Here is something you may have missed if your eyes have been focused on the gyrations in bond and equity markets as euroland crises have come, gone and come again. The S&P 500 telecoms and IT index, the bellwether of digital stocks, has climbed 120 per cent from its 2009 low.
All of us who lived through the exuberance of the tech bubble of 2000, when all you has to do was add ‘.com’ to a company name and watch the fireworks, have a right to be sceptical about this latter-day boom. The rise and rise of Apple to become the most valuable firm in the world, with a market capitalisation of more than $600 billion, has led some analysts to quote the S&P minus Apple to get a better perspective.
However, as a recent traveller to the San Francisco Bay area which takes in Palo Alto and Silicon Valley, I could not but be impressed by the high levels of innovation, the cult of the patent and the constant creation of new value.
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