IN JUNE a senior venture capitalist and a serial entrepreneur debated the rising prices of technology firms in an Economist online debate.
More recently, the investment fad was to justify exorbitant prices of technology stocks based, in part, on a litany of so-called nonfinancial metrics.
Their trading, on which Schwab earns commissions, dropped off when prices of technology stocks collapsed last spring and has not bounced back.
Mr. Moltz, for one, thinks that rising prices of technology stocks are not sustainable unless companies have earnings growth to point to.
The Nasdaq composite index fell 31.97 points, or 2.04percentt, at 1,532.35, pulled down by falling prices of technology companies like Apple, Cisco Systems and Google.
Alan Greenspan, the Fed chairman, "is obviously achieving his goal of compressing price-earnings ratios and bringing down prices of technology" shares, said Paul McManus, senior vice president of Independence Investment Associates in Boston.
Businesses will start spending trillions of yen on new equipment; individual investors, made wealthy by the soaring prices of technology companies, will start spending on luxury goods; and the time of troubles will be over.
The fundamental economic issue here is that the stock prices of technology companies, with few exceptions, already reflect the market's often-outsized expectations of fast earnings growth in the future.
Taking a somewhat longer view, Charles J. Pradilla, chief investment strategist at SG Cowen, pointed to what he called the "full-fledged mania" that elevated the prices of technology companies, those with sound as well as shaky business models, to extremely high levels that he said could never be sustained.
Why do prices of technology stocks keep rising?
