Nasdaq 10,000, or whatever

After touching the 10,000-point milestone yesterday, the Nasdaq Composite set a new all-time intraday high this morning of 10,028.61, per Yahoo Finance.

In more normal times this would be a fanfare moment, the culmination of a long rise in the tech-heavy index indicative of an industry’s rising power. Instead, it feels a bit grubby in light of the national economy formally in a recession, unemployment levels above those seen in the great recession, around 1,000 or so Americans dying every day of COVID-19 and the fact that the index’s recent recovery rally came amidst shocking unemployment claims.

Pop the champagne.

There have been some warning signs around the edges of the recent rally — led by retail investors supposedly — including a recent analyst downgrade of tech shares, and some earnings chop in the super-hot SaaS sector. But who cares, Tesla is worth $1,005.38 this morning. And Nikola, a kinda-Tesla-competitor-maybe is off 10% today, but is still worth $26 billion despite having no revenue.

It’s public market silly season, in other words, and everyone is buying stuff. Reaching Nasdaq 10,000 is meaningless, then; a random number that we humans cleave to as material as we lack real imagination.

Perhaps in time we’ll look back at this week and note that this particular rally was merely another rung on an upwards ladder. Or, like Nasdaq 5,000 back in the dot-com boom, maybe today is more of a high watermark, showing us how high we flew before the wax started to melt and the sun felt a little too warm.

In related news Vroom, which sports gross margins of around 5% and went public yesterday, is now up 143% from its IPO price of $22 in two days’ trading.

Anyway, we’ve noted the Nasdaq’s milestone. You’re welcome.