Poof! `Smart' Investment Ideas Go Up in Smoke, as Market Tumbles --- For Manager Who Stuck With Value, It's Payback Time
IRRATIONAL exuberance?</br></br>Make that uncontrollable, indefatigable, unreasonable, outlandish exuberance.</br></br>Before the market's great fall early this year, investors managed to convince themselves that this time was different, that stocks couldn't go down very much, or for very long if they did. Bolstered by this ill-advised overconfidence, lots of people did lots of things they no doubt wish they hadn't.</br></br>Turn back the clock, to the first quarter of this year. Investors who were content to settle for mutual funds and stocks with 10% to 20% annual returns were made to feel like, well, dullards. They just didn't get it.</br></br>The people who did get it were leaving their Old Economy jobs for the excitement and riches of dot-com-dom. Or, if they didn't go to work for Internet companies, they were working with Internet companies and getting a piece of the action by taking shares in lieu of cash for business they did. Now, much of that stock may be more valuable as wallpaper.