Ships from: acton, MA
Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Why did the Internet and Enron stock collapses really happen? Was it arrogance? Greed? The "madness of crowds"? Just plain bad luck? Or something else entirely?
In Buy, Lie, and Sell High, Harvard Business School Professor D. Quinn Mills offers the first systematic analysis of both the Internet stock bubble and the Enron scandal. Drawing upon new research-including an extensive review of the latest lawsuits and securities documents-Mills uncovers both systemic causes and outrageous misbehavior. He demonstrates how each link in the "financial value chain," from venture funds to auditors and regulators, not only failed to protect small investors, but also actively contributed to their losses.
Mills demonstrates why it didn't have to be that way, comparing the U.S. experience with that of Germany, which experienced its own Internet stock bubble with far milder consequences to ordinary investors. He then offers practical and detailed recommendations for investors, citizens, and policymakers seeking to keep it from happening again.
Includes exclusive interviews with and contributions by:
The Internet bubble: What really happened—and why.
Investors lost millions of dollars in the Internet collapse—and, according to conventional wisdom, they only have themselves to blame for being greedy, shortsighted, and ignorant of business fundamentals. But is that the real story? In this riveting and insightful book, Harvard Business School Professor D. Quinn Mills argues that the Internet bubble and subsequent collapse was no accident: Blame can be placed squarely at the feet of venture firms, investment banks, accountants, mutual funds, brokerages, federal regulators, and the Federal Reserve—not "dumb small investors." Through extensive original research and the contributions of many active participants, Buy, Lie, and Sell High offers authoritative answers to the questions every investor is asking: "What actually happened during the Internet bubble?" "Who got the money I lost?" "Why did it happen?" "Who's to blame?" "What can I do about it?" "Will it happen again, and how can I keep it from happening to me?"
Mills compares the U.S. Internet bubble with events in Germany, where an Internet bubble also arose—but with radically different and far less serious consequences. Drawing on the same ideas, he also offers the first detailed analysis of the Enron collapse. Then Mills presents a specific, rigorous analytical structure for helping investors avoid future bubbles—as well as the first detailed proposals for effective reform.
Through extensive original research and the contributions of many active participants, Buy, Lie, and Sell High offers authoritative answers to the questions every investor is asking: "What actually happened?" "Who got the money I lost?" "Why did it happen?" "Who's to blame?" "What can I do about it?" And most important of all, "Will it happen again, and how can I keep it from happening to me?"
I've written this book because of what happened to a friend of mine. She was in her 50s, and had painfully accumulated over her working life a nest egg. When she lost her job, she received the money in a lump sum. It was to help support her old age. She visited the Web site of one of the largest mutual fund companies and studied the performance record of the 15 or so funds they offered for annuity contracts. She identified those with the best returns. She then called a representative at the company to ask about an investment. He told her that she had picked the two best funds, just what she should do, and he arranged for her to make the investment. She now had an annuity contract with the mutual fund company with her capital invested in a single fund.
Three months later the fund began a rapid collapse. She called the company and was told that the decline was temporary, and that the proper long-term strategy was to remain invested. She did, and the fund fell to about 30 percent of its level at which she had bought it. It turned out that the fund had been heavily invested in Internet stocks.
"Why did I lose my money?" she asked me. "Why was my pension money invested in such speculative stocks? Who got the money I lost?"
So a small team and I went to work studying the great Internet bubble. We looked at the various players who were involved in the process by which venture funds and entrepreneurs built companies, and then with the investment banks, took them public. We made a list of how the venture funds changed their investment criteria as the bubble developed, and how investment bankschanged their criteria for taking firms public. We looked at how the mutual funds shifted their investment criteria so that many funds became loaded with dot-com and telecom stocks. We looked at Alan Greenspan's warnings, and at the inflation and then bursting of the bubble. We looked at who made money in the outcome, and who lost.
We have read the literature on financial manias and explored the explanations being given for the recent bubble. The key explanations are that (1) it was an accident: A group of forces came together like the perfect storm—new technology, an affluent investing public, and a booming economy—and then blew themselves out; (2) it was engineered: The incentive structures in financial service firms made their blowing up into a bubble a certainty; (3) it was a result of inexperience: Investment professionals (including the business press) were young and inexperienced, and believed that the New Economy was qualitatively different from the Old Economy so that valuations weren't recognized as inflated; and (4) it was another example of the madness of crowds—individual investors were prone to mass hysteria and didn't do their homework and so drove stock prices to unreasonable levels, and when the bubble burst, got what they deserved.
We also asked whether or not the entrepreneurs, venture firms, investment banks, brokerages, and mutual funds really thought that the companies they sold the retail investor were legitimate firms; and we looked at the litigation now underway about how IPO sales were conducted.
We asked whether or not a bubble was a necessary consequence of the operation of our free markets—the way western economies raise capital to fund technological innovation? Or, alternatively, whether the bubble was a dangerous aberration that should be avoided if possible?
Our research convinces us it is the latter, so we asked what might prevent another bubble, or at least help protect retail investors from the worst ravages of one if it occurs.
We also looked at Germany, which had a somewhat similar bubble in Internet stocks, but with a very different outcome for small investors, and asked why. In this book, several times we provide German examples of what happened in the Internet bubble; they provide important supplementary material showing how the bubble leapt international boundaries, and how its elements were often the same but sometimes different. But in this book, to avoid confusion we usually are talking about the American experience, except where Germany is explicitly cited.
We were fortunate to find many knowledgeable people willing to talk with us about the bubble. Some were willing to do so for attribution; others were unwilling to let themselves be identified, in part because litigation about events during the bubble is gathering force today, and many people are either involved in or hoping to stay out of the legal fray.
Regardless of whether or not people were willing to be identified in print, they provided us with an ongoing dialogue from which this book emerged. It's the hope of our research team that readers will engage their own friends and acquaintances in a discussion of the important issues which arise in this book. To encourage such a dialogue, we have provided a small group of talking points at the end of each chapter—not a summary of the chapter, but rather the key points that a person might want to take from it to a discussion with others.
An unusual feature of this book is that it includes short contributions from people other than the author and his team. Several American and German participants in the bubble have consented to give their experiences and their views about the issues with which this book is concerned, so that this book provides a forum within which some of the players in the Financial Value Chain can discuss what occurred during the bubble. Sometimes contributors to this book don't agree with the author, but differences in opinion will help the reader make up his or her own mind about what happened in the Internet financial mania and what it means for each of us.
From our inquiry, we've developed a set of suggestions as noted in Chapter 16, "Reforms to Protect Small Investors," about how entrepreneurs and investors can help avoid another bubble or protect themselves from it if it occurs, including proposed regulatory reforms that would provide much more protection for investors in the event of another bubble.
Many investors took heavy losses during the Internet bubble. How did that happen and what, if anything, should be done about it?
| Acknowledgments | ||
| Pt. I | The Bubble and Capital Markets | 1 |
| Ch. 1 | How to Use This Book | 3 |
| Ch. 2 | Destroyed by the Bubble | 7 |
| Pt. II | How the Bubble Happened | 17 |
| Ch. 3 | Causing the Bubble | 19 |
| Ch. 4 | Inflating the Bubble: The Financial Value Chain | 33 |
| Ch. 5 | What it Meant to "Do the Right Thing" at Enron | 47 |
| Pt. III | Inexperienced Leaders | 57 |
| Ch. 6 | Dumb Kids? | 59 |
| Ch. 7 | How Some VCs and Bankers Led Entrepreneurs in the Wrong Direction | 75 |
| Pt. IV | How Venture Firms Changed Their Criteria | 91 |
| Ch. 8 | Building to Flip | 93 |
| Ch. 9 | Choosing the Wrong People | 107 |
| Pt. V | Taking Start-ups to the Public | 117 |
| Ch. 10 | How Investment Banks Inflated the Bubble | 119 |
| Ch. 11 | The Retail Investor: Victim or Fool? | 135 |
| Ch. 12 | Influencing Factors: Where Does Responsibility Lie? | 145 |
| Pt. VI | The Road Kill of Capitalism | 157 |
| Ch. 13 | Sell, Sell, Sell | 159 |
| Ch. 14 | Dire Consequences | 173 |
| Pt. VII | A Troubled System | 193 |
| Ch. 15 | Can America Lead? | 195 |
| Ch. 16 | Reforms to Protect Small Investors | 207 |
| Pt. VIII | Less Damage Next Time | 223 |
| Ch. 17 | What Does the Future Hold? | 225 |
| App. A | NEMAX (The German New Market) and NASDAQ | 235 |
| App. B | Financial Value Chain Influencers | 237 |
| Contributors | 249 | |
| Endnotes | 251 | |
| Index | 257 |
I've written this book because of what happened to a friend of mine. She was in her 50s, and had painfully accumulated over her working life a nest egg. When she lost her job, she received the money in a lump sum. It was to help support her old age. She visited the Web site of one of the largest mutual fund companies and studied the performance record of the 15 or so funds they offered for annuity contracts. She identified those with the best returns. She then called a representative at the company to ask about an investment. He told her that she had picked the two best funds, just what she should do, and he arranged for her to make the investment. She now had an annuity contract with the mutual fund company with her capital invested in a single fund.
Three months later the fund began a rapid collapse. She called the company and was told that the decline was temporary, and that the proper long-term strategy was to remain invested. She did, and the fund fell to about 30 percent of its level at which she had bought it. It turned out that the fund had been heavily invested in Internet stocks.
"Why did I lose my money?" she asked me. "Why was my pension money invested in such speculative stocks? Who got the money I lost?"
So a small team and I went to work studying the great Internet bubble. We looked at the various players who were involved in the process by which venture funds and entrepreneurs built companies, and then with the investment banks, took them public. We made a list of how the venture funds changed their investment criteria as the bubble developed, and how investment bankschanged their criteria for taking firms public. We looked at how the mutual funds shifted their investment criteria so that many funds became loaded with dot-com and telecom stocks. We looked at Alan Greenspan's warnings, and at the inflation and then bursting of the bubble. We looked at who made money in the outcome, and who lost.
We have read the literature on financial manias and explored the explanations being given for the recent bubble. The key explanations are that (1) it was an accident: A group of forces came together like the perfect storm—new technology, an affluent investing public, and a booming economy—and then blew themselves out; (2) it was engineered: The incentive structures in financial service firms made their blowing up into a bubble a certainty; (3) it was a result of inexperience: Investment professionals (including the business press) were young and inexperienced, and believed that the New Economy was qualitatively different from the Old Economy so that valuations weren't recognized as inflated; and (4) it was another example of the madness of crowds—individual investors were prone to mass hysteria and didn't do their homework and so drove stock prices to unreasonable levels, and when the bubble burst, got what they deserved.
We also asked whether or not the entrepreneurs, venture firms, investment banks, brokerages, and mutual funds really thought that the companies they sold the retail investor were legitimate firms; and we looked at the litigation now underway about how IPO sales were conducted.
We asked whether or not a bubble was a necessary consequence of the operation of our free markets—the way western economies raise capital to fund technological innovation? Or, alternatively, whether the bubble was a dangerous aberration that should be avoided if possible?
Our research convinces us it is the latter, so we asked what might prevent another bubble, or at least help protect retail investors from the worst ravages of one if it occurs.
We also looked at Germany, which had a somewhat similar bubble in Internet stocks, but with a very different outcome for small investors, and asked why. In this book, several times we provide German examples of what happened in the Internet bubble; they provide important supplementary material showing how the bubble leapt international boundaries, and how its elements were often the same but sometimes different. But in this book, to avoid confusion we usually are talking about the American experience, except where Germany is explicitly cited.
We were fortunate to find many knowledgeable people willing to talk with us about the bubble. Some were willing to do so for attribution; others were unwilling to let themselves be identified, in part because litigation about events during the bubble is gathering force today, and many people are either involved in or hoping to stay out of the legal fray.
Regardless of whether or not people were willing to be identified in print, they provided us with an ongoing dialogue from which this book emerged. It's the hope of our research team that readers will engage their own friends and acquaintances in a discussion of the important issues which arise in this book. To encourage such a dialogue, we have provided a small group of talking points at the end of each chapter—not a summary of the chapter, but rather the key points that a person might want to take from it to a discussion with others.
An unusual feature of this book is that it includes short contributions from people other than the author and his team. Several American and German participants in the bubble have consented to give their experiences and their views about the issues with which this book is concerned, so that this book provides a forum within which some of the players in the Financial Value Chain can discuss what occurred during the bubble. Sometimes contributors to this book don't agree with the author, but differences in opinion will help the reader make up his or her own mind about what happened in the Internet financial mania and what it means for each of us.
From our inquiry, we've developed a set of suggestions as noted in Chapter 16, "Reforms to Protect Small Investors," about how entrepreneurs and investors can help avoid another bubble or protect themselves from it if it occurs, including proposed regulatory reforms that would provide much more protection for investors in the event of another bubble.
Many investors took heavy losses during the Internet bubble. How did that happen and what, if anything, should be done about it?
Overview
Why did the Internet and Enron stock collapses really happen? Was it arrogance? Greed? The "madness of crowds"? Just plain bad luck? Or something else entirely?
In Buy, Lie, and Sell High, Harvard Business School Professor D. Quinn Mills offers the first systematic analysis of both the Internet stock bubble and the Enron scandal. Drawing upon new research-including an extensive review of the latest lawsuits and securities documents-Mills uncovers both systemic causes and ...