Cisco, Intel, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments—these star stocks from the dot-com bubble era are re-emerging in the market spotlight after a silence of over a quarter-century, in a manner that is unsettling to a generation of veteran traders.
Cisco's stock surged by double digits last Thursday following its latest earnings report, setting a new all-time closing high. This milestone comes more than 25 years after the company last touched its historical peak. Concurrently, Intel, Qualcomm, and Texas Instruments have also successively刷新ed records. This scenario is sparking a new round of discussions about a potential replay of the dot-com bubble, deeply unsettling some seasoned traders who lived through that period.
The current strong rally in semiconductor stocks has pushed the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX) into a range widely considered by technical analysts as "extremely overbought." Meanwhile, Tony Pasquariello, head of Goldman Sachs' hedge fund business, admitted that the current trading environment's亢奋程度 is "almost intoxicating," stating he spent the entire week反复对照ing the present market with the late 1990s. "The Big Short"原型 Michael Burry wrote directly on social media that the current market "feels like the final months of the 1999-2000 bubble."
The return of these familiar names to their peaks and the historical parallels are raising alarms. Cisco was once the world's most valuable company at the peak of the dot-com bubble. However, after setting its all-time closing high on March 27, 2000, the stock did not surpass this record again until December 10 of last year—a gap of over 25 years. Intel's situation is similar; according to Dow Jones Market Data, the stock did not exceed its historical high from August 31, 2000, until April 24 of this year. At that time, Intel was the second most valuable company in the U.S.
"The big winners right now happen to be Qualcomm, Intel, and Cisco. It is indeed an eerie coincidence," said Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers. During the dot-com bubble, Sosnick worked as an options market maker at Timber Hill, the predecessor to Interactive Brokers.
Brent Donnelly, president of Spectra Markets, who was a day trader back then, said, "It's truly unbelievable to see Cisco and Intel back at the top. These two stocks have just broken through their 2000 highs."
Technical data further intensifies market vigilance. According to a MarketWatch analysis based on FactSet data, earlier this week, the SOX was一度 as much as 63.8% above its 200-day moving average—the largest deviation since the early days of the dot-com bubble burst in April 2000. For comparison, at its peak on March 10, 2000, the SOX was 111.2% above its 200-day moving average.
Simultaneously, Bespoke Investment Group has been tracking the trajectory of the Nasdaq Composite Index since the release of ChatGPT for years, comparing it to the market行情 following the Netscape IPO—widely regarded as the starting point of the internet era. The吻合程度 between the two historical trajectories is近乎惊人. According to this comparative framework, the current cycle position of the Nasdaq corresponds roughly to around May 1998.
Despite the widespread discussion of historical parallels, several market participants point out significant differences between the current era and the dot-com bubble.
The most direct distinction lies in valuations. FactSet data shows the SOX's current forward P/E ratio is 27.7x, compared to a lofty 52.1x at the peak of the 2000 bubble. Sosnick noted that the current rally is accompanied by substantial improvement in earnings expectations, with this earnings season being one of the strongest in years, and valuation multiples have not yet reached the extreme levels of the dot-com era.
Donnelly also pointed out that the recent U.S. government investment in Intel and the more complex geopolitical factors affecting tech stocks today are far more intricate than back then. Furthermore, he believes retail investors today employ more sophisticated strategies compared to the dot-com era—during the significant market pullback in April 2025, retail investors chose to buy the dip rather than chase highs.
Bearish voices cite more direct historical analogies. Some analysts list three "致命信号" of the 2000 bubble: Cisco being revered as a "buy forever" stock with a P/E of 196x; companies raising hundreds of millions based on user growth and narratives alone; and retail investors flocking into a handful of star stocks until the Federal Reserve tightened liquidity. These analysts believe all three signals have reappeared in 2026.
Even if it is a bubble, exiting is not easy. Kimberly Caughey Forrest, founder and chief investment officer of Bokeh Capital Partners, lived through the entire dot-com bubble—she started as a stock research analyst in October 1999,恰好赶上 the final疯狂阶段 of that bull market. She believes the root cause of the dot-com bubble's end was the market's erroneous assumption that spending on telecom networks and computer hardware would continue at the pace of the initial build-out phase, which reality did not support.
In the current AI infrastructure build-out cycle, Forrest notes that much of the spending is concentrated in the hands of a few giant companies competing for AI leadership. "When one of them pulls back, will the others stop investing?" she said. "We will have to wait and see."
Craig Johnson, chief market technician at Piper Sandler, holds a relatively optimistic view. He compares the current AI infrastructure build-out to the internet era's upgrade from dial-up to fiber optics, believing "we are opening the next up-cycle for faster communication, entering a brand new upgrade cycle."
However, even if investors are convinced a bubble exists, deciding how to act is not straightforward. Donnelly points out that any investor who exited in 1999 likely missed the Nasdaq's parabolic rise in the final stage of the bubble. "It's incredibly difficult to act on because even if we are in the final wave of a bubble, we could still see a pretty substantial move higher," he said.
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