As I was Saying ...

In my post dated Feb 1 written before the market close I wrote

As for the publicly traded companies...even the top performers Apple Microsoft and Facebook (Amazon is a bit of a different case)they are not only veteran companies. They have large profits, and billions of cash their earnings have strong growth and when bring the cash home will most likely engage in dividend increases, stock buybacks and acquisitions. In fact some of the largest tech stocks including Apple, Oracle, and Intel trade at a valuation discount to the overall market.

All of this is a far cry from the triple digit p/e valuations and large string of ipos of companies with no profits at all and weak business plans that characterized the tech bubble of the late 1990s.

After the close we got earnings reports from Facebook, Apple and Alphabet (Google) showing that despite the rise in these stocks the situation is far different than that of the late 1990s.when earnings of so many Nasdaq stocks was minimal or even non existent.

from the WSJ

Tech Giants Power to New Heights

Apple, Alphabet and Amazon.com report record results; Apple’s profits top $20 billion for first time

Three of the biggest tech companies reported record quarterly financial results on Thursday as they extended their dominance over swaths of the global economy.

Apple Inc., AAPL 0.21% Alphabet Inc. GOOGL -0.05% and Amazon.com Inc. AMZN -4.20% —with a combined market value of more than $2 trillion—all boosted growth by broadening their reach into new areas.....

Two of the other largest tech companies by market value— Microsoft Corp. and FacebookInc. —reported record sales a day earlier. Revenue at Microsoft rose 12% to $28.92 billion as its cloud-computing division continued to grow, while Facebook’s revenue jumped 47% to $12.97 billion.

Those companies are the five most valuable in the U.S. by market capitalization, the first time a single industry has occupied that position in several decades, according to S&P Capital Inc.

"It's different this time" is often a phrase with dangerous consequences. But compared to the tech bubble of the late 1990s it clearly is "different this time"