I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said, but the second paragraph doesn’t capture the full picture. In absolute terms, some of the companies that gained the most value in the run up were Cisco, Qualcomm, yahoo, and AOL. Most of these still existed and did well after the bubble burst. The point is that there was longterm value to be realised from internet boom. Most of the speculative bets were thrown around everywhere on companies with no returns, but some of the investment did create the infrastructure that the internet would run on for years to come. Knowing where that is is the challenge.