💬 Friday discussion: a new bubble?

We saw a spate of technology companies filing for IPO this week. They include:

• Asana, a project management tool;

• Snowflake, which helps companies handle large volumes of data;

• Unity, makes of 3-d gaming technologies;

• Corsair Gaming, which makes accessories for video games and live-streamers;

• JFrog, which makes developer tools;

• Palantir, a government contractor

In addition, Desktop Metal, an additive manufacturer, will go public via a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). A SPAC is a vehicle to allow private companies to go public while circumventing the broken IPO process.

At the same time, the energy sector collapsed. It is now the smallest sector in the S&P 500. Tech makes up nearly 30% of the market. (Graph below from @natbullard.)

Is this a new bubble? I’ll put my cards on the table. Having lived through the dotcom bubble, this feels different. I’m certain that while there might be some exuberance, there are also fundamentally strong businesses finally coming to market. And the ex…