Chris Stadele

I asked Grok about the trading behavior around tech earnings before the 2000 crash, and it confirms good earnings reports triggered selloffs at the top of the bubble. That's what we saw this week. The 2000 Dot-Com Crash Tech and internet stocks showed a systematic pattern of post-earnings sell-offs even when results were solid or better than expected. This was especially pronounced in the frothy late-1990s environment and continued after the Nasdaq peaked in March 2000. A University of California, Berkeley study (Trueman, Wong, and Zhang) of internet firms from January 1998 to August 2000 found: Prices typically ran up in the days before earnings announcements. They reversed and fell in the days afterward. The pattern held regardless of the actual earnings or revenue news. It persisted into the crash period (including October–November 2000). Contemporary market reports from mid-2000 (after the March peak) reinforce this. Stocks often sold off when companies merely met or slightly beat expectations, or when guidance was cautious. Examples include: Microsoft, Intel, and Apple in July 2000 — results that were in-line or only modestly better triggered sharp declines amid fears that high growth rates could not continue indefinitely.⁠ Multiple cases of “beat estimates but stock crushed” behavior, including Amazon (better-than-expected loss but slight revenue miss) and various internet names. This fits the classic “sell the news” dynamic in highly speculative, high-valuation environments: good results were already priced in, and any hint of slowing growth or “not good enough” guidance was punished heavily. The Nasdaq ultimately fell ~78% from its March 2000 peak to the October 2002 low.