From Airbnb to Tesla, It’s Starting to Feel Like 1999 All Over Again. It May End the Same Way.
By Randall W. Forsyth
Thu, Dec 17, 2020 6:11am
3 min
3 min
Maybe this time is different. Those words, supposedly the most dangerous to utter in the investing realm, came to mind amid the frenzied pops in the highly anticipated initial public offerings of the past week.
They recalled the wild IPOs at the end of the last century, when the public’s enthusiasm for all things dot-com had investors paying crazy prices for new stocks that often lacked earnings, revenue, or, in some cases, actual operations. After the calendar turned over to the year 2000—without the world descending into chaos from the Y2K computer bug, remember that?—the bubble popped, especially after Barron’s published its seminal cash-burn story that March, which showed that the dot-com kids were rapidly running through the liquid assets compliant capital markets had provided to them. As it turned out, the Nasdaq Composite had posted its top tick a bit more than a week earlier, although we only learned that in retrospect.
What is different this time is that the current highflying IPOs are coming from innovative companies that have become major businesses, nurtured by their private-market investors while attracting throngs of fans who wanted to become shareholders as well as customers. So they clamoured for DoorDash (ticker: DASH) and Airbnb (ABNB), sending their shares soaring in their first day of trading by 86% and 113%, respectively, over their respective IPO prices.
So great was the frenzy that there was furious buying of the call options of ABB (ABB), the big European industrial company out of confusion with the ticker for Airbnb, our former Barron’s colleague Mike Santoli amusingly reported on CNBC. That wasn’t the first case of mistaken identity with a hot IPO. Instead of getting in on the 2019 IPO of Zoom Video Communications (ZM), which has become one of this year’s stay-at-home winning stocks, punters mistakenly chased penny stock Zoom Technologies (ZTNO) ahead of the former’s IPO.
What does recall the dot-com bubble era are the valuations accorded these IPOs. In his preview of the Airbnb offering last week, colleague Andrew Bary quoted New York University professor and tech entrepreneur Scott Galloway bullishly predicting a US$100 billion market value—by the end of 2022. At the end of its first day trading on Thursday, its market cap already topped Galloway’s no longer outlandish projection, which was three times what had been estimated just a week earlier.
Another blast from that past is Tesla‘s (TSLA) 50%-plus jump since Standard & Poor’s announced last month the electric-vehicle stock’s inclusion in the S&P 500 index. That recalled the 64% jump in then-dominant internet search company Yahoo! in December 1999 ahead of its addition to the benchmark index, just a few months before the Nasdaq’s peak.
S&P 500 index funds and portfolios that followed the benchmark will have to buy Tesla without regard to the stock’s value, as colleague Evie Liu reports. But the slavish adherence to this particular market gauge belies the tenet of index investing—that the efficient market distills the reasoned assessments of buyers and sellers of the value of a security. “Whether or not [Tesla CEO] Elon Musk will ever deliver autonomous driving, we are drifting closer to autonomous investing,” writes Jim Grant in the current Grant’s Interest Rate Observer.
Even if that’s the case, this episode demonstrates that the S&P 500 doesn’t represent the entirety of the U.S. stock market. For instance, the Vanguard 500 Index fund (VFIAX) has significantly lagged the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index fund (VTSAX), 15.64% to 17.8% in the year through Wednesday, according to Morningstar data. Over the past 12 months, the gap is 17.41% to 19.14%.
For his part, Musk decried the “M.B.A.-isation of America” to The Wall Street Journal this past week for U.S. corporations supposedly focusing too much on financials. Which is ironic given Tesla’s adept financial engineering, including its announcement this past week of a $5 billion sale of stock, its third equity financing this year, for a total $12 billion.
Musk’s criticism seems directed at those skilled at analyzing the EV maker’s income statement and balance sheet, such as Vicki Bryan, who pens the Bond Angle research letter. Tesla’s addition to the S&P 500 followed its reporting of a requisite four consecutive profitable quarters, which can be “traced entirely to energy credit sales plus noncash account and unusual items—none of which are its core business,” she writes.
These items provided a $1.6 billion boost to reported free cash flow of $1.93 billion in the four quarters through Sept. 30, which, however, ignored $100 million for solar-equipment capital expenditures and $1.1 billion in capex funded by leases. Taking all that into consideration, operations actually consumed more than $800 million in cash, she concludes.
The entire $9.18 billion year-over-year increase in reported cash, to $14.53 billion on Sept. 30, resulted from net borrowing of $1.5 billion and the sale of $7.7 billion in stock and equity equivalents, Bryan adds. The ebullient stock market, augmented by the index effect, provides the cheap capital to keep the Musk magic going.
That’s what’s different this time from the dot-com era. There seems to be a seemingly limitless font of money to be tapped by hypergrowth companies that promise to change how we work, live, and get around. The question is whether it will end differently.
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The lunar flyby would be the deepest humans have traveled in space in decades.
By Micah Maidenberg
Mon, Mar 30, 2026 4 min
4 min
It’s go time for the highest-stakes mission at NASA in more than 50 years.
On April 1, the agency is set to launch four astronauts around the moon, the deepest human spaceflight since the final Apollo lunar landing in 1972.
The launch window for Artemis II , as the mission is called, opens at 6:24 p.m. ET.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration teams have been preparing the vehicles to depart from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center on the planned roughly 10-day trip. Crew members have trained for years for this moment.
Reid Wiseman, the NASA astronaut serving as mission commander, said he doesn’t fear taking the voyage. A widower, he does worry at times about what he is putting his daughters through.
“I could have a very comfortable life for them,” Wiseman said in an interview last September.
“But I’m also a human, and I see the spirit in their eyes that is burning in my soul too. And so we’ve just got to never stop going.”
Wiseman’s crewmates on Artemis II are NASA’s Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen.
What are the goals for Artemis II?
The biggest one: Safely fly the crew on vehicles that have never carried astronauts before.
The towering Space Launch System rocket has the job of lofting a vehicle called Orion into space and on its way to the moon.
Orion is designed to carry the crew around the moon and back. Myriad systems on the ship—life support, communications, navigation—will be tested with the astronauts on board.
SLS and Orion don’t have much flight experience. The vehicles last flew in 2022, when the agency completed its uncrewed Artemis I mission .
How is the mission expected to unfold?
Artemis II will begin when SLS takes off from a launchpad in Florida with Orion stacked on top of it.
The so-called upper stage of SLS will later separate from the main part of the rocket with Orion attached, and use its engine to set up the latter vehicle for a push to the moon.
After Orion separates from the upper stage, it will conduct what is called a translunar injection—the engine firing that commits Orion to soaring out to the moon. It will fly to the moon over the course of a few days and travel around its far side.
Orion will face a tough return home after speeding through space. As it hits Earth’s atmosphere, Orion will be flying at 25,000 miles an hour and face temperatures of 5,000 degrees as it slows down. The capsule is designed to land under parachutes in the Pacific Ocean, not far from San Diego.
Is it possible Artemis II will be delayed?
Yes.
For safety reasons, the agency won’t launch if certain tough weather conditions roll through the Cape Canaveral, Fla., area. Delays caused by technical problems are possible, too. NASA has other dates identified for the mission if it doesn’t begin April 1.
Who are the astronauts flying on Artemis II?
The crew will be led by Wiseman, a retired Navy pilot who completed military deployments before joining NASA’s astronaut corps. He traveled to the International Space Station in 2014.
Two other astronauts will represent NASA during the mission: Glover, an experienced Navy pilot, and Koch, who began her career as an electrical engineer for the agency and once spent a year at a research station in the South Pole. Both have traveled to the space station before.
Hansen is a military pilot who joined Canada’s astronaut corps in 2009. He will be making his first trip to space.
Koch’s participation in Artemis II will mark the first time a woman has flown beyond orbits near Earth. Glover and Hansen will be the first African-American and non-American astronauts, respectively, to do the same.
What will the astronauts do during the flight?
The astronauts will evaluate how Orion flies, practice emergency procedures and capture images of the far side of the moon for scientific and exploration purposes (they may become the first humans to see parts of the far side of the lunar surface). Health-tracking projects of the astronauts are designed to inform future missions.
Those efforts will play out in Orion’s crew module, which has about two minivans worth of living area.
On board, the astronauts will spend about 30 minutes a day exercising, using a device that allows them to do dead lifts, rowing and more. Sleep will come in eight-hour stretches in hammocks.
There is a custom-made warmer for meals, with beef brisket and veggie quiche on the menu.
Each astronaut is permitted two flavored beverages a day, including coffee. The crew will hold one hourlong shared meal each day.
The Universal Waste Management System—that’s the toilet—uses air flow to pull fluid and solid waste away into containers.
What happens after Artemis II?
Assuming it goes well, NASA will march on to Artemis III, scheduled for next year. During that operation, NASA plans to launch Orion with crew members on board and have the ship practice docking with lunar-lander vehicles that Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin have been developing. The rendezvous operations will occur relatively close to Earth.
NASA hopes that its contractors and the agency itself are ready to attempt one or more lunar landing missions in 2028. Many current and former spaceflight officials are skeptical that timeline is feasible.
