MW The big dogs of the dot-com era are barking again, 25 years later. Will they suffer the same fate?

By Joseph Adinolfi and Tomi Kilgore

Former dot-com darlings Cisco, Intel, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments are all hitting record highs - some for the first time since their heyday

The big dogs of the dot-com era are back, baby.

The big dogs of the dot-com era are barking again, some for the first time in many years.

As a rapid rally in semiconductor stocks reignites comparisons with 1999 - when the dot-com frenzy went into overdrive, eventually peaking in March 2000 - some investors have noticed another troubling parallel.

Shares of companies that rode high and survived the dot-com bust - but were then relegated to the tech sector's back ranks during the decades that followed - have suddenly come alive again. Given some of the similarities between now and then, there's a growing worry that the stocks may again suffer the same fate.

Even if that doesn't happen, the fact that these stocks are back on top is notable, some said. So-called Y2K fashion has already caught on with members of Generation Z. Now, some of the hottest stock-market names from that era are also being embraced by a new cohort of investors.

Over the past few weeks, shares of Intel $(INTC)$, Qualcomm $(QCOM)$, Texas Instruments $(TXN)$ and, most recently, Cisco Systems $(CSCO)$ have seen big gains, touching record highs for the first time in years. On Thursday, Cisco finished at a record high after tallying a double-digit surge following its latest earnings report.

The networking company, which ranked as the most valuable company in the world when the bubble reached its peak in early 2000, didn't surpass its March 27, 2000, record close until last Dec. 10 - more than 25 years later.

Intel, which has tallied big gains this year after a long stretch of lackluster performance, didn't take out its Aug. 31, 2000, record close until April 24, Dow Jones Market Data showed. At that earlier peak, Intel was the second most valuable company in the U.S.

"It certainly is an eerie coincidence that the big winners these days are Qualcomm, Intel and Cisco," said Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers. During the dot-com days, Sosnick was an options market maker at Timber Hill, a predecessor firm to Interactive Brokers.

Brent Donnelly, now the president of Spectra Markets, was a day trader back then. "It is kind of mind-blowing to see Cisco and Intel at the top of the charts. Those two stocks just recently took out their year 2000 highs," he said.

Torrid gains for the PHLX Semiconductor Index SOX have seen the index of hot chip stocks reach territory that most technical analysts would consider to be extremely stretched.

Earlier this week, the SOX traded as much as 63.8% above its 200-day moving average, based on a MarketWatch analysis of FactSet data using the 200-DMA - a long-term trend tracker closely monitored by analysts - as the denominator. That's the biggest spread above the 200-DMA since April 2000, as the SOX was trying to fight off the popping of the dot-com bubble.

When the SOX reached its dot-com peak on March 10, 2000, it was 111.2% above the 200-DMA.

That is another unnerving parallel between today and the dot-com era, but, as Sosnick pointed out, there are important differences as well. The current valuation picture for these companies is very different from what investors witnessed during the dot-com bubble days.

While enthusiasm and momentum-chasing are certainly a factor, this latest surge higher is happening alongside a boom in profit expectations, as one of the strongest quarterly earnings seasons in years draws to a close. As a result, valuation multiples like forward price-to-earnings ratio have yet to reach the extremes of the dot-com era.

The forward P/E ratio for the SOX is currently at 27.7, compared with 52.1 when the SOX reached its dot-com peak, according to FactSet data.

There are other notable differences, as well. Donnelly pointed out that the U.S. government recently took a stake in Intel. But beyond that, geopolitics has become a much more important factor affecting the stock market, particularly hot tech stocks. Recently, reports that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang would be joining President Donald Trump on his trip to China caused shares of the chip maker - already the world's most valuable company - to pop.

Donnelly also pointed out that the retail investing crowd has seemingly gotten more savvy since the dot-com days. Instead of buying at or near the top, retail investors these days appear to be taking more of a strategic approach, showing up to buy in large numbers when the market takes a dip, like they did in April 2025.

Even if an investor has decided with certainty that semiconductors and other names linked to the artificial-intelligence theme are currently in a bubble, deciding what to do next isn't always so easy, Donnelly added. Any investor who got out in 1999 could have missed out on some strong returns, as the Nasdaq went parabolic during the final days of the bubble.

"This can be very hard to act on, because even if we're in the final wave of the bubble, we could still see some pretty big gains," Donnelly said.

Read: Here's how to invest when the stock market gets this concentrated.

For those interested in a more direct parallel to the dot-com days, analysts at Bespoke Investment Group have for years been tracking how the Nasdaq composite has traded since the launch of ChatGPT, and comparing its performance to how the index fared following Netscape's initial public offering - widely considered the beginning of the dot-com era.

The degree to which the two periods have tracked each other - so far at least - is almost uncanny. If the comparison continues to hold, that would mean the Nasdaq today is at the same point in the cycle as it was back in May 1998, according to Bespoke.

It makes sense to compare the debuts of the pioneering web browser and the AI agent, because the rallies that followed were driven by a similar need - the need for more speed.

Just as internet access was upgraded from 56K dial-up to ISDN and then to fiber-optic networks connected directly to homes, the current battle is also for faster communication speeds to build very large, bigger-bandwidth and low-latency networks, said Craig Johnson, chief market technician at Piper Sandler.

As AI infrastructure is put in place, "networks need refreshing," said Johnson, who joined Piper Sandler in 1995. For the consumer, that includes upgrades to 6G networks and to the new Wi-Fi 7 standard.

"We're starting the next leg higher for faster communications as we enter a whole new upgrade cycle," Johnson said.

The question is, will the current cycle end the same way?

Kimberly Caughey Forrest, founder and chief investment officer at Bokeh Capital Partners, said the dot-com cycle ended because Wall Street believed that the spending on telecommunications networks and computer hardware would continue at the same rate as during the initial buildout. It did not.

"Then the realization hit that the telecom spending was overblown," Forrest said. "The dot-com craze ending was the final blow."

Forrest saw it all happen. She was hired as an equity research analyst in October 1999, just as the dot-com bull run was shifting into overdrive.

In the current cycle, she said, much of the spending is being done by a handful of companies that are in a race with each other to be the leader in AI.

"When one blinks, will the rest stop investing in the buildout?" Forrest asked. "We will find out."

-Joseph Adinolfi -Tomi Kilgore

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May 15, 2026 12:31 ET (16:31 GMT)

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