteoric rise of technology stocks was their decline. The unwinding of the froth caused many of the celebrated highfliers to collapse, sometimes in spectacular fashion or even resulting in bankruptcy.