The most massive and heinous fraud ever perpetrated in the stock market was conducted on a massive scale by the big brokerage houses during the Dot Com Boom. Remember those heady days? If you ever give your money to a large brokerage house after reading this, do so at the very real peril of losing your money.
In the late 1990’s it seemed everyone and their grandmother should have been making money investing in internet start-ups. But were these companies even actual businesses or merely figments of finance invented by the Wall Street Lords? Methinks yes. During these crazy years the Big Brokerages were upgrading and shoving dot com stocks on their clients while calling the companies worthless in internal memos. They underwrote companies with no chance of ever turning a profit just to bank huge fees. They allowed their analysts to recite fantasy price targets without justification that made sense to anyone outside of Alice in Wonderland.
Television stations like CNBC paraded hyperventilating idiots out day after day to sing the praises of internet stocks. The government was asleep at the wheel (no big surprise) and didn’t allow the SEC resources to investigate the widespread chicanery that was going on at the time. In fact, the media in general should have been taken to task for not having the guts to stand up and tell their readers/viewers exactly what was going on.
It’s hard to even put a dollar value on this industry wide scam fest. Suffice it to say that the fraud was vast. Millions lost money and thousands lost life savings.
Feel better about choosing income property investing now? You should.
