Tech mania is resurgent. Investors are again glancing at a clock with no hands — and dismissing the risk. The profitless start-ups that were wiped out in the dotcom crash have consolidated into an oligopoly composed of leading survivors such as Google and Apple. These are giants with real earnings, yet signs of an irrational euphoria are growing. One is pitchmen bundling investments with very different outlooks into a single package. Last decade, they bundled Brazil, Russia, India and China to sell as the Brics. More recently, they packaged Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google as Fang, then, as names and prospects shifted, subbed in Alphabet, Apple and Microsoft to make Faama. Others are hyping the hottest tech companies in China as BAT, for Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent. Whatever the mix, acronym mania is usually a sign of bubbly thinking. As the US stock market keeps marching to new highs, the gains are increasingly concentrated in the big tech stocks. It’s true that prices today are...
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