Happy Friday and welcome to another issue of Net Interest, where I distil 25 years’ experience of investing in financial companies into a weekly email. If you’re reading this but haven’t yet signed up, please join over 15,000 others by clicking here. And to my regulars: thanks for spreading the word.
Party Like It’s 1999: From ETrade to eToro
Towards the end of 1999, two authors published a book called Dow 36,000. Over almost 300 pages, they laid out a view that the Dow Jones index would go on an almighty run. From an already elevated level of around 10,000 at the time of publication, they projected that the index would rally to 36,000 over the next few years. Needless to say, it didn’t.
Over 20 years later, however, we’re finally getting close. This week, the Dow broke through 33,000 for the first time, putting us within a whisker of Dow 36,000.
The current stock market rally has many features in common with 1999. Chief among them is the involvement of retail investors. Dow 36,000 was w…