[santa_boy]

> For a meaningful analysis, you would need to dig into the winning stocks specifically and ask why they're up so much.

IMHO rationalization of this is very random at best. Why is Zoom (up >600% YTD) really worth it?

Most of the big tech cos. can replace Zoom overnight. I use Google Meet daily without the trivial bells-n-whistles that Zoom offers. Absolutely no adjustments needed!

Jio in India (where I am from) would eat Zoom very quickly (https://bit.ly/3nSBuRy)

I don't mean to dampen the euphoria but seriously without $ backing, many of these companies are simply difficult to justify. (Valuations will revert to DCF over the long term. But then, in the long term there is no one really alive :-) ... dance along while the music is playing is the mantra ... )

I'd be happy to receive opposing views that are well explained.

[runako]

> Most of the big tech cos. can replace Zoom overnight.

This ignores the fact that Zoom rose alongside competing offerings from all of the big tech cos. You cite using Google Meet, which has essentially existed (as Hangouts and G+) for all of Zoom's lifetime. Microsoft bought Skype around the time Zoom was founded (edit: and obviously has Teams now). Cisco bought WebEx in 2007. GoToMeeting (Citrix) is older than Zoom.

And that's without counting the transit providers (AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, etc. in the US), who have been doing video chat trials since the late '80s. Again, all big rich companies.

Edit: Amazon has video calling in Alexa & Chime. Facebook has Portal. IBM had Sametime until 2019.

The assumption that the big tech companies can replace Zoom overnight needs to account for the fact that Zoom started in a marketplace crowded by competition from big public companies and should never have achieved traction. Not to compare them directly, but people made similar arguments about Google, which also launched into a crowded marketplace and was "overvalued" etc.

Note: I am not taking a position on Zoom's valuation.

[dylan604]

>Most of the big tech cos. can replace Zoom overnight.

If that's true, why haven't they? Streaming live video isn't simple. Multiply that times the number of users in one meeting multiplied by the number of calls, and not simple gets even more complicated. Also, big tech will do the obvious thing and make you be a member/user of their platform. G would require a Gmail account, FB require FB account, etc. The one attraction to Zoom to me is that no account required to attend.

[mdorazio]

I don't disagree. In a lot of cases, like Zoom, there's a stupid amount of free capital floating around due to effectively-zero interest rates, and not many places with decent returns to invest it. So anything that gets hyped as a good place to put it (like tech stocks) gets blown out of proportion and underlying fundamentals don't really come into play. Basically, investors (and the market) aren't rational right now.

[f00zz]

> there's a stupid amount of free capital floating around due to effectively-zero interest rates, and not many places with decent returns to invest it

That's probably the reason, but it would be great if all this liquidity were going to companies that are actually building innovative tech. I mean, we're 20% into the 21st century already, where's my asteroid mining ETF?

[mdorazio]

I'm with you. I would love to plow investment dollars into SpaceX or Planetary Resources, but it seems like most of the real innovative companies are either still private or got acquired by companies I don't want to invest in.