As Ireland begins to anticipate the age of large-scale domestic online broking, the collapse of British Internet sporting clothes retailer Boo.com gives a timely warning.
Online broking, allowing private clients more immediate access to the market and cutting upfront costs through margin trading, has been one element fuelling the dizzy rise of the dot.coms as investors sought quick and hearty profits by chasing fashion.
This first major collapse of an e-tailer, essentially because it ran out of funds before it could post a profit, has sent a chill through the sector. A few days earlier, a report from PricewaterhouseCoopers indicated many dot.coms have not the funds to last more than another six months in trade and are much further away than that from producing earnings. And after Boo.com's demise, Merrill Lynch counselled that three-quarters of Europe's burgeoning dot.coms will be but a distant memory within a few years as they either go to the wall or are forced to consolidate.
Some high profile investors, including some of JP Morgan's A-list, have been burned by Boo.com. Maybe they, along with smaller market players, will learn from the fiasco.
Some years ago it was fashionable to declare the death of inflation. Strange how silent that lobby has become as consumer prices rise once more. So too, with the argument that old economy valuations were entirely inappropriate to the new economy tech stocks. The end of Boo.com and the poor prognosis for many in its peer group only prove the validity of sound fundamentals and the more traditional measures of worth.
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