It only takes a pin to burst a bubble. And on Friday, 10 March 2000, that's exactly what we got. On that day, the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite index reached its pinnacle at 5,132.52, ending the day at 5,048.62. The dotcom bubble that had been inflating since 1997 finally popped. When traders returned to their desks after the weekend, it was to months of misery.
It's not hard to see what had got them so excited in the first place. The dawning of the internet age during the 1990s seemed like a genuine revolution of the way we live our lives, from doing our shopping online to emailing and research. In many ways, it was a revolution.But in the frenzy to grab a piece of the pie, investors piled in to whatever happened to end in .com. Between 19 October 1999 and 10 March 2000, the index rose by an astonishing 87.8% in less than six months.
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